Flour is an essential item in our home. It probably ranks higher than any other food item. Because I make so much of our food from scratch, we can't do much if we run out of flour. Therefore, having a good quality, healthy flour is important to me. In order to keep up with the superfoods recommendations, I am purchasing only whole wheat flour.
This isn't something new. I've been buying whole wheat flour for years and for most of those years, I hated it. All of my "whole wheat" recipes were 1/2 whole wheat at best. Anything more than that and the food became heavy, dense and sometimes even grainy. Yuck! I want to be healthy, but I don't want to compromise quality and taste.
After doing some searching, I found that the whole wheat flour I had been purchasing all these years was ground from red wheat. Red wheat is known to be denser, lower in gluten and doesn't do well in baked goods. I needed flour ground from white wheat berries. There are hard and soft varieties, but overall white wheat does much better in breads, cookies, muffins, etc.
Armed with this new information I found whole white wheat flour and the difference is simply amazing. No one can tell the difference between cookies or muffins made with white wheat flour versus all purpose flour. Yeast breads are still a little denser (although nowhere near what I had been making), but the flavor is more in line with an all purpose or bread flour. To combat the density issue, this past weekend I purchased wheat gluten and will add that to my breads to see how it turns out.
I found a local bulk goods store that has ordered a 50 pound bag of the white wheat flour. It comes in on March 7th. I'm so very excited, I can hardly contain myself! When I pick the flour up, I'll also pick up large quantities of evaporated cane juice, rolled oats, brown rice, pinto beans, etc. This will take a large chunk of my grocery budget, but I am certain that it will save me money in the long run.
In the meantime, I picked up another 5 pound bag of flour to get me by until the 7th. This week I'll be experiementing with whole wheat yeast breads and hopefully be able to share some awesome recipes.
So will your white wheat flour become your ap flour? I currently use 1/2 wheat 1/2 ap because like you said whole wheat is really dense.
ReplyDeleteYep, the only other flour I have in the house now is a homemade bisquick mix that I'm finishing up. I'll use the white whole wheat to make it this next time. I'm hoping the added gluten will give more rise to my yeast breads, because it is hard to tell the difference taste-wise. In gravies and sauces the wheat flour gives it a darker color but the taste is the same.
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