Hi, I am a bread novice in Hobart Tas, looking for somewhere to buy
wholewheat flour for breadmaking. Does anyone know of a retail outlet
or wholesaler who will sell small lots? Or a mail-order company. If
possible I would love to use organic wheat. Please email me if you have
any ideas, I'd appreciate it.
Deb

Tasmania? Is there a Coles. Safeway, Bi-LO,Sims superstores nearby
like in Mainland Australia?

Some bakeries that grind their own are willing it sell it by the pound. A Great Harvest near me does that. Kinda spendy, though.

Order a mill and buy grain in bulk?

On 15 Jul 2005 14:28:35 -0700, "Deborah"
spewed forth :

Hi, I am a bread novice in Hobart Tas, looking for somewhere to buy
wholewheat flour for breadmaking. Does anyone know of a retail outlet
or wholesaler who will sell small lots? Or a mail-order company. If
possible I would love to use organic wheat. Please email me if you have
any ideas, I'd appreciate it.
Deb


+++++++++++++

Reply to the list as I do not publish an email address to USENET.
This practice has cut my spam by more than 95%.
Of course, I did have to abandon a perfectly good email account...

Wooly wrote:

Order a mill and buy grain in bulk?



I hate to be honest, but the home mills I've seen produce a very poor
grade of flour from the baker's perspective. Check the recipes at the
web sites that cater to home bakers and sell grain mills for home use.
Virtually all the recipes I've seen use adjuncts to make the bread work
right. Vital wheat gluten, dough conditioner, cottage cheese, and eggs
among them. There's nothing wrong with these ingredients per se, except
that they are unneeded. If you have to add them to make the dough rise,
theres something wrong with your flour, your technique, or both.

Some people use home mills to crack grains to add to other doughs, and
thats very nice and easy to do. It's making flour that will work well
that's hard.

To do a good job of home milling, and make good flour, you need to have
a mill that grinds the grain, not a micronizer mill that shatters it
into microscopic components.

Then you need to sift out the heaviest bran and chaff. And then you get
a nice fresh whole wheat flour that will work well. You can sift it
further and get white flour.

The key advantage of this flour over the stuff you buy in the store is
that its fresh.

However, it won't be consistent. You don't have an army of purchasers
trying to get the best wheat for you. The big mills do. You don't have
a squad of food chemists analysing the wheat to determine how the
different wheats should be combined to give you a flour that handles
(reasonably) consistenly. The big mills do.

Some people say flour you grind is healthier than the stuff in the
stores. Well, the additional nutrients in the wheat are bound by phytic
acid, so they aren't available to you, which means that they aren't
actually more nutritious. You can unlock them through the use of
sourdough, however, these very high ash flours will produce a bread that
is more sour than many home bakers are really after.

At the end of the day, I'd rather not mess with it. There are enough
complications in my life already.

Mike

I've got a 10yo Grainmaster Whispermill. Until I was diagnosed as a
type-2 diabetic and had to drop 90% of carbs from my diet I baked 3x
weekly with output from the mill. The only "adjunct or additive" I
used was sourdough starter or, if I made yeasted bread, yeast,
molasses, salt and oil.

No sifting, no additives, no adjuncts. I turn out essentially the
same bread every bake, with slight variations due to humidity or lack
thereof. Baking is just as much art as it is science. "Variations"
are what keep it interesting. I'll posit to you that the sites you're
visiting that publish recipes calling for "conditioners" and gluten
flour also sell those things, and call for them by brand name in the
free recipes. Yes?

You seem to be looking at low-end (ie, inexpensive) mills, which do
mostly mash or crack the grains instead of producing flour. I owned a
Corona for about 30 seconds, long enough to realize it wasn't going to
be a good mill for me as a baker; my friend the home-brewer loves it.
The more expensive mills do in fact pulverize the grains, producing
quite nice flour - my GM puts out a finer flour when set 3 clicks from
"finest" than I've ever been able to find in a market.



+++++++++++++

Reply to the list as I do not publish an email address to USENET.
This practice has cut my spam by more than 95%.
Of course, I did have to abandon a perfectly good email account...

"Mike Avery" wrote in message =
news:mailman.3.1121656109.12629.rec.food.sourdough @mail.otherwhen.com...

I hate to be honest, but the home mills I've seen produce a very poor=20
grade of flour from the baker's perspective. =20

I do very well with my ancient chromed VitaMixer. Witness:
http://www.prettycolors.com/bread%5F...BMWW7SEP04.jpg
which was made in a bread machine.

1 cup bread flour (All Trumps 50111)
2 cups hard red spring wheat, ground in VM after measuring
10 fl. oz. water, in which is dissolved at the right temperature
Enough dry yeast (try 1.5 rounded tsp. of the not-instant variety)
2 fl. oz. molasses (total fluid incl. molasses 65% of flour weight)
10 grams salt (~2 tsp. level)
Optional: zest of an orange
(Cycle #1, crust setting 1 of 3 in machine rated for a 1.5 LB loaf.)

I know what you mean about honesty -- you just don't get any respect.
Even worse -- contempt sometimes.

[ ... ]

At the end of the day, I'd rather not mess with it. There are enough=20
complications in my life already.

Whole grain is nice because it stores indefinitely and is always "fresh" =

as soon as it is ground and can be bought cheap in big sacks. I think
that WW bread has got enough taste of its own so that WW SD does
not make sense. I have made the above formulation slightly complicated
with the molasses and the orange peel, but it works (rises) much better =
with
the molasses, and tastes pretty good with the slight molasses sweetness
and the very mild orange flavor.

In general, I feel that the best bread is that which is made in the =
simplest
way with the fewest ingredients. (Couldn't sell any books about that,
could I(?), nor bread to fancyassess!). Similarly, when it comes to=20
ingredients, the cheapest and most abundant are always the best. (So
don't recommend me for a job at kingarthurflours.)

Normally I would not be using a bread machine, but I found one at a
close-out for $17 and could not resist. There were serious problems=20
with the instruction book that came with it, which probably accounted
for the low price. We do have a KA45, but it is quite old.

--=20
Dick Adams
firstname dot lastname at bigfoot dot com
___________________
Sourdough FAQ guide at=20
http://www.nyx.net/~dgreenw/sourdoughfaqs.html

On Sunday, July 17, 2005, at 10:08 PM, Mike Avery wrote:

I hate to be honest, but the home mills I've seen produce a very poor
grade of flour from the baker's perspective.

I've been using an $85 dollar KA mill attachment for about 18 years,
baking bread no less than twice a week, often three times now that I
have teenagers. It certainly won't mill a super fine pastry flour, but
with long fermentations, the grain breaks down just fine. The mill
produces flour equivalent to KA whole wheat. Personally, I set it to
grind a bit coarser because I get a better quality dough. The feel
isn't glue-like.

Check the recipes at the
web sites that cater to home bakers and sell grain mills for home use.
Virtually all the recipes I've seen use adjuncts to make the bread work
right. Vital wheat gluten, dough conditioner, cottage cheese, and eggs
among them. There's nothing wrong with these ingredients per se,
except
that they are unneeded. If you have to add them to make the dough
rise,
theres something wrong with your flour, your technique, or both.


Very true, but look at any cookbook, same thing. The adjunct issue
isn't a mill issue... it's a cultural one. Our contemporaries (out
there) think bread needs eggs, milk, honey, sugar and what-all.

Those bakers have their own news-group, it's called bread-bakers-list
or something.

Some people use home mills to crack grains to add to other doughs, and
thats very nice and easy to do. It's making flour that will work well
that's hard.

To do a good job of home milling, and make good flour, you need to have
a mill that grinds the grain, not a micronizer mill that shatters it
into microscopic components.


I've not used a micron-izer mill though I'm betting you are right. I
read, somewhere in Hamelman's book, that a miller had to replace his
micron-izer unit because his commercial customers did not like the
flour it produced. The subject was starch damage.

Then you need to sift out the heaviest bran and chaff. And then you
get
a nice fresh whole wheat flour that will work well. You can sift it
further and get white flour.

There are times when I have to urge to buy a lab shaker and a few
screens g.

My solution is longer ferments/retards. I also omit kneading, which is
another one of the myths we've inherited. Fully hydrated bran isn't
nearly as destructive as dry bran being whipped around a bowl for 6 or
7 minutes.

The key advantage of this flour over the stuff you buy in the store is
that its fresh.

However, it won't be consistent. You don't have an army of purchasers
trying to get the best wheat for you. The big mills do. You don't
have
a squad of food chemists analysing the wheat to determine how the
different wheats should be combined to give you a flour that handles
(reasonably) consistenly. The big mills do.


The blending to produce an ash number, protein number, falling number
is certainly interesting. But isn't this "big mills" reasoning similar
to the argument that filled the grocery shelves with cake and pancake
mixes after WWII? Are men in white coats with clipboards are necessary
to evaluate quality? (Forgive me, I just reread Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance.)

Some people say flour you grind is healthier than the stuff in the
stores. Well, the additional nutrients in the wheat are bound by
phytic
acid, so they aren't available to you, which means that they aren't
actually more nutritious. You can unlock them through the use of
sourdough, however, these very high ash flours will produce a bread
that
is more sour than many home bakers are really after.

I must be doing something wrong. I had to cadge some of that ACME going
around to get sour g. My buried dough ball levains are sweet.
Seriously... I suspect a lot of that "sourness" folks experience is due
to stale flour, heat damaged flour, rancid germ oils, etc...

At the end of the day, I'd rather not mess with it. There are enough
complications in my life already.

But not bread, right? Never bread.

Will

Wooly wrote:

I've got a 10yo Grainmaster Whispermill.

I have a two year old whispermill. And had a year old nutrimill. And a
four year old KA attachment.

No sifting, no additives, no adjuncts. I turn out essentially the
same bread every bake, with slight variations due to humidity or lack
thereof.


Or grain.

Baking is just as much art as it is science. "Variations"
are what keep it interesting.

If you are baking for yourself, or to give bread to friends, yes. If
you are trying to sell bread, then consistency is essential.

I'll posit to you that the sites you're
visiting that publish recipes calling for "conditioners" and gluten
flour also sell those things, and call for them by brand name in the
free recipes. Yes?


Some of the sites do, some don't. Some specify the brand of vital wheat
gluten, others tell you to just go to the store and buy some there.
Some sites specify the dough conditioner to use, others give you a
recipe so you can make your own. (Key ingredient - vitamin C, diluted
with milk powder so it is measureable. Less important ingredient - ginger)

You seem to be looking at low-end (ie, inexpensive) mills, which do
mostly mash or crack the grains instead of producing flour. I owned a
Corona for about 30 seconds, long enough to realize it wasn't going to
be a good mill for me as a baker; my friend the home-brewer loves it.


Nope. I don't think my mills are less expensive. One is the same as
the one you use and like.

The more expensive mills do in fact pulverize the grains, producing
quite nice flour - my GM puts out a finer flour when set 3 clicks from
"finest" than I've ever been able to find in a market.



There is a difference between the texture of a flour and its
useability. In the end, it was all but impossible to get a consistently
good result.

Mike

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 09:18:19 -0600, Mike Avery
spewed forth :

much snippage

You asked for flour sources, I recommended a mill. You threw up
objections, I countered by relating my experience with my mill.

You needn't get huffy, and you needn't feel as if I was teaching you
to suck eggs since you never did mention that you have mills but are
tired of doing the work yourself. Had you done so at the outset you'd
have saved us both some time.

+++++++++++++

Reply to the list as I do not publish an email address to USENET.
This practice has cut my spam by more than 95%.
Of course, I did have to abandon a perfectly good email account...

Correction - you weren't the OP.

+++++++++++++

Reply to the list as I do not publish an email address to USENET.
This practice has cut my spam by more than 95%.
Of course, I did have to abandon a perfectly good email account...

Wooly totally missed several points and wrote:

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 09:18:19 -0600, Mike Avery
spewed forth :

much snippage

You asked for flour sources, I recommended a mill. You threw up
objections, I countered by relating my experience with my mill.


As you later realized, I didn't ask for flour sources.

You needn't get huffy, and you needn't feel as if I was teaching you
to suck eggs since you never did mention that you have mills but are
tired of doing the work yourself.

I didn't get huffy. I still haven't gotten huffy. Despite your
condescending BS attitude.

No, I didn't get tired of the work. I got tired of the inferior results
that were only salvagable by adding things to bread I'd rather not add
to bread.

And my comments were made so the OP would realize that grinding your own
wheat adds another layer of complexity to the bread making process, and
that the outcomes are not as wonderful as people who sell mills would
like you to believe.

I talked to a "Great Harvest" owner a while back. The two hardest
things in his life are staffing and grinding wheat. And they do it all
the time. They claim they grind all their own flour.

If its worth it to you, cool. I'm happy for you.

My experience was, inconsistent results, lower quality results over
all. I don't recommend it if your goal is better bread.

If your goal is mystical re-connection to the earth, a quest for better
nutrition, religous reawakening, other health issues, or whatever, then
it might be worth it.

Mike

Dick Adams wrote:

"Mike Avery" wrote in message news:mailman.3.1121656109.12629.rec.food.sourdough @mail.otherwhen.com...


I hate to be honest, but the home mills I've seen produce a very poor
grade of flour from the baker's perspective.



I do very well with my ancient chromed VitaMixer. Witness:
http://www.prettycolors.com/bread%5F...BMWW7SEP04.jpg
which was made in a bread machine.

1 cup bread flour (All Trumps 50111)
2 cups hard red spring wheat, ground in VM after measuring
10 fl. oz. water, in which is dissolved at the right temperature
Enough dry yeast (try 1.5 rounded tsp. of the not-instant variety)
2 fl. oz. molasses (total fluid incl. molasses 65% of flour weight)
10 grams salt (~2 tsp. level)
Optional: zest of an orange
(Cycle #1, crust setting 1 of 3 in machine rated for a 1.5 LB loaf.)



I think the all trumps saved you - it's my favorite white flour. If you
had tried to make the bread with just home ground hard red spring wheat,
which is what most of the food faddists want to do, your results would
have been very different.

Having made more than my share of 100% whole wheat breads, the home
ground variety straight from the home mill is not as good.

At the end of the day, I'd rather not mess with it. There are enough
complications in my life already.



Whole grain is nice because it stores indefinitely and is always "fresh"
as soon as it is ground and can be bought cheap in big sacks. I think
that WW bread has got enough taste of its own so that WW SD does
not make sense. I have made the above formulation slightly complicated
with the molasses and the orange peel, but it works (rises) much better with
the molasses, and tastes pretty good with the slight molasses sweetness
and the very mild orange flavor.



If you were trying 100% home ground, I think you'd find sourdough is worth the effort with the home ground. It helps. Not enough, but it helps.

Mike

On Monday, July 18, 2005, at 11:36 AM, Mike Avery wrote:

If your goal is mystical re-connection to the earth, a quest for better
nutrition, religous reawakening, other health issues, or whatever, then
it might be worth it.

Come on, Mike...

How did you feel when you discovered that mechanical dough development
was bogus?

There must have been some element of re-connection. I mean after all,
thousands of pre-industrial, French bakers lived and died, working
every day with the knowledge you just discovered. They used coarse
flour from a donkey mill too. Want to bet there's another revelation to
come? bg

Will

Will wrote:

On Monday, July 18, 2005, at 11:36 AM, Mike Avery wrote:



If your goal is mystical re-connection to the earth, a quest for better
nutrition, religous reawakening, other health issues, or whatever, then
it might be worth it.



Come on, Mike...

How did you feel when you discovered that mechanical dough development
was bogus?


Well, it's not bogus, so thats not a good comparison. Kneading works,
and works well. And is reasonably optimal in a large production
environment. I don't feel betrayed because I've been kneading dough for
30 years. The breads I made were good. I enjoyed them.

There must have been some element of re-connection. I mean after all,
thousands of pre-industrial, French bakers lived and died, working
every day with the knowledge you just discovered. They used coarse
flour from a donkey mill too. Want to bet there's another revelation to
come? bg

Since the middle ages - or before - flour has been sifted or bolted to
remove the extra bran that makes the bakers job difficult. In the
middle ages, the wealthy ate white bread that would please a wonderbread
fan.

When people have tried to use really whole grains, they have met with
mixed results, usually along the lines of, "thats nice, but I prefer
something lighter". Commercial whole wheat, like you get in the grocery
store, is about an 85% extraction flour. That is, 15% of the grain has
been extracted and sold as animal feed. Getting commercial whole wheat
to rise "well" is an interesting exercise that some people never manage.

I am quite convinced that if you don't do something with flour straight
from the mill, something like mix it with a high protein flour, use
wheat gluten, or sift it, you'll be getting less than wonderful bread.

I've made enough less than wonderful bread that that is no longer my goal.

I don't think I'll be getting a reconnection with milling my own flour
and using 100% extraction flour.

That said, I love dense ryes, rich whole wheats, and I really like to
crack grains to add accents to breads. I'm not a white bread fanatic.
I just don't think grinding wheat into flour and using that flour as
ones only flour is a good answer for most people.

Mike