bread from hand milled flour

i have been baking bread for over 2 years now and experimented with lots. 2-3 years ago, just before martin left for uk (he's now back in malaysia), martin gave me a hand mill. i used it once but made such a mess of it as i didn't build a proper stand for it.

so at blog visitor's chan's prodding, i tried this mill again. fabricated a proper mount and managed to mill some wheat berries.

note, i finally found a use for junk mail!

as this is a hand mill, it took quite an effort to mill the wheat berries to flour. however, if you modify the mill, you could hook up a bicycle chain, thus you could cycle, have some exercise, while you mill the flour. not bad an option! who says men can't multi task?

as for me, it took about an hour to mill about 1 kg of flour. i have scrawny hands...

so, what's the point of milling flour? other than bragging rights, well, with whole wheat flour, the most valuable part is the wheat germ oil which is also the most nutritious part of the flour. and oil, being oil, will turn rancid if left too long. so some manufacturers take out the wheat germ oil or put in some preservatives to preserve this oil. yes, even the organic flours. by the way, wheat germ oil is sold separately for some really serious mullah.

in white flour, only the wheat endosperm is milled to flour. the wheat bran, germ and oil is all taken out, so white flour do not have this problem of the flour turning rancid or smelling bad. white flour is also a lot less nutritious.

furthermore, freshly milled flour is still active with enzymes and nothing is as fresh as working on them to make bread just after you milled the wheat berries!

also, hand operated stone mill is better as the stones won't heat up too much as we can't spin them too fast, thus the nutrients and oil is kept fresher.

so the flour is all whole wheat.

from experience, not an easy bread to bake and don't expect monster rise unless you add gluten which i'm not interested in at all.

still, the bread turned out pretty well.

okay, burning question, what's the difference compared to bread baked from store bought flour?

taste wise, there's less "wheat" smell. this is only apparent if you bake with 100% whole wheat flour. if you only bake with white flour, then you have no idea what i'm talking about. now this "wheat" smell, could it be the rancid wheat germ oil?

texture wise, it's more tender compared to 100% whole wheat bread made from store bought flour. also, it stays tender longer.

so all in all, i like this bread much better. the effort to mill the berries is justified! so don't think i'll be buying flour any time soon!

the mill i used is this "little ark" from this company called retsel in the usa.

you could buy wheat berries from most organic stores. the variety i bought is described as "hard wheat". i think it's protein content is higher, thus suitable for making bread. the wheat berries range from rm7-rm12 a kg.

what do we expect of our bread?

last sunday, 8tv's "ho chiak" featured a few bakeries. among them, mardia & mustafa's bakery which i blogged about 2 years ago.

i find it amusing that the 2 hosts introduced martin's bread as "chewy" and unlike the typical off-the-shelf soft sandwich bread. martin also explained that this is the way bread is supposed to be and this is how it's sold in europe.

so why does martin have to explain himself? and why does folks here (malaysians, singaporeans etc) have only one expectation of bread, namely soft and fluffy?

i think it all has to do with our introduction to bread.

now bread is a western thing. it's not asian at all. asians have own versions of baked goods like mantou, pratha, capati etc. bread is different, mainly because the wheat grown in this region isn't the high gluten type so it doesn't lend itself well to the development of bread.

but bread gained a foothold in asia, thanks to the chorleywood bread process.  this method, invented by the british, simplifies the production of bread and instead of high protein flour, it could make bread out of low protein wheat. 

excerpts from the wikipedia page,


The aim of the Chorleywood bread process is to use cheaper, lower-protein wheats and to reduce processing time, the system being able to produce a loaf of bread from flour to sliced-and-packaged form in about three and a half hours. This is achieved through the use of chemical improvers, solid vegetable fat, higher quantities of yeast, and intense mechanical working by high-speed mixers to incorporate air into the dough. The last requirement means that the CBP cannot be reproduced in a domestic kitchen. Solid fat is necessary to prevent the risen loaf from collapsing — in traditional methods, this structure is provided by the gluten produced by higher-protein flour.

see? so instead of the traditional sourdough, or long fermentation, organic, artisanal bread, the chorleywood process reduces bread to a commodity! so there is no difference between different makes of bread. in fact, MOST bread manufacturers use this method to bake bread, including some organic varieties.

note that why does bread, despite being touted as a health food, needs to be enriched with vitamins and minerals?  because there isn't much in low quality flour!

why is it so soft and fluffy? because it packs more air inside than the real stuff. a huge loaf of commercial sandwich bread weighs 300-400gm. a loaf i bake which is 1/3 the size weighs 450gm.

note also all the nonsense ingredient? understand this, to bake a loaf of bread, we need only flour, water, yeast and salt. NOT chemical improver, NOT enrichment by additional vitamins/minerals, and certainly NOT preservative.





i guess because of the industrialization of bread, we the home bakers, now have our own artisanal bread.

if you care about your own health (and your loved ones), bake your own artisanal bread. use organic flour, long fermentation (or sourdough) and incorporate higher whole wheat (wholemeal) rather than white flour.

speaking of which, i better call martin as i haven't called him since he came back from uk a year ago!