Basic Ingredients - Flour


Flour is the milled powder of grain.  The source grain can be wheat, barley, oats, rice or rye.  Other flours can be made from potato, peas and other seed based sources.  The quality of the flour depends upon the milling size and whether it is sieved or not.

Grist is the first course milling of grain that is used as the start product for rolling or to grind into fine flour.

Wholemeal flour is the whole grain, including the husk (bran).  The milling quality is what is generally called type 2 flour.  

White Flour is sifted to remove any husk or bran from the hull of the grain.  This flour is referred to as type 1 flour.  Such flour has a lower nutritional content and makes fine and soft bread.   Milling finer will give type 0 flour.

Pasta flour is milled to a much finer gauge and is referred to as type 00 flour.  This gives a much more pliable dough which can be worked into fine sheets without tearing.  00 flour is always sieved white flour.

Wheat grain contains gluten.  There are two types of gluten molecule - glutenin which gives the dough strength and glandin which gives the dough elasticity.  Insoluble forms of albumin in grain form the gluten molecules and the albumin content of wheat grain is generally around 12%.

Whole wheat flours contain about 10% gluten, strong white flours have around 14% gluten and 00 pasta flour has usually 7% gluten.  Pastry flours also have a lower gluten content that wholemeal flour.  The higher gluten flours will result in a better rise in the dough.

It is worth noting that commercially produced flour from modern mills is subject to increased temperature during processing.  This reduces the nutrient value of the flour and alters the taste to some degree.  This is not such an issue as the modern industrial process produces a good quality consistent flour that can be used effectively for industrial scale baking.  This technology allows large quantities of food to be produced that have a consistent and good quality over a world wide market.  This ensures that products can be sold at low prices to lots of consumers.

Traditional stone-ground grain from wind or water mills will almost always give a better tasting and more nutritious product, but the cost may be higher per unit of flour.



 


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