[Sca-cooks] What Samidh Flour Isn't

[David Friedman]

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
> _______________________________________________
> Sca-cooks mailing list
> Sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
> http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/sca-cooks-ansteorra.org
>
>

-- 
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/