I purchased 5 pounds of Central Milling Type 85 Wheat flour for a specific recipe That bread is wonderful, however, I would like to use the Type 85 in additional recipes. I have read that it is approximately halfway between white and whole wheat flour. Is it possible to use it to replace of part of the bread flour and part of the whole wheat in recipes? Does anyone have any other suggestions for how to best make use of this flour?
Thank You!!
@junefdavidson I’m no expert, by any means, but I’ve read about Central Milling Type 85 Wheat flour makes me think it could be used as the bread flour in other recipes that call for a portion of bread flour. This is just strictly my opinion so I do definitely defer to our resident “experts” @Fermentada and @homebreadbaker for their answer.
Baking blessings,
Leah
One use would be to make a miche-style French bread, a country loaf. Several of my bread books give instructions to make some approximation of Pain Poilâne. Your Type 85 flour would be about right for that. A number of German breads also call for 850 wheat flour, which is the German designation for French type 85.
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Thank you both for your responses. The bread I have made with the type 85 is a wonderful Einkorn Miche recipe from the Perfect Loaf website.
I do make this periodically, however, I would also like to be able to use the type 85 for other types of bread that include bread flour and/ or whole wheat. How would you suggest going about this?
Thanks again!
June
Hi, June. I don’t have deep understanding of European flour types. What I’ve done a number of times trying to reproduce a bread from one of my German books is to do arithmetic on the type numbers. If you were taught interpolation in math or science class it’s sorta like that. Type 55 is more or less equal to US all purpose flour. Type 150 is whole wheat flour. The size of the number reflects ash content in the flour, what’s left after you burn a standard amount of flour under the right laboratory conditions. The fact that there is more ash in the whole grain means that the noncombustible material is more in the bran than the endosperm.
What follows is something I made up, so take it for what it’s worth. Type 85 is 30 steps of the 95 steps from 55 to 150, about 30%. All purpose flour includes roughly 7/10 of the original wheat berries (a 70% extraction) and the whole grain flour is just that, whole (a 100% extraction). That spread in extraction terms is 30%. If type 85 is 3/10 of the way from 70 to 100 it would be equivalent to a 79% extraction, an off-white flour, darker than all purpose or bread flour but not a lot.
By this reasoning one can approximate the same extraction rate with 70% white flour and 30% whole wheat flour. Substitute your type 85 in any bread recipe with that ratio of white to whole grain flour. Pretty much, it will be good in any formula calling for high extraction flour.
The other, simpler, answer to your question is to use type 85 flour in any formula you like, knowing that it’s a little more branny than plain white flour. I just did a search on thefreshloaf.com using the string “type 85” and all sorts of things came up. For more on flour generally, see the “Flour” entry in Wikipedia.
Hi Tony,
Thanks for your careful analysis and explanation. I will follow your suggestions and see how they work out…using the type 85 for recipes with an approximately 70%/30% white to whole wheat proportion. Experimentation is the name of the game with sourdough.
I also looked around on the web after your first response, and specifically on the Perfect Loaf website, and found several interesting recipes using type 85, which I am referencing here for anyone who may be interested.
Again, many thanks for your assistance with this. Stay safe!
June
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Interesting sample breads. The Perfect Loaf one shows percentages similar to those in Rinehart’s Bread Baker’s Apprentice – numbers given to the hundredth of a percent. I don’t understand that. In my experience, changing one or another ingredient by a gram or a few grams makes negligible difference to the end result. I go back and forth between simple ratios (e.g., 2:4:8) and simple percents. Hardly ever do I use fractions of a percent.
Good finds, they use the same Central Milling flour that you have.
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Hi again, I totally agree. I am not even able to measure weights to less than a gram on my scale. I do try to be as accurate as possible, but have found that a gram or so difference has never spoiled the result. I have had my home made started for about a year and a half, and made about 25 different recipes in that time, and have not yet had a fail.
June