Durum wheat is the hardest of all the wheats that’s why it’s more suitable for making grits. And while semolina doesn’t necessarily mean durum wheat it’s become synonymous because of this. It can be re-milled to get a flour however it damages the starches because of the extra processing it needs. Rimacinata is re-milled semolina, and it is durum flour, however not all durum flour is re-milled semolina as it can be the by-product of milling semolina. Although I’ve never actually sourced durum flour made by this process and always used re-milled semolina or fine semolina.
So yes, durum wheat can be ground into flour but the nature of durum wheat, being the hardest of all the wheats, is more suited to semolina and needs more processing if being ground into a flour. Rimacinata is very close but when compared to bread flour the difference can be seen.
I made the bread yesterday for the first time. It looks great on the outside, but the crumb is dense. I made the Semolina version. The dough was very sticky throughout the process. I will try again soon.
Hi Edith, that crumbshot looks like classic under-proofing. Next time you try this bread, let the proofing go somewhat longer. How much longer is hard to say, but based on that crumb it looks like it would need a fair bit longer.
Probably, however, I started the process at 6:00 in the morning. It took several hours just to build the stiff Levin, that’s probably where the problem lies as I’ve never used a stiff Levin. I also let the dough proof for the full six hours and then the additional one hour. I baked it in my preheated Emile Henry Cloch for the prescribed time and finished baking around 8:00 pm.
With sourdough bread, I think it’s usually best to ignore specific proofing times from a recipe and instead go by how much the dough has risen. There are a lot of different variables that can affect how fast or slow the proofing process goes and so a written recipe that specifies a particular proofing time has to be an approximation at best.
@Benito has an excellent post on the forum here that describes a simple technique using an “aliquot jar” that you can use instead of following a recipe’s recommended proofing time to nail the proofing more consistently regardless of the temperature in your kitchen, the strength of your starter, the variations in one batch of flour vs. another, etc.
OK, I’m puzzled here. I found that I have to grind the durum berries at a very coarse setting in order for the sifting to separate out anything (with my usual coarse setting, everything passes through the 30 sieve). So I ground some durum on a very coarse setting. What’s left in the sieve is gritty yellow stuff, what passes through the sieve is less yellow/more the usual tan of red wheat (and more powdery). I’m wondering if to approximate semolina, I should actually re-grind the more yellow gritty stuff left in the sieve (when I tried that, it certainly looks more like how I think of semolina flour looking), rather than regrinding what passed through the sieve, like I usually do to make bolted flour, say from spelt. Thanks for any thoughts you might have!
@terrafirma The tradition for the bread is to have a closed crumb, so your bread is more true to style than mine was. But if the base or some areas were really dense/gummy, then I’d try what @homebreadbaker suggested and let it ferment a bit more.
@meglamm That is awesome and fascinating information. It totally sounds to me like what’s in your sifter is the endosperm or semolina, and that’s what you should be using.
Semolina is the endosperm only, so it definitely performs better from a gluten standpoint than whole grain durum flour – the whole berry milled. I don’t find it any more gritty or difficult to use than other whole grain low gluten flours though (e.g. kamut, emmer, einkorn). It’s hard but a stone mill on the finest setting, does make it smooth in my experience.
For the milled durum version of the recipe above, I suggest 40% bread flour to make the dough behave similarly to the 100% semolina version (definitely not identical though).
It’s interesting that you’ve seen the durum germ and bran only being sold as durum flour.
I haven’t seen this. I’ve only seen re-milled semolina being sold as durum flour. The ‘other’ durum flour is the fine powder left behind when milling semolina. It’s basically the same thing with one being re-milled semolina and the other being the by-product of milling semolina.
Re-milled semolina is a pleasure to use! It is fine but not exactly the same thing as bread flour. Comparing like with like! Not when comparing re-milled semolina (white flour) to wholegrain flours of different varieties of wheat. I’ve never come across wholegrain semolina or durum flour (they are not really used in traditional Italian breads using semolina/durum flour) although I’ve seen it available. Never seen just the germ and bran.
Both semolina and durum flour are referring to just the endosperm. Another confusing terminology because durum flour is like saying spelt flour which doesn’t specify if it’s wholegrain or white flour per se but durum flour means the ‘white’ flour or re-milled semolina.
Using a graduated cylinder to gauge increases in dough volume has been used for a very long time in the baking trade. In Italy, the cylinder is called a “spia” (spy) in baker’s jargon because it gives an accurate measure of volume increase which would be more difficult to measure in the bulk dough mass. This is particularly important in panettone making, for instance, where the cost of the raw materials is so high and the fermentation process is so complicated, that there is no room for mistakes.
I had to google tempering and now I also wonder if durum wheat is tempered before it’s milled for semolina.
What is tempering? Tempering consists of adding water to dry grain and allowing the grain to rest for a period of time before it is milled. The purpose of tempering is to toughen the bran and thus make it resist being broken into small particles during milling and to soften or “mellow” the endosperm and make it easier to grind. From thefreshloaf.com
If you mean milled commercially, I think tempering is a standard part of the process, at least with regular wheat. I just don’t know if durum differs.
Some googling brings up an technical article which does include the statement “For flour and semolina, tempering is used before debranning and milling operation,” which does suggest that durum is tempered too. (https://millermagazine.com/english/grain-cleaning-and-tempering/.html)
From my own experience with a home stone mills, I do find tempering makes it easier sift out the bran (at least with winter wheats).
I’ve been using durum wheat for years and love the flavor it brings. I’ve been interested in trying a whole durum loaf, so I was excited to see the recipe posted. I used the 80:20 mix of bolted home milled durum flour and KA bread flour with 330g water. The dough was a bit wet, but as it gained strength it had a wonderful aroma and a lovely soft, silky texture. The loaf rose well in the oven, tastes delicious and left a wonderful aroma in the house after baking. My only issue is that the crumb turned out very tight. I was expecting a more open crumb considering the amount of oven spring I got. I’ll keep trying to improve that. Overall, I’m very happy with the results.
That sounds delicious. My crumb was pretty tight too, and I think I would expect similar at 80:20, even with the 80% durum being bolted. It would be neat to hear if modifications to technique or water amount can open it up though. I bet with a round of laminating, you could get more holes, but probably not a lacy openness.
What I gather from this: durum has a thinner coat of bran. For separating out that bran most effectively they use a friction process (“peeling” and “pearling”) before milling. During milling “stratification” (blowing air upward through the milled product while agitating to float the bran to the surface) is the primary means of removing the bran. I think are saying that sifting is less important for that process than with regular wheat (because it’s less effective? or because there’s less bran due to earlier peeling?).
They also talk about “conditioning” to 16-17% moisture which I assume to be the same as tempering.
A while back I was in an internet rabbit hole, learning about semolina. I saw a video that had some shots of an industrial semolina mill, if you want to check it out. (a lot of tubes!)
Ok, just one more comment about tempering durum! I’ve tried it out since my last comment here. I started by adding 5% moisture and after a couple of days tested it by biting a piece. If you don’t have the equipment to measure grain moisture content easily, the old fashioned method is to get a feel for how it crushes between your teeth. The problem is, durum feels nothing like regular wheat, and this lead me to think it could use another 5% of moisture, which I added. A few days later, I started milling some of it and ended up glazing my stones. Luckily, dialing it back to a coarse setting, I was able to get the flow started again, and then ran some non-tempered durum through it and that seems to have fixed the situation.
So, home temperers beware!
BTW I’ve made your Altamura recipe twice now (the durum version) and I love it. I’m trying it out again tonight substituting emmer for half of the durum.
