Fresh Milled Flour (FMF) From Many Grains!

I used to make bread, for almost 30 years with fresh ground flour - primarily hard white wheat. In one day I'd have 6 sandwich loaves, 4 french bread, and four dozen cinnamon rolls made. I'd freeze the majority of it all. That was when our kids were here. They were raised in this house, but now off raising their own families.

 

I started making sourdough bread. My research showed the nutritive value of sourdough, as well as its aid in digestion as a ferment. It's basically predigested.  It's also the way bread has been made forever. Yeast is new as of very late 1800, so from 1900 on our breads in the US have been made quickly and don't go through a ferment time using a starter culture. Anyway, I'm making everything sourdough from my almost 20 year old starter. I keep it in the refrigerator in between baking.

 

Fresh Milled Flours

 In the picture I've ground-

• 600g Kamut
• 200g Hard White Wheat 
• 200g Hard Red Wheat   
   

Sourdough starter proofing in the oven

I've got it soaking in 800g warm water while my sourdough starter, which I added some flour and water to, is proofing in my Breville Smart Oven Pro. It almost always takes 2 hours to proof from the refrigerator to a bubbly state.

Soaking (autolyse) grain flour in the water

The soaking of the grain, in my third picture, is an Autolyse step I now do with all fresh ground whole grains. It softens the bran, primarily. I was told in the beginning of my sourdough process that you cannot use whole grain for sourdough bread because the bran would cut the bubbles and you'd end up with flat bread, so I used store bought (or Azure bought)  bread flour, which are basically sifted for removing the bran (and probably the germ of the grain, which goes rancid, thus not shelf stable) and adding about 10-30% fresh ground flour. Because I made the Tartine sourdough bread for so many years, I really have the sourdough bread process memorized and great loaves of bread. I kept the freezer stocked for the two of us. 

I've got the bowl in above picture sitting on a heating source set at 80 degrees, while the starter is proofing in the oven, which is also set at 80 degrees. Our house is generally cold so a warmer temperature for proofing is good.

 

 Once the leaven is bubbly, I measure 150g of the leaven into the soaking ground grain. Then I let it autolyse some more. I usually wait about 30 minutes before adding another 50g of water and 25g of salt. 

  

 

Ready to mix in extra water and salt

Now I'm folding in the water and salt. And I often just use my wet hands. I like to work the salt and water into the dough well. So I mix it in with lots of folds, almost like kneading.

 

Then about every 30 minutes with my wet hands I'll do several folds for about 2 hours. Most times I'm really good about this and sometimes very irregular. Then you're supposed to let it bulk rise for awhile. And again, sometimes I'm good at doing this and other times when busy I forget. But in the end, once folded several times and maybe bulked for awhile I put it in a Cambro container overnight in my fridge in the garage.

 

So stay tuned for the formed and baked bread, most likely tomorrow. Sometimes I'll keep it refrigerated for 2 days before baking if it fits my schedule better. I'll show you what I typically bake 2 loaves in, and then other pans I don's use as often. I'll give you a clue tho, I prefer bread easier to slice to eat with our fresh cooked chicken eggs, or sandwiches.