March 15, 2017 - 7:37am
Graham flour vs regular whole wheat flour
I've made the same 100% whole wheat sourdough sandwich loaf many times, always with good result using KAF WW flour. Yesterday I made the loaf using my usual recipe except that I substituted a brand-name Graham flour for the KAF WW.
Wow, what a difference. The timings were all longer, the Graham loaf didn't rise nearly as high, the texture of the baked loaf was coarser, and the loaf had a horizontal separation through the middle (see photo at top).
Has anyone else had experience baking bread with Graham flour? How do you alter recipes that are meant to use ordinary whole wheat flour?
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Graham crackers are named as such because they're made from Graham flour. Something to try?
Very nice indeed!
Apparently Graham flour is more thirsty than normal wheat flour but haven't worked with it yet.
As I understand it, graham flour is pretty much whole grain whole wheat flour - that is, the whole grain goes into the hopper and what comes out is kept as is, without sifting. Many of the whole wheat flours you can buy are milled, then sifted, then have the bran added back in. Some or most of the germ is removed so the flour has a longer shelf life.
I mill my own whole wheat flour from hard red spring wheat and the texture and behaviour of this flour is much different from the commercial 'whole wheat' flour that I use for some breads. The latter is more like white (or very low extraction) bread flour that has a bunch of bran added to it. My own stone milled flour is more grainy and coarse and makes a looser, dryer dough.
Even though graham and whole wheat flour is milled from hard red wheat, performance will vary based on where the wheat was cultivated, whether its winter or spring wheat, and how the wheat is milled.
Wheat cultivated on the same farm will have protein content differences crop by crop, year by year due to climate and soil conditions. Hard red is cultivated in a number of states with extremely different climates and soils, so there will be significant differences in protein and ash content based on local.
Since protein content effects water absorbency and dough development, no two brands will perform the same.
There's also extreme differences in milling methods that effect performance. Graham flour isnt milled to a standard. Some mill the bran and germ separately, then blend it back together. Some remove a percentage of endosperm. Some mill the endosperm super fine and leave the middlings coarse. Some mill both the bran and germ fine. Ya just never know what's in the bag until you bake it.