Freshly ground wholemeal flour is fantastic, it tastes good and is full of all the grain's nutrients - it's healthy. As a baker, it can present some challenges when we bake with sourdough, it can be difficult to manage, all the good nutrients simply give more nutrition to the dough, the sourdough and the bread can rise very quickly. The activity can make the dough less strong and cause the bread to be over-risen before baking, so that it punctures and collapses. The same applies to baking with yeast, but when baking with yeast, the dough is not as sensitive as when we bake with sourdough.
As long as you use 10-15% freshly ground flour, you rarely encounter the big problems. You can feel a difference in the dough, but it is still manageable. As the amount of whole grains straight from the mill increases, the dough will become more difficult to work with. In order to control the development of the dough, so that it does not run wild, we can adjust some parameters.
The dough temperature is lowered by a few degrees, this is done by using slightly cooler water than you normally use. Flour that comes straight from a grinder is lukewarm, it helps to raise the dough temperature, make sure to adjust the water temperature accordingly. 23°C-25°C is a good starting point.
Salt has an inhibitory effect on sourdough. In the amounts we use in baking, salt cannot kill a sourdough or yeast culture, but salt can slow down the rate at which yeast cells and bacteria multiply. If it is difficult to control the dough, you can add salt immediately and not wait until after the auto light. (Autolysis is the resting time the dough stands, from the time flour, water and possibly sourdough and salt are mixed together, until the actual kneading takes place.)
Keep the autolyse short, it is not unusual for the bacteria and yeast cells that live on the freshly ground flour to get started faster than the yeast cells and bacterial cultures we have in the sourdough. Autolysis of 30 minutes is often sufficient. If you use a lot of whole grains and want longer autolysis to give the flour time to absorb liquid, you can use completely cold water and possibly also add salt. For long autolysis times of 1-12 hours, I recommend leaving out the sourdough and adding it after autolysis. For autolysis longer than 2-3 hours, I put the dough in the refrigerator.
Remember to try yourself. There is no one right way and there is no one right outcome. Learn from your mistakes and successes and enjoy the ups and downs of the journey.
Mikael Krogdal February 2021
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Buy a Mockmill - Danish Rye & More is a dealer of German Mockmill milk mills, which are gaining popularity due to their quality, ease of use, long factory guarantees and modern look. They are used both by private and professional kitchens. See our models and prices here.
Buy whole kernels - directly from our mill Kragegaarden on Funen. Organic and hand packed, and preferred by many gourmet bakeries and connoisseurs for much more flavour. See the selection here.
]]>I was recently lucky enough to be able to borrow a Mockmill from a business partner. Mockmill is a grinder or mill for grinding flour at home. The principle is immediately the same as with a large commercial stone grinder, it is just easier to operate and on a much smaller scale, so that it can stand at home on the kitchen table.
Wholemeal flour is best when freshly ground, I always grind my flour immediately before use. This is where the taste is best and the grain's nutrients are best preserved. It is also in freshly ground flour that the enzyme activity is greatest, and this means that extra attention is required when baking with freshly ground flour. Dough made from freshly ground flour develops and rises faster than flour that has been standing for a longer time, so it can be advantageous to reduce the amount of sourdough by 25%-50% of what you would otherwise use, and possibly also lower the temperature of the water by a few degrees.
When grinding larger quantities of grain, it is important to pay attention to the heat generation in the stones. If the stones and thus the flour get too hot, it is destroyed. Heat generation is only a challenge when grinding large quantities of flour and especially when it is ground very finely. To reduce heat generation, I paint larger amounts twice, first on a rough setting and then on the setting I want.
I do not sift the flour from my grinder, at most I sift a very small amount of shell parts that the stone does not catch, it is less than 0.5 grams per 100 grams of flour, so it hardly counts. Sifting your own flour is a big waste, in ordinary sifted wheat flour there is approx. 28% of the grain is sorted from, and the biggest gain from freshly ground flour lies in whole grain flour.
I like to explore "exotic" grains such as einkorn, emmer, kamut and spelt. Grains that I bake with mainly for their taste rather than their baking properties and therefore use as wholemeal flour. It can be a long time before I use a kilo of these types of flour, and a bag can therefore last a long time before it is used up. Whole grains can last a long time if they are stored dry and fairly cool, so with a grinder on the kitchen counter, I always have freshly ground whole grain flour and don't have to worry about the shelf life of my whole grain flour.
In addition to several different types of wheat and rye, I have so far painted
Oats and barley completely coarse. I soak it for 10-12 hours and cook porridge for baking and to eat for breakfast, for example.
Rice flour - perfect for the rising baskets and for sprinkling the bottom of the loaves with before they smoke in the oven. I grind rice on the finest setting.
Coarse salt - I often find it difficult to find fine salt of good quality, and the coarse salt can be difficult to dissolve in the dough. The Mockmill grinds sea salt just the way I want it. I grind salt on medium coarseness.
Mikael Krogdal February 2021
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Buy a Mockmill - Danish Rye & More is a dealer of German Mockmill milk mills, which are gaining popularity due to their quality, ease of use, long factory guarantees and modern look. They are used both by private and professional kitchens. See our models and prices here.
Buy whole kernels - directly from our mill Kragegaarden on Funen. Organic and hand packed, and preferred by many gourmet bakeries and connoisseurs for much more flavour. See the selection here.
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