A talk about flour

[Davinci]

This morning Hub requested muffins. I make terrible muffins. Tough and clunky. I have always hated my muffins. Remembered back in middle school home ec where the teacher told us to gently fold the ingredients just until moist, not to beat the stuffing out of your muffin dough. No matter how careful I am, my muffins are hateful failures.

But this morning I got the bright idea to use some of that special biscuit flour I had bought last fall. Special. Flour. For biscuits. It was supposed to make my biscuits light and fluffy but frankly, I've always thought my biscuits were just fine. It's was my muffins that failed.

Not far from us tucked off the highway is Roger's flour mill. THey have an onsite bulk store where you can buy all manner of dry goods. It is small and cozy. I love that place. I always buy dried beans which I never use for anything and throw away a few years later. But last year I got talked into attending one of their cooking demonstrations, normally something I enjoy about as much as a root canal. But to please my friend, I went.

This was no blousy cooking class! This was hard science! The lady was wearing a lab coat, not a froo-froo apron. SHe held up flour samples and talked about the science of gluten and flour and flour blends for different cooking needs. Wait. What? DIFFERENT FLOUR? What do you mean, different flour? There are two kinds, right? All purpose white and all purpose brown. End of story. No my good reader, NOT end of story.

It would seem there is indeed a science to the blending of flours and knowledge of grains that best lend themselves to certain kinds of baking and it is actually a lot more to know than one short class could hope to cover. In the end I came home with a small bag of this special flour (no dried beans, thank goodness) and a recipe. BUt this morning, in a quest to please the man, to produce light and joyful muffins, I reached past the all purpose and grabbed the special stuff. The result was...pudding.   

Those muffins did NOT get stiff and take on their expected muffin shape. No. They OOZED. They bubbled and blurped and splatted out over the side of the muffin tin and burned on the bottom of the oven. I had even added some regular flour and still there was not enough gluten to form a muffin. THey taste great, but they in no way resemble a muffin. YOu have to scrape the delicate stuff up with a spoon. No handling it, it falls apart.

I think there is merit here. I think all purpose is maybe not best for my muffins, but I have yet to find that perfect blend of tender but solid enough to hold its shape.

If we have any gluten, grain, flour or baking experts among us who wish to expand on the discussion of flours and what they do, or what grain you grow to make your own flour and why, I'm all ears.

[ooptec]

Bought a home grain mill, a l'equip, and sourced organic red fife wheat after they started spraying round-up around here 10 days before harvest to dessicate.

Not easy to find wheat in SK believe it or not

Red fife is the original wheat grown on the prairies and has a different gluten profile than modern wheats but still high gluten. I suffer from chrone's so experiment.

http://www.wheatworld.org/wp-content/uploads/about-wfc-flour-types-booklet.pdf

Yes, there is a whole science behind wheat and not only varieties but also how finely it's sifted. Read a not bad book, got it from the library as was $80 on amazon, and it was pretty good but the same stuff in one pkg. that I had already gleaned piece by piece. Will look for the title. Darn, is not on my library account, I'm pretty sure it was "Flour Power"

Also sourced some einkorn organic wheat, totally different gluten that conventional wheat tho is another ancient wheat non-related to present day ones. Is hulled and looks like wheat when de-hulled

Einkorn bread vs regular wheat bread: Nutritionals

Einkorn Einkorn Reg wheat Reg wheat
1 lb loaf 1 slice 1 lb loaf 1 slice
Calories 800 100 840 105
Protein(g) 32 4 24 3 Carbohyd (g) 160 20 182 23
Fat g 4 1 2 0
Vitamin A IU 750 94 22 3
Riboflavin(vit B2)mcg 1080 135 288 36
alpha-Carotene mcg 127 16 0 0 beta-Carotene mcg 46 6 12 2 Lutein + zeaxanthinmcg 1846 231 528 66

Also been experimenting w/sour dough as well.

Lots to learn baking w/. Been making whole wheat einkorn crackers and they are stupendous.

Have a fear of GMO and pesticide so nothing I will abandon soon.

Wore out breadmaker, there is just me during week and us on the weekends so use the breadmaker a lot but just for the mixing/kneading. Noodles, breads, everything that starts as a dough

Also somewhere have how to make different flours, Like add cornstarch to make I think cake flour prob. Looked for nut have so much stuff is self defeating as cannot find often in the jumble

Also grew dwarf popcrn and use that to make cornmeal. The e'quipe grinds everything except oily stuff. Makes bean flour etc. Good machine for around $200

[ooptec]

Other flour tid bits

Whole wheat flour in the store is exactly like brown sugar

They refine it to white and in the case of sugar add some molassas and in the case of whole wheat add some bran back in but not the germ where all the good stuff is

[niglefritz]

You are right, ooptec...it is just all glue. Some is just fancier glue than others.  

Different grains have different purposes, just as different growing conditions can change how their flour react in baking. Level of protein is important. It is a complicated thing that I have not delved into that much. I am afraid that I would be easily overwhelmed.

Different flours certainly do make a different end product. Also the coarseness of the grind, and if you are baking anything, the amount of time that you knead and punch it, as this helps to develop gluten.

I do believe that adding cornstarch makes what is equal to cake flour...but I just use home-ground whole grain flour for any of my cakes. Our whole grain flour suits us just fine without adding cornstarch. We have a WonderMill that we bought through Berry Hill.

I just look for awesome recipes that adjust to the whole grain better, or rather, I make them into awesome. :lol:I finally have two cake recipes that work great...a chocolate one that I use to make McCain-type cakes (use french silk pie filling for the frosting), and a white one from the late 1800s. I developed my own bread recipe. It has 13 c. whole grain, 1 c. white (still can't shake that white in it and have it the way I want) and it doesn't have any sugar/sweetener, nor a dough conditioner/gluten enhancer. I use milk and whey left from cheese making in it as well to make it better.

Ahem...back to your question...I am wondering, Davinci, if you should use a combination of flours. Mix 1/2 & 1/2. One end product was rock hard, the other was juicy. This would make me think that a combination should work.

We generally don't do muffins here, but I read that if you blast the muffins/cupcakes on a higher heat setting for a couple of minutes, that it makes them rise quickly and somewhat sets/seals the outside. For the remainder of the time you put them at a lower temp to bake the inside. It is much the same as with breads.

Good luck and let us know how they turn out! We'll keep troubleshooting this puppy until you get it right.

I am adding more here... I tracked down Roger's online site and found this information. I thought if I posted it here, someone might be able to use it:
http://www.rogersfoods.com/whole-wheat-flours-canada/
http://www.rogersfoods.com/soft-wheat-flours-canada/
http://www.rogersfoods.com/specialty-flours-canada/

I like that they state that they want to avoid GMOs. Good for them!

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