[Sca-cooks] period flour
Stefan li Rous
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
Tue Feb 20 21:40:58 PST 2007
Bear mentioned:
<<< Check the nutritional information on the bags. Gold Medal All
Purpose is
10% protein. High gluten bread flours are up around 14% protein. Soft
flours usual run 9% down to about 7%. If you want to match traditional
European flours, soft flours are the closest match, but you can fudge
with the Gold Medal. >>>
From this thread it sounds like most modern bread flours are harder
flours with more protein than what was used in most of period Europe.
Why this change? Do the high gluten/high protein flours grow better
these days or yield more? Are they better for machine driven
agriculture? Or is there some other reason they are preferred?
<<< In the past, I have been able to get bulk whole wheat pastry
flour from a
local health food store, which is probably as close to period
European flour
as you are going to get. Both Arrowhead Mills and Bob's Red Mill
produce
whole wheat pastry flour. Quite a few groceries carry one or the
other or
both and might be willing to special order for you.>>>
How does the bread differ, especially the period breads we know of,
when it is made with a harder wheat than when made with the softer,
pastry flours that are apparently closer to those of period Europe?
I'm still keeping the back of mind the idea that the reason that
medieval Europeans didn't make/use the sandwich is that their bread
wasn't conducive to sandwich making. Perhaps the type of flour enters
into this. Or maybe not.
Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous Barony of Bryn Gwlad Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris Austin, Texas
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at: http://www.florilegium.org ****
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