From: dadams@cray.com (David Adams)
Newsgroups: rec.food.sourdough
Subject: home made unbleached white flour
Date: 5 Oct 92 18:15:12 GMT
Article-I.D.: hemlock.1992Oct5.131512.12852
Reply-To: dadams@cray.com
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.

I had promised to report on my experiments making home made unbleached
white flour.  So here goes.


This is sort of a recipe for making unbleached white flour at 
home.  To do this you will need:

	Wheat.   	(see note below.)
	Wheat grinder 
	Sifting material such as 1 yard of fine chiffon fabric.

	A variety of buckets and bowls to hold the wheat, flour,
	and bran etc.

(Sort through the wheat carefully before grinding to make sure there are
no stones etc. that would ruin your mill.  One small rock can wipe out
your new K-TEC mill.)

I set my K-TEC mill on its coarsest setting and milled 6 cups of Golden-86
whole grain wheat.  The whole wheat flour came out very light colored because
of the color of the wheat, but I suspect that most of the color of the wheat
is in the bran and that it really would'nt have mattered whether I had used
red wheat or white for this project.  (I will try it sometime with red wheat.)

Note on Wheat:  If you want a bread flour you should get a wheat with a high
gluten content.  This means a hard wheat.  Preferably a hard spring wheat.
If you want flour for biscuts or cakes etc you should get a soft wheat.

I set the chiffon fabric over a five gallon plastic bucket and scouped about
4 cups of the flour into the center of the fabric.  I let the fabric drop 
down into the bucket with the ends of the fabric hanging over the side of
the bucket.  I picked up the edges of the fabric, one side in each hand
and began pulling up and down on the sides with the motion of milking a 
cow.  As I did this the flour began to sift through in billowing puffs 
of white smoke which began to settle in the bucket.  When no more 
smoke would come out I knew I was done sifting that part.  I poured 
out the stuff that remained into a different bowl and called it "bran".
(Actually it contains the germ also.)  Then I repeated this about 
four more times until I had sifted all the flour.  It took me about
2 or 3 minutes to do each round or 8 to 15 minutes for all the flour.

When I was done I had 5 cups of flour and about 4.75 cups of bran.

(That was a sobering experience!  Next time you buy a loaf of white
bread think for a minute that almost an equal weight of bran is 
being thrown away to make you that loaf.  Well it might be fed to
animals or something, but the bran contains most of what is good
for you.  Not that I'm going to stop buying white flour, but I'll
think it over more often.)

I used the flour so made to make a loaf of bread.  I could tell
just as soon as I began kneading that I had never had any flour
with as high a gluten content.  The dough became satiny almost
immediately.  Where I normally would have kneaded 600 strokes
this dough nearly passed the "stretch test" after 100 strokes.
It clearly passed it after 200.  I kept going just because it was
fun and after 600 strokes I could stretch this dough thin like 
when you blow bubbles with bubble gum!  

I used the Russian culture, and I let it raise at night in the cold room
while I was asleap.   I let it fise 5 hours and then I baked it.
It came out a little rubbery.  I had been hoping for a light dinner 
loaf, but this was to glued or rubbery.  It made a nice sandwich 
bread.  I attribute some of the glueyness to the long cold rise.
I suspect that a quicker rise at a warm temperature would have 
lifted the dough much more and made a lighter loaf.

Now I need recipes for bran so I can use up all that bran.  This 
morning I made a mush by boiling 4 cups of water with 1 t salt.  
I added 1 1/3 cup of this bran and let it cool as I mixed it.
It came out creamy and smooth.  It was ugly light brown.  I told
my kids it was a cream-of-wheat and I put some sugar and canned milk
on it and served it to them for breakfast.  They ate it up and said
it was good.  Well I still have 3+ cups of bran left and most of
this mornings breakfast cerial.  It makes you apreciate whole wheat
bread.  

 
---
--David C. Adams  Statistician  Cray Research Inc.  dadams@cray.com
___________________________________________________________________
       Old Sourdoughs never die.  They just ferment away.