Eric,
I may try some of those flours in the future. What is the workability and hydration capacity of these flours? Any information you can share will help me avoid the issues I had with the Red Fife.
Thanks!
I’ve really only worked with heirloom flours since I started going whole grain. So my take on these is probably not super helpful since I can’t really give a comparison to store bought whole wheat, or even home-milled “regular” hard red wheat. Also my “baptism by fire” I starting out with a wheat that didn’t hydrate like the wheats that the recipes I used were written for, has kind of lead me to take a very “play it by ear” approach to hydration, and so I don’t really pay much attention to hydration numbers. And finally I often temper (increase the moisture level of) my grain which also throws hydration off.
All that being said I’ll give you my impressions.
- When I switched from Red Fife to Turkey Red I did notice it would take more water.
- Rouge de Bordeaux is much tighter (stronger gluten? less extensible?) than Turkey Red (I often end up mixing them 50/50 for that reason.)
- Warthog is even stronger tasting than Red Fife and not to my taste.I don’t recall how it fell with regard to gluten strength or hydration, but my experience was that it hydrated…strangely. It had a tendency to release liquid (as if you can get it to absorb more water initially than it will continue holding onto?) I think I’ve noticed this quality with Rouge de Bordeaux but not to the same degree.
- I’ve worked with a few others, like Marquis but don’t recall how they hydrated.
Btw, I remember once reading the opinion somewhere that Turkey Red was a very strong wheat, which was not my experience, at least relative to other wheats I’ve used. So it makes me wonder if a lot of this depends on where it was grown, season to season, etc. So grains of salt may be in order.
Thanks for this writeup. I think it will help people. Different farms and harvests have an impact in my experience. I helped a friend do a Turkey Red terroir experiment (I’ll post it here when he writes up the results) and we baked with four different turkey reds. The doughs felt different and the breads came out different.
I’ve had the sweating dough with warthog especially. I really like it’s flavor though – but I do tend to use it as a complimentary wheat, not solo.
I haven’t used rouge de bordeaux in a while but my recollection is that it’s really thirsty. Like hydration close to 100% feels manageable. I find it and red fife too baking spice-y for things like pizza and pasta, unless you’re going for a spinach-ricotta-nutmeg kind of dish.
That’s really cool! I look forward to reading that. I did just see a recipe where the author specified “Kansas Turkey Red” which might further support the idea that this variety varies (perhaps more than others? or maybe it’s just more widely planted than other heirloom wheats?)
I should also note that I’ve not tried Red Fife or Warthog since I started doing sour dough. I wonder if that would balance the flavor more to my taste?
I right now have a 100% R d’ B ciabatta retarding. It’s very tight and unciabatta-like. Part of me thinks I should have upped the hydration, but the sweating thing makes me doubt whether it would have held it. Mixing it with Turkey Red as I usually do really helps with the extensibility, and it moderates that baking spice flavor, making it still present but not as overwhelming.
All the Turkey Red I have experience with, BTW, is from Breadtopia. @Fermentada, have you found it to be consistent over the years? Do they always source it from the same farm or general region?
@ericjs I can’t speak for our @Fermentada but what I read from the description of the Turkey Red flour offered here at Breadtopia (and the Turkey Red Whole Berries) I believe all the Turkey Red (which I read to be the original Kansas Turkey Red) is sourced from the same farms consistently. I’ve put the description (bold print I added) copied from the Turkey Red flour offering in the Breadtopia store below:
Performs similarly to and can be use in place of modern Hard Red Winter wheat.
Turkey Red Wheat, once the dominant variety of hard red winter wheat planted throughout the central U.S., is back in production in Kansas.
“Turkey” variety hard red winter wheat was introduced to Kansas in 1873, carried by Mennonite immigrants from Crimea in the Ukraine, fleeing Russian forced military service. In the mid-1880s, grainsman Bernard Warkentin imported some 10,000 bushels of Turkey seed from the Ukraine, the first commercially available to the general public. That 10,000 bushels (600,000 pounds) would plant some 150 square miles (10,000 acres). By the beginning of the twentieth century, hard red winter wheat, virtually all of it Turkey, was planted on some five million acres in Kansas alone. In the meantime, it had become the primary wheat variety throughout the plains from the Texas panhandle to South Dakota. Without “Turkey” wheat there would be no “Breadbasket.”
Like many traditional crop varieties, by modern times the old variety of Turkey Red had all but vanished. Fortunately, a few enterprising Midwest farmers have kept the old seed stock in production, so we are now able to offer this heirloom wheat and flour to our customers.
Blessings,
Leah
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How did your rd’b ciabatta come out? I can see how blending it would be delicious. I think it’s great solo too, just not in a couple of applications, and that probably can be said for many wheats.
Breadtopia’s turkey red has come from Nebraska for at least the past couple of years. I’m not sure beyond that.
It could be that sourdough leavening vs yeast brings out or highlights different flavors in some wheats. That could be a neat experiment. I do love yeast in some applications…the Walnut pastry roll especially.
It came out alright but I would’ve liked the crumb to be opener, and wish I had either done the 50/50 thing or upped the hydration (though I’m not sure how well the latter would have worked). The overnight retardation was not part of the original plan, but my starter was quite sluggish, so I did it both for scheduling and to try to give it more time to develop. I probably should have given it a longer bulk ferment, but it was one of those periodic stretch and fold recipes that makes that a bit hard to judge.
But anyway it tastes good, I don’t expect every loaf to be ideal.
At the same time, I made your 100% einkorn recipe which due to the same sluggish starter / slow bulk rise also got transferred to the fridge for an overnight retardation. It came out well, but the long fermentation resulted in a strong sourdough taste, so any einkorn flavor was lost.
I’m glad the ciabatta tastes good. I do a lot of refrigerating for the sake of schedule as well, and actually also made a soft wheat pan loaf this weekend that turned out too sour. It was alright, but I prefer light sour, not suuuuuper sour (and this was that).
Melissa,
I’ll be interested in the results of the Turkey Red terroir experiment. Your initial comments about the variability of the different flours makes me wonder if that’s why other wheat varieties became dominant because they gave more reproducible results for home and commercial bakers. I can certainly speak to the frustration I experienced with the unexpected behavior of the Red Fife flour.
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Not meaning to interrupt Melissa’s response, I just read about this a few months ago.
From what I have read, the wheat varieties that are dominant were chosen for protein quality and yield based on location. Protein quality is what you mentioned; wheat protein that can produce acceptable bread in commercial bakeries. HRW accounts for about 85% of all wheat grown in the US. (Fwiw, less HRW (and proportionally, less of all other wheats) was planted in 2019 than in 1919 – wheat farmers opted to grow corn (ethanol) instead for its higher return.) Yield based on location has to do with how wet the ground is during the growing season. Not all wheats tolerate the same soil moisture content. Some wheats are not worth the yield in some areas. Northern US is different than mid-US than lower-US, so each area has preferred varieties of wheat for the largest yield in a given area.
I don’t recall the percentages but the other two main wheat crops (after the 85% HRW) are durum and spring wheat. HRW is kind of an all-purpose wheat.
From what I am recently told, this year California wheat took a hit. A drought hit before the farmers could get their seeds in and germinated. If the wheat seed will germinate and get above ground, it will be fine. That did not happen this year. Central Calif is mostly without a wheat crop this year, Y Rojo being one variety that is all but crossed off.
The sour einkorn loaf was intended for sandwiches and it’s actually working out quite well for that. I wasn’t shooting for sour, but the tang is actually a nice feature for the sandwiches, something that hadn’t occurred to me would be the case.
What’s most interesting to me is how much more sour the einkorn loaf was vs the r’d ciabatta. Same mother, same starter build except for the grain used. The ciabatta used a large amount of starter, and was retarded in the proofing step. The einkorn bread used a small amount of starter and therefore bulk fermented much longer, and the retarding was done at that stage. I don’t know how much whole grain einkorn vs whole grain r d’ b factors in.
I think that hard red spring wheat became the dominant wheat for commercial bread and flour production mainly because of yield and ease of harvesting; with disease resistance, gluten strength/bread outcome, and flavor following in importance.
I’ve done some reading about the Green Revolution and the work of Norman Borlaug but there is always more to learn.
I don’t know to what degree heritage wheats have more or less range of difference than hard red spring wheat. I thought the four turkey red loaves tasted remarkably similar, but I don’t know what my friend thought. And I suspect that the differences in dough strength could be as @otis noted, location and climate variation, more than inherent seed difference.
In these experiments it is also sooooooo difficult to control for fermentation and shaping differences.
I also wonder (and truly don’t know one way or another) if commercial producers of whole wheat flour adhere to a very consistent protein level by adding vital wheat gluten when needed from one year to the next.
I never thought of that! Could be? I’m not sure that’s something we’ll ever know.
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I suspect that commercial producers of WW flour achieve consistency by blending wheats of known gluten content to meet specification instead of adding vital wheat gluten. But this is based on no evidence whatsoever. However, I did read on The Fresh Loaf forum that King Arthur’s AP is a proprietary blend of hard red spring and hard red winter wheat. I imagine blending could be used for their other flours to meet specifications.
I would appreciate if protein and ash content of flour for purchase was posted online. It helps to match flour to a particular specification. This is especially important with bolted and other high extraction flours. As I have learned reading The Rye Baker by Stanley Ginsberg, rye flour is especially tricky this way with white, light, medium, whole, and dark rye (which is not the same as whole rye) all having characteristic ash contents that I am try to match.
Yeah that makes sense!
You might enjoy this video. I haven’t had a chance to watch it so I’m kind of recommending blindly but it’s a lecture of sorts on approaching new flours sensorially. But I get wanting flour specs too.
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CP6gYUkps-j/?utm_medium=copy_link
Click on any flour, scroll down to read the description, both protein and ash content are disclosed. Over the years I have wondered how neither value ever varies, it is always the same amount of protein and same ash content.
Otis,
Thanks for the link. I am aware of Central Milling’s publishing protein and ash content. What I want is for all vendors to do the same. When I have asked for this information, it is generally available. I just don’t want to have to ask for every flour I am interested in and from every vendor. Breadtopia does not publish these specs consistently and they are the nearest (read: cheapest shipping) full line flour vendor.
Can anyone speak to whether it is at all likely that farms that grow this stuff keep their own seedstock from year to year? I think typical modern, “big ag” practice is buy your seed every year from the seed sellers keep the seed stock tightly controlled (and consistent). If you grow a wheat year after year with seed from last year’s crop you eventually get a variety that is adapted to your conditions. One would like to imagine heirloom crops being grown this way, but I have no idea how realistic that is, and whether heirloom wheat is big enough business these days to be handled no differently from “standard” wheat.
Here’s a link to a new forum thread I made about the terroir experiment Terroir Experiment with Turkey Red