Is the type of flour I use important? And how does it affect my sourdough baking?
Now let’s talk about flour
General Rules of Thumb
White / Light
- means commercially sifted flour,
- extracted to get most of the bran out of the flour
- less protein than whole
- Less bran = you need add less water
- Less bran = gives you more ovenspring
- Less bran = gives you lighter, bigger, fluffier bread
- Gives you white bread
Whole / Dark
- Still sifted but not as much as white,
- Bran left in the flour, gritty
- More protein than white
- Bran = you need to add more water
- Bran = gives you less ovenspring
- Bran = gives you more dense bread, a meal within a slice
- Gives you brown bread
Different Flours and what it means
White Bread Flour
- Gold standard in bread baking
- Gives you a really beautiful sourdough bread with a great ovenspring, great ear, great belly
- It’s got high protein, high gluten and no bran to cut the gluten down
- Hydration is capped at around 72%
- But you can force it to accept more water through autolyse and bassinage
Whole Wheat Flour
- The “whole” version of ANY wheat flour
- Any flour that is not sifted, contains the bran of that flour
- Whole wheat sourdough needs to be high hydration
- At the minimum, 84% hydration
Attention:
- To check what type of whole wheat flour you have, see the ingredients list.
- HARD/WINTER wheat = high gluten (bread flour) and
- SOFT/SPRING wheat = low gluten (AP flour)
All Purpose Flour
- Low gluten flour = less water
- Made for cookies, cakes, pies, muffins —anything that doesn’t need to be chewy
- Can still make bread, but will be cake-like instead of bread-like, meaning
- It gives you bread that is less chewy, more soft like cake
Ancient Grain Flour
- Flours like Einkorn, Spelt, Rye, Kamut, etc.
- They’re very nutritious and tasty
- —but have LOW GLUTEN content and HIGH fiber
- It will NOT behave like white bread flour
- FLAVORFUL, but much, much denser
- Will not have a great ovenspring unless you cut it with AP or Bread flour and/or
- Add sweeteners to aid in taste and speeding up fermentation
Home Milled / Fresh Milled Flour
- Behaves like whole wheat flour –but even denser because even the whole wheat flour you find at stores is sifted a little
- even if you sift it yourself at home, you will never, NEVER be able to extract all of the bran
- I have tried with a medical-laboratory-grade mesh sieve of 180 microns and it is so tedious and impossible, it’s not worth the money and effort to do this
- ALL Sourdough bread made with Fresh milled flour will ALWAYS behave like whole wheat
- Needs to be high hydration (min 88%)
- Faster fermentation because of the high hydration