Baby Steps … to Bread

And one fantastic Batard!

A Sourdough Bake with Nuts and Cranberries

Wheat Berries

A few months ago I had never heard of a wheat-berry. Well, I’m glad that issue has been rectified and I’m now able to create healthier, and better tasting bread. The first order of business was to purchase a Mill in order to grind wheat-berries into fine flour. As it turns out, home mills are hard to come by and I had to wait several weeks for one to come available. I ended up with a Nutri-Mill Classic which I really like. It uses real stones to grind the wheat, unlike an impact meal. I can grind to a very fine textrure with the only drawback having to clean the stones by grinding rice after I’m done.

This Bake

For this first bake, I didn’t want to go out on a limb and use 100% fresh ground. They recommend to start off small and build up to more and more stone ground flour. As such, I used 125 grams of fresh milled Hard White Wheat Berries purchased at Sprouts Farmers Market. I supplemented this with 125 grams of Central Milling’s Old-World Bread Flour and 250 grams of King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour. In summary:

• 125g Hard-White Wheat Berries
• 125g Central Milling Old World Bread Flour
• 250g King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour

As with a lot of my recent bakes, I also added a tablespoon of Diastatic Malt Powder for color and crust and I tried a tablespoon of Dough Enhancer to give it more of a sour taste.

The Bake

To be frank, I was concerned with the Home Milled Flour holding together. I didn’t know if the gluten strands would hold, if I added the correct amount of water, or if I over-mixed.

In the end, I used the Kook Dutch Oven. It’s the perfect size for batard’s and it tends to contain a loose loaf. I did my typical cold-bake: A cold-Dutch Oven to start, and a cold oven…no pre-heat. For some reason this works beautifully.

Conclusion

My first experience with Home Milled Flour was a success. This bake had a certain depth of flavor that we really enjoyed. I guess it had a certain nutty undertone and a slightly darker tone, both of which I enjoyed. If you haven’t tried grinding your own flour, there’s a certain satisfaction to it. My goal is to work up to 100% home milled…slowly.