I think it is a question of semantics. From what I see on the Web site, I think Shambo is absolutely right, especially since she uses that brand! They really should not be using the word "flour" on the packaging, but they do. It does depend on the type of flour you use for your bread on how much gluten you will need. Apparently there are some special bread machine bread flours. I haven't seen them but that would present an additional conundrum. I use organic whole wheat bread flour that I get at the health food store, and King Arthur organic white bread flour that I get at ye olde grocery store. For a long time I couldn't find real whole wheat bread flour, and the labeling was confusing on that too, but the kind I get is the hard wheat kind, or so it says on the label. It gives me good results, that I know. It's also tricky when they add wheat gluten to low gluten flours to make them into "bread flour." I'm gonna have to try that honey wheat now, sounds like one BF will like. Right now we are lovin' up the yogurt bread. That's one of my favorite recipes in Beth's book. You get the sourdough taste without the sourdough fuss. I make a lot of the recipes in there with half whole wheat flour even though the recipe doesn't call for it. I just like the taste and texture of whole wheat better. I add a little more liquid to compensate, but not much. With this week's yogurt bread I subbed one cup whole wheat bread flour for one of the white, and subbed oatmeal for 1/2 cup of the flour. It has been a great loaf, albeit not very pretty looking! I have so many of those breads on my "to try" list, lol! Before my oven gave out I was just using the dough cycle and baking them in a small loaf pan in the oven. I don't like the big hole you get in the loaves when you use the bread machine to bake in. But it is a godsend right now with my oven being broken. We eat around the hole, lol! I also find some of Beth's breads very yeasty-tasting. I'm wondering if that just goes with the territory of homeade bread, in particular the kind made in the bread machine. Oh, and BTW, being able to find and buy real whole wheat PASTRY flour, has revolutionized my non-yeast baking. I get superior muffins and cakes using it, as opposed to the all-purpose whole wheat flour that was the main offering in the stores for so many years. I remember a time when I was happy they just started carrying whole wheat flour, let alone the different kinds. That's one modern trend I am happy about!

--Whole wheat pastry flour is milled from low-gluten, low-protein, soft wheat varieties. I use soft white wheat for pastry flour, or anywhere I don't need a lot of gluten development. Spelt is another good wholegrain choice when you don't need a lot of gluten development. Spelt has a gluten level that is 5,000 parts per million; compared to wheat which begins at 50,000 parts per million and go up from there. --Technically, "all-purpose" flour was developed commercially for bleached/unbleached flour from a mixture of hard wheat and soft wheat. There's enough hard wheat so it has enough gluten to make yeast breads, and enough soft wheat flour so it makes decent quick breads, pastry or cakes - so it covers "all purposes", but it's NOT the optimum choice of flour for most things, other than soft dinner rolls. We've just developed our flour use from the most common commercial flour available - all-purpose - with occasional moves to Southern all-purpose for biscuits and quick breads, and the even more elusive cake flour for beautiful tender cakes. Even in the world of commercial bleached/unbleached all-purpose flour there are great differences... Northern all-purpose flour (King Arthur and Robin Hood - 11-12) have a higher protein level than National Brands (Gold Medal and Pillsbury 10-12). Southern all-purpose flour (7.5-9.5) is milled from soft wheat, so it's best used for quick breads, biscuits, muffins, pastry, cookies, cakes - foods where you don't want a lot of gluten development. A mix of 3:2 hard wheat to soft white wheat is a great "all-purpose" mixture when you want soft yeast rolls. Otherwise, choosing a mix of hard wheat and soft wheat is less than optimum for other baked goods. --Whole wheat "bread" flour would mean a high protein level milled from hard wheat. Bleached/Unbleached bread flour has a protein level of 13-14. I've milled wheat that was 16% protein and made yeast bread with it, but it takes a lot more kneading to develop the gluten and you find you have tough bread as a result of the high protein level. This also happens when you add too much vital wheat gluten to a recipe, so more (protein/gluten) is not necessarily better. The protein levels of wheat I purchase is generally between 13% and 14% protein, which is more than enough to raise a lofty loaf of bread. If you tend to get short squatty loaves of 100% whole wheat bread, there are other factors you need to address besides protein/gluten levels - such as stop using a (quick mix) direct dough method and switch to a sponge method. A sponge will help soften the bran - the sharp edges of bran can cut the gluten strands. A sponge method also helps develop the gluten without kneading. Adding an acid ingredient (vinegar, lemon juice, ascorbic acid, etc) to the recipe has a positive effect. There is a substance in wheat germ called Gluthione which breaks down the gluten strands. Adding an acid, such as ascorbic acid, counteracts the negative effects of Glutathione. Ascorbic acid helps to prevent the gluten bonds from breaking down and will repair the gluten bonds, so you'll get a high-rising loaf of 100% whole wheat bread. I generally add 1/8 t. ascorbic acid per loaf of bread when making bread that includes wheatgerm (as a single ingredient or from whole wheat flour). -Something we tend to forget, or possibly didn't even know, hard wheat wasn't even available for milling until the late 1870's when the German Mennonites arrived here in Kansas and brought the granddad of all hard winter wheat varieties, Turkey Red, with them from Europe. Prior to the developing of the hard winter varieties of wheat, all flour was milled from soft wheat. The mills liked soft wheat for milling into flour because it was easy to grind in one pass through the mill, and had a much larger extraction of flour. Soft wheat tends to be a plumper seed with more endosperm, while hard winter wheat is small and rather wrinkled with more bran and less endosperm. You can tell the difference between hard and soft wheat when you mill it at home - the hard wheat flour is more coarse and gritty from the bran, while soft wheat renders a very soft, talcum powder feeling flour. --"Bread flour" or high protein flour milled from hard wheat, was available to commercial bakers and they referenced it by calling it "strong" wheat flour. Strong and weak wheats indicate a wheat or flour's baking strength. It wasn't until the advent of the bread machine in the 1980's that high-gluten bread flour became available for home use. Up until that time all-purpose flour, which is a medium-protein level flour, was about the only kind of flour available for home use. If "whole wheat bread flour" is called for, it means use a "regular" whole wheat flour which is milled from hard wheat, instead of "pastry" whole wheat flour, which is milled from soft wheat. -Grainlady

If you are using red wheat, the flavor and color of the finished product would be improved by using white wheat varieties for your 100% whole wheat baking. The genetics that determine the bran color also make red wheat bitter-tasting. There are 3 genes that determine bran color and the "grandfather" of all red wheat varieties, Turkey Red, has all three genes. Most of today's red wheat varieties only contain one or two of those genes, and they are not as dark or as bitter as the old varieties of red wheat. White wheat, on the other hand, doesn't contain those genes, which results in a light bran color and a sweeter, more mild-tasting, wheat. Soaking the flour by using long preferments, sponge method, soaked flour method, or using a starter for a longer overall fermentation making a naturally-leavened bread, will also alter the bitterness AND the finished color of red wheat (even making it lighter in color). Using a fast bread making method like the direct dough method, won't give you these results. So for 100% whole wheat bread, use an older bread-making method, not a fast modern bread making method. Try adding 1/8 t. of citric acid per loaf (or even Fruit Fresh will work since it contains citric and ascorbic acid) to aid in the gluten structure of 100% whole wheat bread. The glutathione in the germ has a negative effect on the gluten bonds. Adding an acid, as I believe plllog mentioned in the other whole wheat bread thread, will help prevent the gluten bonds from breaking down, and it will also help repair gluten bonds that have already been broken. The addition of the acid (which can also be from lemon juice, orange juice, or vinegar, but in much larger amounts since citric acid is 9-times stronger than lemon juice) will also help promote yeast growth and sustain the leavening. If you are making naturally leavened whole wheat bread (made with a starter - aka sourdough starter or old dough method), it is already acidic enough and does NOT require the addition of an acid. Adding an acid is a great dough improver which is used by professional bakers, along with other dough improvers like this: along with vitamin C for better gluten development; an egg yolk for antistaling (from the lecithin in the yolk) and better gluten development; 1/4 t. ground fenugreek, rosemary, or cinnamon for enhanced yeast activity and better baking qualities; 1 T. sugar to feed yeast; and 1 t. barley malt syrup, which contains enzymes to convert flour to yeast food (or you can sprout your own wheat and dry it in a low-temperature dehydrator and mill it for malted wheat flour for the additional enzymes - I posted this information recently - it doesn't need to be barley malt, it can be wheat malt). Yeast bread made with 100% whole wheat flour does NOT have the extensibility that you normally get using white flour (bleached or unbleached) or a mixture of white and whole wheat flour, so only allow this bread to rise to just under "double". Use a dough rising bucket so you can judge how much the dough actually rises. Don't use a timed rise since dough rises according to the strength of the yeast, ambient temperature, and amount of humidity - and can't tell time AT ALL! If you place 1 quart of dough into the dough rising bucket, you will know it has "doubled" in bulk when it reaches the 2-quart mark (as an example). And as you already know, it takes longer if it's cold than if it's warm. But anything more than "doubled" in bulk (and preferable just UNDER double) and you are essentially over-proofing the dough which will affect the rise and oven-spring. You can help compensate for this by adding some vital wheat gluten to the dough, but I never found it necessary unless I was also using a large portion of low-gluten flour (like rye, spelt, einkorn, etc.) along with the whole wheat flour. I never added vital wheat gluten to 100% whole wheat bread recipes. Although it may be necessary if the wheat you are using has a low protein count. As an enriched dough, you may find better results panning it rather than making free-form loaves. Well-hydrated lean doughs are better for free-form loaves. In the mixing process, when do you add the fat - early or late? Adding the fat early in the process will "shorten" the gluten by coating the flour and the gluten absorb less hydration, and you will get a shorter, more compact, crumb structure. By adding the fat later, after the gluten has developed, it will allow more gluten development and a more open structure, and a high-rising dough. If you are mixing your dough in a bread machine, add the fat at the add-in beep. If you are making the dough by hand, you can wait until the last few minutes of kneading to add the fat. What to expect when you retard the dough. There are positive and negative characteristics to chilling the dough (retarding) in the refrigerator. It develops more flavor and a slightly more open texture. But chilling also affects the rise and oven-spring (negatively), and to compensate for this, after chilling, you can dissolve 1/2 t. of yeast in a few tablespoons of warm water and knead this into the dough before shaping since chilling dough also retards the action of the yeast, and even kills some of the yeast. Using this method may give you the extra loft you are looking for, rather than thinking it needed to rise more, which may actually have been over-proofing your dough. -Grainlady

No. Soaking the wheatberries will make them too soft, and you'll get slurry instead of flour, and it will be hard to control the hydration. Yes, soak the flour, but in the amount of water you want to use for the recipe. It may seem crumbly dry, but just make sure it's as well mixed as you can. It'll be nice and moist at the end of the soaking period. I think I'd soak all the flour, rather than just the WW, but that's something to experiment with. Maybe the white would be greedy and soak it all up before the WW had a chance. Best of both worlds, soak the ww, then do an hour autolyze after mixing the rest. Do soak the WW for at least 8 hrs. Overnight is good. This is even more important if you have little chunks you’re trying to soften. An alternative to having coarsely ground bits of wheat, would be to mix in some interesting other whole grain, like millet. Just toss it into the soak. It's very nice. I've also used amaranth, buckwheat groats, various seeds and whatever took my fancy. Just keep to a small enough quantity that it doesn't impede the rise. Don't chill it unless your baking day gets postponed more than a day or two, and you think you'll get mold. Just cover your vessel, and leave it on the counter. Ambient humidity does make a big difference. I know you baked professionally, but I can't remember what. IME, all that “baking is chemistry” cliche stuff is about cake (which includes quickbreads and cookies). You have to have the right specific ingredients, in the right quantities, with the right methods under the right circumstances, to get a replicable product. Breads are different. They're much more about art, about adjusting for how dry your flour is, how dry the air, how active the yeast. You know there’s enough flour or water when it feels right. Pastry seams somewhere in between.