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Wow, those look delicious, and I can’t wait to make them. Does anyone know if Caputo brand Semola Rimacinata “di grano duro” is considered whole grain? The label is mostly in Italian, but doesn’t seem to specify. I’m guessing it is white since it can be used for pasta. If so, could I still use it here?
Caputo Semola Rimacinata is re-milled semolina and isn’t wholegrain. It is what Italians use for their traditional semolina breads.
What you could try is use the Caputo flour in place of the wholegrain durum flour and wholegrain wheat flour in place of the bread flour. Hold back on a little water and add it in later if the dough needs it.
Brilliant…Thank you. Now more than ever I need to use what I have on hand so as not to waste flour. The percentage of whole to white will change but I presume that is why you suggest holding back some water to begin with.
Yes. Although you have made a simple swap you are now using less wholegrain. Another option might be to calculate how much rimacinata is within the 300g wholegrain durum (about 255g as wholegrain flour is about 85% endosperm) and simply make up the rest with wholegrain bread flour.
So you can either use…
OPTION ONE: (a switch)
Or…
OPTION TWO: (calculating how much rimacinata is within 300g wholegrain durum flour)
I believe both options will be a good substitute for the flours used in the recipe with the second one having a slightly increased amount of wholegrain more in line with the recipe.
P.s. Both options fall short of wholegrain with option two being closer. @Fermentada hasn’t specified the type of starter used and has left that up to you. So in both options to further increase the wholegrain you could make it a wholegrain wheat flour starter.
Thanks for doing the math for me! I’m good at following a recipe but not so good (yet) at understanding the impact of substitutes. I’ll likely try option 2.
My pleasure. Looks like a delicious recipe and look forward to your results. Rimacinata is a lovely flour to work with and as @Fermentada says it pairs very well with sesame seeds (and olive oil).
This recipe shows an altamura style bread made with semolina rimacinata and made with durum, and talks a bit about the different flours. I first learned about this bread from @Abe in fact.
If you decide to use bread flour and semolina rimacinata, just drop water in the dough by maybe 20g. You can always add a little more water if the dough feels too dry.
Baked today in my Challenger Pan using Abe’s option 2. I did hold back 10 grams of water which was a good thing because they were quite sticky at shaping time. My whole wheat was not home milled, so that may have accounted for this. We couldn’t wait for them to cool before sampling, which is a nice advantage to making rolls vs a loaf! I had no barley malt syrup so used honey as a substitute. I can’t say that I detected the semolina, and the overall taste profile was quite whole wheaty. Next time I would use a bit of white bread flour in place of some of the whole wheat. It was nice to complete the recipe in just one day, which is not the norm for my bakes. And I love trying out different formats from my usual go-to loaves. Thanks for the recipe Melissa and for your advice Abe!
Looks lovely! Single-day process steaming hot bread rolls 
Semolina + bread flour + whole grain flour sounds like a tasty plan.
I have a bucket of durum berries. Should I finely grind them or should I grind them and then sift to achieve the flour texture needed for this bread recipe?
If you’re only going to use durum wheat only then I would probably sift.
The recipe mixes finely milled whole grain durum flour with bread flour, and some of the squishy loftiness of the rolls comes from the bread flour and may not be replicated with even sifted durum flour. It’ll be delicious though and definitely worth testing.
Thankyou Melissa. I’ll just mill the durum and skip the sifting.
Durum berries are hard to mill. Might be better if you do it in stages. Don’t try to mill it fine straight away. Do a rougher milling first then mill it again on a finer setting.
Thankyou Abe. I am learning more and more about durum wheat from this forum!
If you have a full powered countertop mockmill or komo, I don’t think think you need to mill in stages, but this pro baker is in agreement with you @Abe Here is a link to one of his three videos on durum milling strategies. I can’t remember if he freezing the durum too, to help it stay cool through all the milling.
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CQYmLfXHQ1Y/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
When I did a informal comparison of double vs single, I didn’t feel a difference, But I mill at most 500g at once, so I’m not heating everything up all that much by cranking the stones super tight on such a hard grain. I think that’s what explains my experience vs the guy in the video.
Maybe I’ll do another test. I think in my test a while back, I didn’t freeze the berries first.
@BusyBaker see what @Fermentada has just said. Apparently a full powered mickmill or komo should be good enough to do the job. Why don’t you try a 250g on the finest setting and 250g passed through twice, once on a rougher milling and a second time on the finest setting, then compare. Durum wheat makes such a lovely bread but it is one of, if not the, hardest wheats.
I’d love to hear about the results of that test as well 
I’ve got an ancient Retsel brand mill (bought it in 1981!). I think I’ll have to mill and then mill again.
Sounds like a good idea!
