Hi,
I was hoping for a little advice regarding using my home-milled flour.
I read somewhere that you should either use your freshly milled flour within 6-12 hours, or you should age it for about 3 weeks before using it. The reason is something to do with oxidization and the formation of disulfide bonds which will strengthen gluten. Question 1: Are you aging your home-milled flour, or using it fresh from the mill for bread?
I have had a starter going for over a year now, and I typically feed it with a 1:1 mixture of KA bread flour and commercial whole wheat flour. So I recently purchased a home-mill and I always seem to have a little bit of flour left over after milling. I like to sift it through a 40 mesh sifter. I wonder if I can just save my left-over sifted flour and use it to feed my starter even if it hasn’t been aged/oxidized/whatever for three weeks. I have been using this saved home-milled, and I feel like the starter isn’t as healthy as it has been, and I worry it is because I’m feeding it not-fresh, not-aged-enough flour. So, question 2: Will it adversely affect my starter to use my home-milled not-fresh, not-aged flour for feedings?
Andy, thank you for asking these questions. I’ve recently started milling grains with my new Mock mill and wondering why my sourdough bread, while really delicious, doesn’t rise as well as when I was using commercial organic flour.
I’m looking forward to some words of wisdom from bakers with more experience using freshly ground flour.
Andy, I’m no expert. I’ve been making bread a long time but have fairly recently been honing my sourdough skills as well as milling my own flour. I have switched from using commercially milled flour to freshly milled flour. My starter is going gangbusters and, if I time things right, will raise the final loaf of bread in about an hour and a half.
My initial thought when I read your post was that when you sift flour, you’re going to be sifting out more bran than endosperm (where the gluten-producing stuff lives). I don’t think you’d get a very good sourdough starter using mostly sifted product (bran). I feed my starter with 1/2 WW flour (home milled) and 1/2 All Purpose flour, though I’m experimenting with transitioning to 100% WW. The endosperm is where “white” flour or bread flour comes from because it contains the gluten. Without (with with too little) gluten, your bread or starter won’t rise properly. So I’m thinking that your sifted leftover flour isn’t maybe the flour that you should be using for your starter. I’d be curious to hear others’ thoughts about that.
I don’t age my flour. I grind it fresh, by weight, for the loaf I’m baking. I grind extra and keep some in a jar in the fridge for my starter feeding. I’ve had no problems keeping my starter going well since switching to home milled flour.
Hope that helps,
Dave
Hi Dave,
Thanks for the reply and tips. Unfortunately I realize I did not word my post as carefully as I could.
Indeed, when I sift the flour I discard the bran. The sifted flour (without the bran) is what I have been feeding my starter. In fact I store mine in a jar similar to you, although I leave mine on the counter next to my starter. So it seems that feeding your starter older than 6-12 hour, refrigerated flour is working out ok. I will continue to feed my starter with my sifted (bolted?) flour and more carefully log it’s health and feeding times.
My recent loaf with 100% home milled red hard wheat (85% hydration) did not rise very well. So I’m dropping back down to 30% home milled and going from there.
Lol, sorry for my misread! When I started my sourdough quest I really struggled with my bread not rising. I’ve always shot forn100% WW and could not get it to work. I then decided to try switching brands of flour. I got mine originally from my food coop. When I started grinding my own flour I switched to a local organic farmer’s grain and everything changed. My breads and starters just go crazy. Have you experimented with different fllours? Breadtopia has some good stuff, King Arthur’s another. Just another thought, maybe as futile as my previous thought… good luck!
I bake w sourdough several times a week so I go through a lot of flour in feeding. I found King Arthur’s whole wheat and white bread flour are a perfect combo at about 50:50 ratio until final build at 25:75 ww to white. I stopped using my precious organic wheat that I mill. It was getting too expensive. I save that for the bread itself. Using Trevor’s Champlain SD recipe and technique, I end up with great rise and a beautiful loaf.
Hi Andy,
I have been milling for a few years and almost always use it within a few hours, the time it takes to do a leaven build with the newly ground flour. The dough has been vigorous with most of the mixes of berries used. I also keep a small amount in a cannister on the counter for general cooking purposes and it can be there for a couple weeks or so, this is the WW component that is used to feed my starter in a 2 to 1 ratio with King Arthur AP. The starter is very healthy and active. One thing that can effect starters is hydration. When I changed from 100% to 70% my particular one seemed to much happier, so you could try experimenting with the moisture level.
Stu
Hi, all I can do is share my technique. I use the MM 200 for my grains. My flour consists of equal parts hard spring white, hard spring red and soft white. I bake both sourdough and non sourdough with this blend. This is also what I feed my starter.
After milling I sieve out the bran using a 50 or 55 mesh sieve and then grind the bran only a minimum of 5 times. It doesn’t take long. At this point the remilled bran is mixed into the flour and milled one more time. This seems to give a more uniform particle size. I store in the fridge and don’t mess around with aging. My loaves always turn out nice and light.