Bread Baking and Flour Substitution Tips

Good to know. Thanks for your thoughts (and expertise)! My bread is already quite chewy (which I love) but was worrying (perhaps too much?) about how this change would effect my baking.

If you dont mind a little chewy and you already never do more than 75% white flour then I wouldn’t change a thing. It’ll be fine!

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I have a bread flour substitution question - in our area all flour disappeared for several weeks after the start of the coronavirus lockdown. I had some APF and my wife found some KAF Whole Wheat, but bread flour only appeared this week in Giant (and it was bleached, but it was all there was, so…). However, the international store I go to had a quantity of Atta flour (which is made from durhum wheat, if I understand correctly). Now of course I could just make chappati, but I’d like to try to use it in sourdough baking. Has anyone tried it and what was the experience?

Thanks for any advice!

It is my understanding (I may be wrong so if someone could corroborate this) is that while it is durum wheat the process it goes through while making it into flour makes it more fit for flat bread rather than tall loaves. Now I’ve never worked with this flour so I don’t know if its impossible or just not ideal.

Can you find fine durum semolina. Semolina can come in different grades from coarse to fine with fine being not quite durum flour but the next best thing. If you can that’d make a nice substitute.

@HLAgnew @anon44372566
I did a comparison of bolted durum flour and semolina flour recently – they were each paired with all purpose flour 50:50. The semolina (durum wheat middlings in fine-flour form) took longer to absorb the water. The bolted durum (durum wheat flour that has had some bran sifted out) was stickier. Both made similarly lovely khachapuri, a Georgian stuffed bread – recipe to come soon on here on Breadtopia.

Edited since I’ve learned more:
I think Atta flour would be similar to whole grain durum flour, which I use at 60% (ish) in this soooo delicious bread (semolina flour that is fine can be substituted).

You can always put the dough in a pan if it feels like the gluten won’t work with a freestanding loaf.

That’s what I did here (50% semolina flour):
https://www.instagram.com/p/B_A2mNSpfxw/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Here is a pizza dough (40% semolina flour):

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Nice loaf @Fermentada loving that swirl. I’ve often made use of fine semolina and while its a good substitute it just lacks something that rimacinata has. Its amazing what that extra fine grind does and I’m also thinking there are different varieties of durum grain where the better quality ones are grown for rimacinata and the others for semolina even though rimacinata is remilled semolina. But I have no knowledge of this and its just an opinion I’ve formed when working with them. Or it could actually be solely down to the grind which makes all the difference. As for Atta I seem to remember from somewhere that the milling process used destroys the gluten to a certain extent which makes it not ideal for tall loaves.

@Abe I think you’re much more familiar with these flours than I am. I remember learning about the Altamura bread from you. I did some googling and I think Atta flour is maybe closest to whole grain durum flour…and I edited my reply to reflect that. Though @HLAgnew please note I’m still speculating.

Here’s something interesting https://trfl.nl/recipe/73/how-make-good-no-knead-artisan-bread-indian-atta-flour

Cool – I suspect that 100% Atta flour bread is similar to my 100% whole grain Kamut in this recipe post. I haven’t tried a 100% whole grain durum, but am guessing it would be similar too.

I have a 50% whole grain kamut (stone ground in my Mockmill) in the oven right now and it’s looking good :slight_smile:

So here’s a small update - I thought I’d experiment a bit and see what happened. This is the result, made with 100 grams of a refreshed APF San Francisco sourdough starter (which revived in spite of sitting freeze-dried in the back of the fridge since I bought it on eBay in 2012!), 350 grams of white bread flour (Giant store brand, unfortunately bleached, but it was all that was available) and 150 grams of Atta flour (including 1 tbsp of vital gluten). 375 grams of water. Autolyse of about 2 hours, bulk fermentation about 10 hours, proofed for an hour before I went to bed, spent the rest of the night in the fridge and then sat on the counter about another hour before baking. The dough was somewhat slack but I got a good oven spring and the sides of the dutch oven kept it from spreading too much. Color is lighter than with regular whole wheat, taste is very pleaseant

The Atta flour I’m using is Golden Temple brand (made in Canada), which is described as containing Durum wheat flour, Durum what bran, and wheat flour, so it must be some kind of blend.

I look forward to your posting of the khachapuri recipe! Love Georgian food (and Saperavi and Rkatsiteli wines)!

That’s a beautiful loaf of bread. It looks like the flour and your formula are a success. Durum and Kamut both have such a lovely golden color.

The khachapuri was so delicious. I plan to make it again soon. I need to get my hands on some feta cheese.

Here’s my 50% whole grain kamut loaf from last week. 77% hydration.

Great tips for bread baking and substitution, I was looking forward to this for a very long time. I used to read bread machine reviews and recipes at WhatsCookingDad they have some amazing content regarding the best bread machines you can buy.

I’m wondering about going the other direction. I’ve got a recipe calling for Bolted hard wheat flour and I only have all purpose flour. Can i use that? Would substituting bread flour be more optimal? Thanks in advance

Bolted flour is going to absorb more water than both bread flour and all purpose flour. Substituting either is fine but consider reducing the water a bit. (All purpose is slightly less absorbent than bread flour.)

Thank you! I’ll definitely make sure to get bread flour at the very least and reduce the liquids.

Hi Melissa

This might be a strange question, but can I use my regular rye starter with a GF flour blend? i.e instead of using a GF starter?

Yes, definitely. As long as you’re not trying to make 100% GF bread, because rye (and barley) still have some gluten.
The microbes in the rye starter should work fine on GF flour though.

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Yay , very exciting. thank you !!!

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