[Sca-cooks] Sourdough

[kerrimart at mindspring.com]

So using whole wheat flour is not necessarly "hard" flour?  If I am using
whole wheat flour could that be one of the reasons I'm not getting the "lift"
in my bread that I want?

Vitha

On Mon, 28 Oct 2002 13:01:52 -0800 Ciorstan <ciorstan at attbi.com> wrote:

> Esteemed Bear writes:
>
> > One cup of sifted flour weighs about 4
> ounces.  One level cup of unsifted
> > flour weighs between 5 and 6 ounces.  Liquids
> are approximately 8 ounces per
> > cup.  Add up the weights in the recipe,
> subtract 1/4 of the total for
>
> > A medieval baker wouldn't have used
> additional gluten.  They would have
> > bought the hardest flour they could find.  If
> you can find a high gluten
> > bread flour, try that.
>
> I'm a sourdough lurker.
>
> Hardness refers to relative gluten content of
> wheat varieties-- soft
> wheats are pastry flours where no gluten need
> apply for employment; hard
> wheat varieties make good bread. What you see
> in the store packaged as
> "better for bread" is a harder wheat than
> regular flour, which in turn
> is harder than pastry flour.
>
> The best bread flour, hands down, is King
> Arthur. I've gotten good bread
> results from their regular flour; it's not that
> great for pastry-making,
> though. The KA better for bread flour is high
> rise as well. One of the
> modern bread-rise ingredients is diastatic malt
> powder-- would that have
> perhaps come as a by-product of beer/ale making
> or is from somewhere
> else entirely? I've used diastatic malt powder
> in whole wheat breads and
> gotten quite a rise out of them, so I know the
> boost it adds to yeast is
> quite powerful.
>
> ciorstan
>
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