Made bread from flour from our local windmill

ViksB

Thought I would buy some flour from Skidby Mill our local working windmill. It was more expensive that supermarket flour at £1.70 for normal sized bag and it came in fine or coarse but cheaper than I had suspected and still value for money IMO.
I choose fine.
I mixed the flour with 1/3 white flour as I find totally wholemeal bread to be too heavy.
Made normally and put it to rise. 6 hours later it started to rise. kneeded it again and put it in the tins and another 2 hours later it was ready to cook.
It does taste gorgeous, very fresh and very filling, but should it take this long to rise??????
Also the fine was quite coarse in my opinion so I am very curious to try the coarse one, might just buy a small bag though!!

Viks

RacyRed

That sounds delicious Viks, I wish there was a mill near to me.

Maybe increasing the amount of fluid and yeast when using that flour will help the rise? If it is coarser flower it will take longer anyway. Sounds worth the wait though

squeaky

Whole meal or whole grain flour always does take longer to rise, yes. It's because the gluten content is lower than that of standard strong flour.

Other factors that can vary things are, as Racy just said, the water and yeast contents, ( a bit of extra water certainly often helps with whole meal loaves) and there's also the temperature of your room to consider. Especially if your dough is sitting in a draft.

Queenie

RacyRed wrote:

That sounds delicious Viks, I wish there was a mill near to me.

Maybe increasing the amount of fluid and yeast when using that flour will help the rise? If it is coarser flower it will take longer anyway. Sounds worth the wait though

I sometimes buy flour from our local mill and it isn't as processed as store bought flour (which is why I buy it ) and yes, it can take a bit longer to rise. I would suggest adding a little extra sugar, just a smidgen, to help feed the yeast more.

Fresh milled flour makes fantastic bread! :drool:

Angelina-M

I mill my own flour and use it straight away but find that 2/3 is a bit strong so I just use half freshly ground and half bread flour. However as mine is ground only minutes before, thats probably why it can be very strong.

I like to use honey instead of sugar, it seems to add a richness to the bread. Also if you have cooked mashed potato, use the cooking water to make a gorgeous fluffy bread.

I would be a bit hesitant at using the coarser grain as the bran can be sharp and cut the gluten strands, causing the bread to rise less. I only grind on the finest setting so to have a well risen loaf.

Another tip would be to make the dough and leave it in the fridge overnight, then gently knock back and leave to rise for about five hours so the dough comes to room temp and starts rising again. This gives a nice texture as well.