The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book_ A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking - Laurel Robertson [143]
The other 28 percent of the wheat—the nutritious bran, germ, and “shorts”—is not considered flour and usually becomes animal feed. Shorts is whatever won’t separate into any of the mill streams, a mixture of everything, about half of the 28 percent. Another milling product, red dog, is taken from the last reduction or tail of the mill, somewhere between low-grade flour and feed. To get whole wheat flour from a big commercial mill of this sort, all these different products are mixed together again in their original proportions.
Big mills have laboratories for analyzing their products. In addition to blending different varieties of wheat to standardize flour quality, various enzymes and chemicals may be added, some of which must be listed on the label. For example, diastatic enzymes may be added in the form of malted barley flour or malted wheat flour. Chemicals used to “bleach” or “improve” the flour include oxides of nitrogen, chlorine, acetone peroxide, ascorbic acid, and potassium bromate. These chemicals are used more often with white flour than whole wheat.
FLOUR FOR BREADMAKING
If you mean to use the flour for making yeasted bread, don’t buy all-purpose or pastry flours: they have too low a gluten content to make light bread. Flours high in gluten are often labeled bread flour, or if the flour comes from a small mill or is stoneground, it may tell on the package the kind of wheat it comes from. You should be able to count on hard red spring wheat, hard red winter wheat, and hard white wheat to have enough gluten for breadmaking. These are bread flour: the hardness of the kernel is an indication of high protein content. Soft wheats, red or white, have less gluten, and are used either for pastry flour (including whole wheat pastry flour) or as animal feed.
Much of the best wheat in the country comes from Montana, with its long summer days and good soil, but other wheat-growing areas may offer good wheat too: look for a protein content of at least 14 percent for making yeasted whole wheat bread. (Most all-purpose whole wheat flour is around 12 percent, and pastry flour about 6 to 8 percent.) White flour for breadmaking is about 12 percent protein—anything higher would make rubbery bread. Not so with whole wheat, though, because as much as one third of its protein content comes from the brown parts of the grain. Their portion of the protein, since it is not gluten protein, doesn’t help make the bread lighter.
Once you have made sure that the flour you buy is high in gluten, the second requirement, no less important, is freshness. Whole wheat flour, unlike white flour, is perishable. Stored at room temperature, it will keep a month; refrigerated, two. After that, unless there are preservatives in the flour or in the packaging, the natural oils in the flour will be getting rancid, and the quality of the bread cannot help but be affected.
If you buy in bulk at a natural food store, find out how often they get flour, from how far away, and how they store it. Taste a pinch of it; it should have a bright flavor, be a little sweet, with no bitterness. If they know you will be wanting fresh flour regularly, they may be glad to get it for you.
If you’re buying packaged flour off the shelf, watch out for the date it expires. The trouble is, sometimes these dates are given in a code the consumer isn’t privy to. Ask your storekeeper to tell you how to read it, or at least find out how long the flour has been on his shelf. He may not know that whole wheat flour should be stored cool, or that it doesn’t keep a long time. Once you get the flour home, store it airtight in the refrigerator.