How to Make 100% Whole Wheat Bread #2

Today we will talk about the different kinds of flour you can use and how it will affect your bread.  When you bake you can choose from a variety of flours.  A heavier flour that has little protein will not have a very high loaf.  Flours such as rye, or triticale have lower gluten contents and will make a much denser loaf of bread.

ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR: Most commercially milled, all-purpose flour is bleached and has had the wheat germ and the bran removed, resulting in a less nutritious flour.  This flour is mostly the endosperm of the grain and which has the  gluten in it, so it makes light bread very easily, however there is almost no nutrition or fibre in this type of bread.

UNBLEACHED FLOUR:  This is the same flour as the all-purpose flour, except that it is not bleached with benzohl peroxide.  It has the wheat germ and bran removed as well.  But because it is not bleached, it would be the healthier choice between the two.  Oh, by the way they charge you more for this flour and they have left out one step.  Go Figure!

100% WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR:  Most commercially milled 100% whole wheat flour is the all-purpose flour mentioned above with a portion of the bran added back.  Most of the nutrients are still missing.  To me it is like taking away all your clothes and giving you back your socks.  It is all wheat but not nearly all of the wheat kernel.

100% WHOLE GRAIN FLOUR: For whole grain flour, whole kernels of wheat are milled.  As soon as it comes int contact with air, it begins to lose some of its nutrition.  For this reason milling flour fresh , just before baking, results in the most nutritious loaves.  We have a section on our website called "Why Should You Mill Your Own Flour" which discusses this in detail.

MILLING GRAIN INTO FLOUR : Use clean dry grain or seeds when milling your own grain into flour.  If it must be stored, do so in a fridge or better yet the freezer in an airtight containers.  Fresh flour exposed to the air will start oxidizing within 15 min.  After 3 days you will loose over 60% of the nutrition.  If you leave your flour in a container at room temperature the wheat germ will go bad in 10 to 12 days.  In the refrigerator it will keep a little longer, 20 to 25 days and in the Freezer in a tight fitting container it will keep 1 to 2 months.  Fresh ground flour has air mixed in with it so if your are using a recipe that you have to measure your flour, you may need to use a little more than with store bought flour that has settled and the air is gone.  Most recipes are written for store bought flours.  This kind of flour will make really nice loaves of bread if the gluten in the grain is developed properly.  That means lots of kneading if making it by hand to get the stretchy fibres in the dough working.  It also means letting it rise so that the fibres are stretched even more and then punching that down and letting it rise again in the shape of your loaves or buns.  You can skip all these steps if you own a good quality kitchen machine that would be able to knead the dough and develop the gluten into a stretchy dough so that we just have to give it one rise in the loaf shapes and then bake it.

Our next post will discuss the other ingredients in the bread including the yeast.