My flour obssesion
Just sent out the second truck full of goods for the Green City Market. Gonna be a great day. The weather is key. Cold won't keep people away, but rain will end it, right now. Due to the weather, we will probably be sold out at 10am. My fault. That is the downside of an "artisan process". Goods that are sold today, had to be started on Monday. Sourdough starters need to be made. They need to set several hours after each feeding. Val's danish gets mixed on Monday, laminated and shaped on Tuesday, and baked on Wednesday. Kinda cool, the stuff will still be warm when it gets to the market. It goes from oven to truck.
I've mentioned before that we use a milder flour than most bakers. By milder, I mean lower in wheat protein. Bakers have a choice of many different flours. This topic can fill several days blogging, just a warning. The flours range mostly in protein levels. We also have a choice of bleached or unbleached, bromated or not. We choose unbleached, unbromated. Well, except for our cake flour, it is bleached. Choosing unbleached means there are more of the natural caretenoid pigments left in the flour. Our flour is more amber, creamy looking than bleached flour. The crumb of our bread also reflects those characteristics. The flavour of our bread has a more nutty component because of this. The mouth feel of our bread is a lot less "rubbery" than most, because of the lower protein. I mentioned yesterday that I prefer my flour at least fourteen days old. Another thing about our flour, every bag is coded and dated. I get flour specs emailed to me every month, telling me the laboratory specs on every run. I'm making sure what we sell to you is exactly what i think it should be. Information like ash content, protein level, falling number, hydration, even where the wheat was grown. I want to know that.
Go ask the girl at the grocery store bakery if she knows where the flour was grown that's in her oven. Bet she doesn't even know where the dough was mixed.
more about flour tomorrow.......and the next day.....and the next
I've mentioned before that we use a milder flour than most bakers. By milder, I mean lower in wheat protein. Bakers have a choice of many different flours. This topic can fill several days blogging, just a warning. The flours range mostly in protein levels. We also have a choice of bleached or unbleached, bromated or not. We choose unbleached, unbromated. Well, except for our cake flour, it is bleached. Choosing unbleached means there are more of the natural caretenoid pigments left in the flour. Our flour is more amber, creamy looking than bleached flour. The crumb of our bread also reflects those characteristics. The flavour of our bread has a more nutty component because of this. The mouth feel of our bread is a lot less "rubbery" than most, because of the lower protein. I mentioned yesterday that I prefer my flour at least fourteen days old. Another thing about our flour, every bag is coded and dated. I get flour specs emailed to me every month, telling me the laboratory specs on every run. I'm making sure what we sell to you is exactly what i think it should be. Information like ash content, protein level, falling number, hydration, even where the wheat was grown. I want to know that.
Go ask the girl at the grocery store bakery if she knows where the flour was grown that's in her oven. Bet she doesn't even know where the dough was mixed.
more about flour tomorrow.......and the next day.....and the next
posted by Jory Downer at
6:09 AM
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