The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Cultured wheat flour?

pumpkinpapa's picture
pumpkinpapa

Cultured wheat flour?

I was on the Alvarado bakery site and saw Cultured Wheat listed as an ingredient. Google listed many technical pages but no easy answers.

Has anyone ever used cultured wheat flour before, or seen it for sale? 

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

to the opera once. 

Sorry, I just couldn't resist...Mini O

Peternumnums's picture
Peternumnums

🤣

Worth it!

proth5's picture
proth5

Here is a link to a definition of Cultured Wheat:

http://www.naturebake.com/faq.htm#26

Hope this helps

pumpkinpapa's picture
pumpkinpapa

Yes I saw that definition too. Now I have dairy free cultures similar to yogurt. It's kefir actually but I would have to experiment a lot with such a process. 

proth5's picture
proth5

I'm sorry, I answered a bit too fast.

This seems to be an ingredient used in commercial products.  All of my paths ran to very large distributors of commecial baking products and equipment.

www.bakemarkusa.com is listed as a supplier of this product, but asks you to contact your sales representative to discuss it.

Also try this definition:

Cultured whole wheat flour is created by
combining whole wheat flour and distilled vinegar and then dehydrating
this mixture back to flour form. This process is proprietary, but the
only ingredients are whole wheat flour, distilled vinegar and
water.

From the following website:

http://www.vegsource.com/talk/veganism/messages/10101.html

What is your objective for wanting to produce this? It just seems like a curious thing.

pumpkinpapa's picture
pumpkinpapa

Curiosity is what is driving me proth5.

I'm sprouting a lot of grains right now and exploring companies that do this for breads, pizzas etc. So upon finding fermented flour, well I just have to ask :)

It's like the differences in soaking grains or flour in kefir over doing the same in water, I need to ask.

Now I'm also asking brewers of oatmeal stout for spent grain too :) 

proth5's picture
proth5

When I see the applications for which this cultured wheat flour is used, it seems like it is being used by industrial organic bakeries who need to enhance keeping qualities by purely organic means.

When one sees that Rudi's is adding acetic acid to the flour, it almost seems like they are trying to obtain the benefits of acidulating flour without doing a preferment with levain, for as you well know a levain usually brings some acetic acid to the table.

Also, as you well know, most of us preferment a portion of flour when baking and levain certainly adds keeping qualities as well a flavor.  I think this flour is strictly for the big boys - who want those benefits without spending process time to get them.

Other than my own curiosity and research to answer your question, in all of my adventures with flour and baking I have not heard of cultured wheat flour.

It seems like Rudi's will actually answer questions based on the info in the second link, so you might want to ask them directly. 

proth5's picture
proth5

I changed some of my search parameters and found the folowing

American Casein markets cultured wheat flour under the trademarked name Mold-Out

You can go to their website www.americancasein.com  and download specification sheets and maybe even buy some.

It just seems that even this concept is not one for the small scale baker who can take the time to properly ferment their flour in the breadmaking process rather than buying a prefermented flour.

GoJenny's picture
GoJenny

Just had a Eureka(!) moment, courtesy of cultured wheat flour, so I had to revive this thread.

I have always been intrigued by the idea of long lasting breads that can be used for emergencies or lean times.  I remember reading once about this Nordic bread that was huge and round with a hole in the middlle, threaded on a string, and kept in the attic for years (40 years, for example).  Always thought that it must taste terrible, though.  Am also all about hard tack and Depression Bread recipes.  That is-- I like the idea, just not the taste.  But yesterday... I discovered cultured wheat flour.

Not less than 6 months ago, I bought a pack of Trader Joe's Whole Wheat Cinnamon Raisin British Muffins, put them in a tin in my cupboard and promptly forgot about them.  Yesterday, cleaning out my cupboard, I came across them.  Expected to find disgusting mold because the front of the package proclaims "No Artificial Colors, Flavors or Preservatives."  Was surprised to find no mold whatsover, so read the ingredients (listed below) and decided to toast one and eat it with butter.  Was yummy, so I toasted another and ate it.   This morning I toasted and ate another two. 

Here is the ingredient list: "Stone ground whole wheat flour, water, raisins, barley malt, yeast, wheat gluten, expeller pressed corn oil, cinnamon, sea salt, cultured wheat flour (for added freshness), distilled vinegar, cornmeal."  

That's it.  It's gotta be the combination of cultured wheat flour & maybe the vinegar? barley malt? and keeping the muffins in a tin.  I am gonna go out and find me some cultured wheat flour and start experimenting.  Bread with such a long shelf life and no yucky artificial ingredients would be a great thing to send to war torn, hungry places-- wouldn't it?

Ifoundculturedwheat's picture
Ifoundculturedwheat

Hey all,

Was reading ingredients on some Wegman’s miki muffins to try and make a copycat recipe and saw cultured wheat as one of them. 

I was doing some reading, found this and some others and found Mezzoni foods who does wholesale. You can order a 1/2lb bag of cultured wheat from them however!

 

https://www.mezzonifoods.com/info/cultured-wheat/

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

The name doesn't really reflect what the flour is. Seems a little misleading to me.

Peternumnums's picture
Peternumnums

In looking for information on cultured wheat, I found this blog here on the fresh loaf and a description of what it is on bakerpedia. This is an old post and you've probably gotten your answers but just in case others are looking I shared what I found.  

From my understanding, you can make it yourself the way you would make yogurt as long as you are using the same bacteria. 

If you buy it commercially Lin at bakerpedia suggest using no more than 1% to 5% of your flour weight. 

The question I have is how do you determine the amount of acids in your dough in order to determine how much cultured wheat to use?  

And then how do you find the balance to use so it doesn't impeded leavening in your dough. 

Maybe err on the side of caution and just use  1%? 

 

Here is the quote from Bakerpedia and the weblink

https://bakerpedia.com/ingredients/cultured-wheat/#:~:text=Cultured%20wheat%20is%20a%20natural,as%20breads%2C%20buns%20and%20cakes.

Application

Although this ingredient extends the shelf life of bakery products, comes with it’s share of challenges and considerations.

  • It can enhance the flavor and aroma of baked goods when added in adequate amounts. However, too much can have negative effects on product quality.
  • In yeasted products, use 1.0–5.0% based on flour weight. Effective mold inhibition using cultured wheat requires up to 10 times the amount of acids themselves.
  • Acids present in cultured products are weak, so they dissociate poorly in the product’s aqueous phase. This condition limits their effectiveness in lowering pH to mold inhibiting levels. This also presents a challenge in applications that require a shelf-life similar to CalPro-containing breads.
  • Yeast levels should be slightly increased when using cultured wheat because of the negative impact of low pH on yeast activity. Doughs with too low of a pH take longer to fully proof. Also, the oven spring may not be enough for optimum volume.