[Sca-cooks] What Samidh Flour Isn't
David Friedman
ddfr at daviddfriedman.com
Mon Aug 19 11:12:58 PDT 2013
I'm not sure what "crumbly" means in context--the crackers are pretty
rigid, but come apart when you bite into them. I'm going to try to find
a source for emmer flour and try that.
I agree that flour weights are not precise, but it took an increase of
about 50% to make the dough kneadable with either cake flour or regular
flour, which strikes me as a bigger variation than likely to be produced
by differences in humidity and the like.
On 8/19/13 11:02 AM, Galefridus Peregrinus wrote:
> So I asked my wife about this question. What she had to say is that
> the amounts given in al-Warraq's bread recipes are almost certainly
> guidelines. She further stated that there are some environments in
> which measurements of flour by weight and water by volume will work,
> but only if the conditions are relatively consistent: nearly identical
> temperature, humidity, storage conditions for the flour, etc.
> Otherwise, she says that you end up tweaking the recipe every time you
> make it.
>
>
> She further agreed that in theory at least, a high-gluten flour like
> semolina should not produce a crumbly product, because it would make
> for an overly elastic dough.
>
>
> -- Galefridus
>
>> Message: 7
>> Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 00:37:46 -0400
>> From: Galefridus Peregrinus To: "sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org"
>> Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] What Samidh Flour Isn't
>> Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>>
>> A similar discussion of this matter has been occurring on Facebook,
>> so I am reposting here the comments I made there.
>>
>> Before reading the recipe:
>> "The problem that I see with semolina flour is that it has the
>> opposite characteristic of what's specified. Semolina is relatively
>> low starch and high gluten -- that's why it's used for pasta. And
>> while the recipe specifies exact weights of flour and water, I know
>> from living with a baker that such information is often provided as
>> more of a guideline than a set of exact instructions. When she makes
>> bread or other raised dough baked goods, my wife routinely adjusts
>> the ingredients until the dough "feels right." I'll ask her when she
>> gets back from traveling -- she's out of town until Sunday."
>>
>> After reading the recipe:
>> "I checked the al-Warraq recipe for aqr?s fat?t/crumbly crackers. It
>> seems to me that as both the flour and the bread itself are
>> described, it pretty much has to be a low gluten flour that is used.
>> If it were made with a high gluten flour like semolina, then it would
>> be highly unlikely that the final product would "crumble in the
>> mouth" when eaten, as the recipe describes."
>>
>> -- Galefridus
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--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
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