How do you choose how much of different kinds of flour to use to maximize open crumb in your bread?
Right now, I am mainly baking off of a 50lb bag of All Purpose (AP) flour that I bought, and adding in whole wheat as well. I also have a bit of rye, spelt, and buckwheat.
I know that bread flour tends to provide the best open crumb, due to its high protein content which facilitates gluten development. For example, the King Arthur Bread flour contains 12.7% flour.
Is it possible to mix AP flour and whole wheat to a similar effect? I know that whole wheat isn't particularly good for open crumb, since the brand particles tend to cut through gluten.
Here's my question - in a recipe with 1000g of flour, if you used bread flour at 12.7% protein, that's 127g of protein. Could you use instead 769g of AP flour (11.7% protein) and 231g of whole wheat (13% protein)? That would also result in 127g of protein. Let's ignore the flour in the starter for the sake of this experiment.
Would that result in a dough that behaves like 1000g of bread flour? Or would the whole wheat inhibit open crumb? I'm curious if I'm thinking about this in the right way.
Sources:
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/king-arthur-unbleached-bread-flour-5-lb
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/king-arthur-unbleached-all-purpose-flour-5-lb
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/king-arthur-white-whole-wheat-flour-5-lb
I don't think nearly any amount of manipulation of these to flour types will have much impact on your crumb. Instead it's probably better to focus on yeast control, mixing, proofing and bake dynamics. King Arthur has a blog article that compares two exact same bakes with their AP and BF - they are nearly identical just a tad more volume in the BF loaf. Besides protein content can't reliably tell you how much of the two glutenizing proteins are actually present (look up dabrownman on tfl, he often sites how that all works). Back to the KA blog - that was simple White bread, hardly and open crumb style loaf. For an open crumb id anything a weaker flour lends a bit better to complex structures generally speaking. Also adding whole wheat, it's also helpful to sift bran (see Joze's recent [last week or few] WW bakes) as you allude thr gluten matrix doesn't like sharp objects. Just my opinion but if you find yourself calculating down to the percent mark, protein content of your dough and expecting a good surprise, you'll likely be disappointed and frustrated. You just need good elasticity (and many many flours will give you that), gentle and controlled proof and big oven kick - done right anything from say 60% hydration and up you can pull off a real nice crumb with many flours. Sorry i didn't link to joze or dabrownman but this topic runs rampant here and a little surfing and you're sure to find them :)
Thanks, that's some good advice. I agree that there is no magic formula for improving your bakes. I was mainly looking for a good starting point that will get me on the right foot as I continue to refine my technique.
I am curious about how the mix of flours is chosen for a recipe. In the Tartine basic sourdough recipe I'm working off of, it's 900g white flour and 100g whole wheat. That 100g whole wheat - is that just a matter of taste in flavor, or picking a round number? Or does picking 100g serve another purpose - influencing the properties of the dough?
I’ve had great success with Breadtopia’s Kamut Sourdough bread - using the 20% Kamut with 80% AP. I use white Kamut (Khorasan) flour or whole Kamut but it’s a great recipe, long bulk fermentation - like 10-12 hours. But it’s so hands off and I’ve always gotten a great open crumb. It’s delicious as well.
Sharon