I have been using a Nutrimill Flour Mill for the past few years. I really like it, use it all the time. I really have enjoyed grinding my own flour, and make enough to last about a week at a time. For the past three years I have not bought bread. Instead, despite a very busy work schedule, I have managed with my spouse’s help to totally break away from that sort of ‘bread’ and make what we need at home, in part, to recipes I have found on BreadTopia!
Now I am reading how people are grinding their flour twice. That’s something I have never done. I grind it on the finest setting and although the flour is somewhat coarser than store bought flour, I’ve never minded that. I don’t want flour like you buy at the store. I also don’t separate any of the end product, I just sift it all together and use it as is.
My question is – how SHOULD flour be ground to bake our bread? What’s the benefit of putting it through twicely?
And – should I be getting rid of any parts of the freshly ground flour? Or is it ok to use it as is?
Running the flour back through the mill or sifting out the course bran to get a finer flour will help with creating a loaf with more open crumb (somewhat less dense) which can be one objective. It’s just personal preference.
I usually do it exactly like you do and don’t get rid of any of the parts of the freshly ground flour. The bran is probably the most beneficial part of the wheat from a health perspective.
I agree with Eric, but want to give you another option. I sift out the bran using a coarse sieve, 40 mesh I think, and use that along with some flour in a preferment either a sponge with commercial yeast or in a sourdough leaven build. This has two advantages one is that the yeast and or LAB really like the bran and will be very active the other is the longer exposure to moisture will help soften the bran somewhat so that it has less effect on the density of the crumb. It’s a little more work but just adds to the fun.
Good point, Stuart. For the same effect, some bakers will also ad the sifted bran to water and cook it, (same as you how you’d make a hot breakfast cereal), or at least let it soak well, then recombine it with the flour, water, salt to make the bread.
Eric, that must be another advantage of the no knead method. The moist dough ball has a long time for the bran and larger flour particles to absorb water.
Inspired by Stuart’s comment, I tried the cooked bran technique yesterday that I’ve heard about from others.
I milled a combo of 1/2 Turkey Red flour and 1/2 Red Fife flour. Sifted out the bran with a 40 mesh screen. Boiled the bran for a couple minutes in a cup of water and let cool. Added the bran mash back to flour/water/rye levain/salt mix. Cooking the bran indeed softened the edges so it didn’t cut the gluten strands in the dough, resulting in a more open crumb than I usually get with a 100% whole grain bread. It works.
Wow, Eric, that looks great! I’ve used the sifted bits to feed the levain before, but never tried cooking it. Did you use some of the total water from the recipe to cook the bran, or was it additional water?
For me, baking whole grain bread is at least half about eating healthy food–the other half is about eating delicious food. My wife and I grind organic whole wheat kernels to a moderately course grain. The reason for going on the course side is to slow down the absorption of sugar. If you grind your flour to a fine powder and/or remove the bran, you are essentially creating white bread. This is my understanding based on reading sources that I trust. Does anyone have any evidence or point-of-view that goes against this perspective?
I have tried sifting before, and just saved the bran to use in other recipes. I will differently try cooking the bran and adding it back into the dough. Thanks for the idea.
Eric,
Thanks to your note about boiling the bran, I have finally had my EUREKA! moment - I have baked my first truly good loaf of 100% whole grain (in this case spelt) bread. I’ve been doggedly working at this for 2 years, determined to make a good loaf from locally grown, home-milled organic grain. I’ve tweaked everything I could think of, with varying results and limited success. My loaves are almost always edible, but I’ve never been able to achieve much oven spring without adding some AP flour. But this time I sifted my flour and cooked the bran briefly and let it sit for several hours. When I mixed the final dough, it seemed quite stiff, so I added more water. I didn’t measure exactly but I would guess that I took the hydration from the 66% of your original sourdough spelt recipe to somewhere between 75% and 80%! The dough felt good as I worked with it, it didn’t stick to the banneton which has been an occasional problem, and it kept its shape on the peel rather than immediately spreading out. The baked loaf rose twice as high as my usual loaves, the crust was still crisp after it cooled and it tastes great with that springy chew that I’ve been after. How wonderful to have found the solution at last! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Well that’s pretty awesome. I wouldn’t have expected such a dramatic difference but there you have it. I wish I could take credit for discovering the technique. I learned about it from a friend named Malak. But I guess I’ll take credit for posting it here.
I just tried baking 2 loaves from whole grain freshly gourd Spelt flour (only the starter culture was winter wheat), and I ground the grains at the finest possible setting on the grain mill (Komos Classic). I have seen suggestions on this Forum to hydrate Spelt flour bread to 65-67%, but “Josey Baker Bread” (a fabulous little bread baking book!! Highly recommended!!) suggests 77.9% for whole grain Spelt (according to my calculations from his recipe). I tried in-between values of 70% and 74% for the two loaves, and next time I’m going up to 78%. The bread only seems to rise much in the oven; the dough in the bowl, and the shaped loaf in the pan, seem rather flat. But I get about 2-3" oven spring at least. We liked the results! But we don’t like large holes (or very strong crusts), because we eat our bread primarily in sandwiches and as toast.
Great info, thanks everyone. Peter Reinhart has a chapter about cooking “mashes” for whole grain breads. I haven’t ventured there yet but I will now. Makes total sense.
I recently bought a Nutrimill Harvest mill from Breadtopa and am exploring freshly milled flours. Wish I hadn’t waited so long. But I too am a bit disappointed in the coarse flour texture and have struggled with the lack of oven spring, even when milling my flour twice. So I am going to try boiling my bran very soon.
Teresa Greenway suggests that a whole grain bread should use a higher hydration than white bread. She has a 100% hydration ww sourdough bread that worked well for me. I’m thinking the high moisture has a similar effect as the boiled bran.
Eric, I’ll be ordering my sieve soon.
Hi Eric. I’m new here. I just ordered and milled my first flour ordered on Breadtopia; hard white wheatberries I think. I substituted exactly in a baguette recipe but they turned out so dense and with little to no holes in the crumb. Is there some adjustment I should be making now that I’m moving away from King Arthur and grinding my own with an attachment to my kitchenaide?
There’s a pretty huge difference between how whole grain flours perform vs your standard refined white all purpose or bread flour that is typically called for in a baguette recipe. The main difference is the presence of all the bran in whole wheat flour that is completely absent in white flour. The bran acts like tiny knives in the flour, cutting the gluten strands and resulting in much denser loaf than you would get without the bran. In general: refined white flour is good for light, open crumb (big holes) bread with low nutritional value, whereas whole grain flour produces a denser loaf with high nutritional value. In an effort to find a happy medium and get the best of both worlds, many bakers combine white with whole grain flour.
Besides its distinctive shape, a baguette is pretty much defined by a light open crumb and thin crackly crust which, for me and probably most home bakers, would be pretty much impossible to duplicate with whole grain flour. You can approach a classic baguette with your home milled flour if you sift out most of the bran first. This is easy enough to do but kinda defeats one of the main reasons to mill your own.
If you’re just starting out with baking whole grain breads, you might be better off, for now, following recipes that specifically call for whole grain flour. Then you’ll get familiar with how they behave and can more easily judge how to substitute and make adjustments in other recipes. For example, one of the main adjustments needed when substituting whole grain flour for white flour is the need to use more water. Whole grain flours absorb a lot more water than an equal weight of white flour.
