[Sca-cooks] flour: reading the label

[Terry Decker]

>  Oh yes, matching traditional European flour is my goal.  I am not 
> convinced that malted barley was added in period, and that is the main 
> reason I want to avoid the enriched stuff that is commonly available.
>

Malted barley flour (diastatic malt) provides enzymes that help break down 
the starches in flour to more effectively feed the yeast.  It also provides 
a little sweetening.  It may not have been added to period European flour, 
but the equivalent would have been added to the dough of any recipe calling 
for ale barm leavening, so I wouldn't worry about.

>  I would prefer unbleached flour, if it weren't for the higher 
> gluten/protein.  From my reading it would seem that bleaching agents used 
> in the preparation of flour do a similar job to naturally aging the 
> flour - at least as far as the color is concerned.  I'll get some 
> unbleached flour and seal it up for a couple of years to see what happens 
> to the color.
>

Nothing will happen to the color of the unbleached flour.  By the time it 
hit the grocer's shelf, the flour had already aged longer than most Medieval 
flours.  By the time you see it, the xanthophyll is already naturally 
bleached.  Naturally aged flour is cream colored rather than stark white. 
There is also the possibility that the bleaching process may damage the 
gluten, as Betsy Oppenneer contends in Celebration Breads.  Personally, I 
used unbleached flour because it will be closer to the period norm.

>  Why do you feel that whole wheat flour is what the noble households used 
> for everything?  This was an era when whiter food was more desirable, 
> which would lead me to think that whiter flour would be used in royal 
> kitchens.
>
>  Cordelia Toser

Period flours are stone milled, which means that wheat flour was whole wheat 
flour (milled from the complete wheat berry).  Modern roller milling, which 
separates the germ from the endosperm, is a product of the 19th Century.  I 
haven't encountered any period descriptions of separating the germ from the 
rest of the kernal or any information about the milling technology that 
would suggest that it occurred.

European wheat of the day would likely be a yellow rather than a red wheat 
and produce a lighter colored flour (similar to King Arthur's "white whole 
wheat") than the brown (being milled from a darker wheat berry) whole wheat 
flours that are common today.  Starting with a lighter colored wheat then 
milling it fine, sieving it through three boltings and allowing the flour to 
age produces about the whitest flour of the day.

Bear