flour-msg – 1/12/08
Flours. Period flours. Approximating them with modern flours. Types of flours. Flour sources. chickpea flour.
NOTE: See also these files: boulting-msg, bread-msg, breadmaking-msg, dumplings-msg, grains-msg, thickening-msg, leavening-msg, rice-msg, brd-manchets-msg.
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NOTICE -
This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.
This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org
I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter.
The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors.
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Thank you,
Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous
Stefan at florilegium.org
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From: "Philip W. Troy" <troy at asan.com>
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 12:50:45 -0400
Subject: Re: SC - Re: sca-cooks V1 #51
Ray Caughlin wrote:
> Question? Bleached flour during the Middle Ages? Would someone clarify. My
> understanding is that white flour or (bleached) is modern. Good Period
> bakers need to know these things!
> Lord Mandrigal of Mu
The concept of bleached flour is modern only in the sense that flour
being produced on an industrial scale, for storage in warehouses, for
sale God knows when, is modern.
Bleached flour is produced by taking freshly ground flour and storing it
in non-airtight sacks for a specific length of time ( I don't know how
long). They don't add anything to it to bleach it.
So, we have here another one of those "they COULD have had it" things.
How often it actually occurred is anybody's guess.
Adamantius
From: "Philip W. Troy" <troy at asan.com>
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 13:24:03 -0400
Subject: Re: Re(2): SC - Re: sca-cooks V1 #51
Sue Wensel wrote:
> Marham talks about "fine white flour." Could this be bleached flour? (I had
> always assumed so.)
>
> Derdriu
Could be. As I posted earlier (and then deleted for space, dummy that I
am) it seems to be one of those things that COULD have existed.
I just figured Markham is talking about finely bolted flour: sifted
through a fine muslin or other cloth that would allow the passage of the
starchy grains without most of the bran.
Adamantius
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 18:05:09 -0400
Subject: Re: SC - Sugar is sweet and so are you...
Jeanne Stapleton wrote:
> Also, we were talking about bleaching flour earlier. My
> understanding is that much modern bleached flour comes about because
> of chemical bleaching, not storage methods. I have also been going
> for the unbleached white flour, which is still fine and white, and
> using that in my SCA cooking attempts. Any thoughts on this?
From Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking", page 290:
'BLEACHING AND AGING
After the flour has been ground and blended to the desired mix of
particles, it is treated chemically to to accomplish in a matter of
minutes what otherwise takes weeks. Bleaching removes the light yellow
color caused by xanthophylls, a variety of carotenoid pigment also found
in potatoes and onions. The color has no practical or nutritional
significance and is oxidized simply to obtain a uniform whiteness.
Bleaching does, however, destroy the small amounts of vitamin E in
flour, which probably accounts for its bad reputation in some circles.
For historical reasons, yellow coloration is valued in pasta, and so
semolina is never bleached.
Bleaching is often accomplished with the same gas, chlorine dioxide,
that is used to age, or "improve," the flour. But even unbleached flour
has been aged with potassium bromate or iodate. Aging has several
important practical results. It has long been known that flour allowed
to sit for one to two months develops better baking qualities; hence
the practice of letting flour "age" before use (during this period, it
is also naturally bleached by oxygen in the air).'
It seems as if there's little practical difference between the bleached
and the unbleached flour as regards the introduction of foreign matter
to the flour, especially since the foreign matter doesn't remain in the
finished product. As regards the removal of the vitamin E from the
flour, this is pretty insignificant, since the majority of the vitamin E
is found in the germ, which isn't part of white flour anyway.
My suggestion to those who want to come as close as they can to period
flours is to use stone-ground whole wheat flour, which can be sieved to
remove some or most of the bran, depending on the fineness of the
bolting cloth. People living in cities with large Orthodox Jewish
communities might be able to get hold of some Passover flour, such as
non-industrial matzoh is made of. This is a fresh, unaged, unbleached,
sieved white flour. Hard to get hold of, but worth the effort for
experimentation.
Adamantius
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 12:31:42 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: Re(2): SC - Bread
S. Noss wrote:
> Kind gentles, a newbie question. What is a bolting cloth?
>
> Shirley
A bolting cloth is used to sift and grade flour. In pre-industrial
times, whole wheat was ground in a mill, then sifted through
successively finer bolting cloths to get various grades of flour, from
dark whole-wheat to _almost_ white, for the wealthy. You can still buy a
textile item called bolting cloth, I understand, but it usually isn't
used for bolting anymore, so far as I know.
Nowadays the harder wheat we tend to grow and eat has the outside bran
removed by a machine with rollers, and THEN it's ground into flour.
Adamantius
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 12:53:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Mark Schuldenfrei <schuldy at abel.MATH.HARVARD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Re(2): SC - Bread
Kind gentles, a newbie question. What is a bolting cloth?
Mister Dictionary says:
bolt vt [ME bultan, fr. OF buleter, of Gmc origin; akin to MHG biutelnX
to sift, fr. biutel bag, fr. OHG bu-til 1: to sift (as flour) usu. through
fine-meshed cloth archaic 2: SIFT
bolt (bolt) verb, transitive
To pass (flour, for example) through a sieve.
[Middle English bulten, from Old French buleter, from Middle High German
biuteln, from biutel, bag, purse.]
Tibor
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 12:45:31 -0700
From: Brett and Karen Williams <brettwi at ix.netcom.com>
Subject: SC - Re: Bread
What about spelt flour? Would spelt be a good substitute for modern
unbleached white?
I'm on the mailing list for King Arthur's Flour Company (Sands &
Taylor), and they're a good source for all kinds of specialty grains,
including hard and soft wheat flour varieties. I bought a bag of spelt
flour from my local health food store after reading about spelt in the
KAFC catalog. Spelt flour is sorta similar in texture to common
unbleached white-- but the differences are a nuttier (and IMHO opinion
more flavorful) and more complex taste, more nutritious, and has a color
between whole wheat and white flour. I used the spelt flour in all kinds
of baked goods in lieu of my more usual unbleached white, including
Definitely Right Out Of Period Tollhouse Cookies, with great success.
cirostan
From: Gunnora Hallakarva <gunnora at bga.com>
To: ansteorra at Ansteorra.ORG
Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 09:53:08 -0500
Subject: ANST - Sifters and Sieves
The discussion on baking, ovens and bread asked about period
sifters/sieves. I don't know what anyone else was using, but I can tell you
what the Vikings used (and in fact, Swedes in the countryside still use
even today)... they used a round, cup-shaped sieve made by naalbinding,
utilizing horsehair fiber. Such sieves were used for sifting flour, and
for straining milk. Milk straining is how most seem to be used in the
present day, but archaeological examples have been found with ground grain
trapped in the fibers.
Gunnora Hallakarva
Herskerinde
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 13:12:56 -0500
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: RE: SC - Tip o' the Day idea
>Seriously tho', could the references in Apicius to pre-cooked spelt when
>making dumplings be referring to puff pastry dough? Tried it in Vehlings
>BookII, Number 46, and incorporated the scallops , pepper and eggs into the
>dough. Dropped it by tblspns into hot fat (olive oil). It turned out
>great....what do you think?
>
>Lord Ras
Spelt (Triticum spelta) is a hard wheat still cultivated in Italy and (I
believe) Germany. It was replaced in common use by softer wheats which
made better flour. While I have no practical experience with it, my
notes say that it mills to a coarse flour and is used in polenta,
porridge and bread.
Boiling spelt flour would soften the meal and might improve the texture
for use in pastry dough.
Bear
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 09:59:17 -0600
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: RE: SC - Sharpening Fine Points or Will Adamantius Tell All?
>2. What modern flours most closely correspond to the sorts of flours
>referred to in period sources?
Here's a little lecturey commentary on what I've tried.
Bear
The Wheat
The original European wheat was emmer and has been used since Antiquity.
This was later joined by German wheat (spelt), which appears to have
been popular in Rome and was spread across Europe by the Vandals. These
were displaced by club wheat. There are now some 30,000 varieties of
wheat developed from these basic stocks.
Medieval wheats were white-skinned and soft (low in gluten). Modern
wheats, especially those grown in North America are red, amber or
yellow-skinned and are hard (high in gluten). Spelt was popular in
bread making because it was harder than the other wheat available at the
time.
Modern flours tend to be mixtures of flours with all-purpose or bread
flour being high in gluten and cake flour being low in gluten.
In practice, I ignore the difference between hard and soft flours and
use what is readily available. Unless you can get it through a bakery
supply, soft flour tends to come in small packages with a very high
price.
The Milling
Medieval flour was stone milled. Most modern flour is roller milled, a
process developed in the 19th Century.
Roller milling breaks the wheat germ loose from the endosperm early in
the milling process, yielding wheat germ and bran as a salable products
and high extraction flour. Because of the minimal wheat germ, roller
milled flour has an indefinite storage life and is drier than a
comparable stone milled flour. The germ is used to make semolina and
other wheat germ products.
In Medieval milling, the fineness of the meal depended on the quality of
the stones. Wheat would normally have been ground on the hardest,
closest tolerance stones available to achieve the finest average meal.
Stone ground wheat comes very close to the fineness of roller milling.
The chief difference is in the level of extraction. Stone grinding
reaches a maximum of about 80% extraction. Roller milling goes above
90% extraction.
There are 4 layers of skin on a wheat berry. This is the bran.
Apparently in parts of England, the coarser fragments of the skin were
referred to as bran and the finer fragments were referred to as chisel.
After milling, flour was boulted (sieved) through fabric to remove the
bran and establish the fineness of the flour. The bran removed during
the boulting would be used by the miller to feed his livestock or be
sold to others as feed.
Boulting cloths were made of linen, canvas, or wool, being joined by
silk in the mid-18th Century.
The lowest grade of flour would be that straight from the mill. A
prudent farmer might take his meal this way to ensure the maximum return
and boult the flour immediately before use.
Once boulted flour would remove the largest pieces of the bran, but
there would still be pieces of bran and chisel and a fairly coarse
flour. This flour would be used for rough breads, possibly trenchers.
I've used a Hodgson Mill 50/50 Wheat and White Flour, which I believe
would fall between once boulted and twice boulted flour.
Twice boulted flour is called for in The Good Huswife's Handmaide for
the Kitchen (1594) for the making of fine manchet. This flour is used
for making fine breads and general pastries. To approximate it, I use a
stone ground whole wheat flour with graham and unbleached white flour
mixed between 1:1 and 2:1. This is probably the flour called for when a
recipe speaks of "fine flour" or "fair flour".
I've seen finer flour mentioned, but I can't remember the reference. In
this circumstance, I would use a whole wheat pastry flour I am able to
purchase in bulk or a 1:1 mix of the pastry flour and unbleached white
flour. This particular whole wheat flour is about the same color as the
unbleached white flour and may be what is being referred to by "finest
white flour".
Some Thoughts
Modern high extraction flour has a lower moisture content than its
Medieval counter part. It will probably require more liquid than called
for in a recipe.
While recipes call for "white" flour, they say nothing about the color
of the end product. Some of the manchets I made with a 1:1 mix of whole
wheat pastry flour and unbleached white flour produced a lovely golden
brown loaf, whose color resembles that of the breads in Medieval
paintings.
Would a 1:1 mix of HM 50/50 and whole wheat pastry flour be closer to a
Medieval twice boulted flour than what I currently use?
Did a miller user different kinds of cloth for different boultings?
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 01:35:13 -0600
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: RE: SC - Flours was:[Dstlg] beer bread, OOP
> Arabella said:
> I have had the same problem with my bread maker. I have found that
> wheat flour takes longer to cook, and the very best flour for a bread
> machine is the type ground specially for the machine. Gold Medal makes
> one, it comes in a yellow package. There's is something about how it's
> ground that makes it different from regular bleached flour.
The yellow bag Gold Medal flour I'm familiar with is a bromated flour. It
contains additives to increase aeration and improve the rise. I've used it,
but it causes problems with fine baking, so I tend to use all-purpose flour
except where a specialty flour is required. It might improve the action of
a bread machine.
I believe you are also talking about whole wheat when you say wheat flour.
Whole wheat has less gluten than white flour. If you are not already doing
it, try mixing whole wheat and white flour 1:1. If the recipe calls for 1
pkg (teaspoon) of yeast, you might consider using 2 teaspoons of yeast.
> To which Kiriel replied:
> Most of the flour you buy in the local supermarket is too low in
> gluten to make really good bread. Gluten is the protein in
> wheat, and helps to give doughs resilience, stretch and
> good rising abilities. Most shop-bought flours have been
> bleached within an inch of their lives (so to speak) and have
> very little protein left.
>
> Having lived in USA most of my life and moved to Australia, I never had
> the problem with low gluten flours til I moved here. While I agree that
> most shop bought flours have less gluten in them, I found the problem
> worse in Australia. My mother, living in the US still makes lots of
> bread, I do not believe she normally adds gluten. Times do change
> however and I could be wrong.
>
> Nicolette
> Barony of Stormhold
> Principality of Lochac, Kingdom of the West
The gluten content is dependent on the type of wheat and to some extent the
processing. The preferred wheats for bread making are "hard" wheats, those
having a red, amber or yellow skin. "Soft" wheats have a pale, almost white
skin. Hard wheats are high in gluten. The best hard wheats are grown
primarily in the US and Canada. Rye has some gluten, but all other cereals
have virtually none (flours other than wheat are mixed with wheat flours to
get a rise).
In processing, whole wheat has less gluten than white wheat. Bleaching
doesn't do much to gluten, but it does remove the B-vitamins. I prefer
unbleached white flour for my general baking. Wheat germ and bran are
removed in the milling process, but that has more to do with nutrition than
good baking.
Store bought flour in the US is more than adequate to make a good loaf of
bread. I don't know about the situation in Australia, but you might look to
see if any of the flours are labeled as "strong" flour. If you do have low
gluten flour, rejoice, it makes great cakes and pastries. If you want to
use it to make bread, and about an ounce of gluten extract to the pound and
toss in a little wheat germ for good measure.
Beyond that, I would look for a bakery supply that is willing to sell to the
general public.
Bear
Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 16:22:56 -0700
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - chickpea flour
At 2:57 PM -0600 5/2/98, Stefan li Rous wrote:
>Aldyth said:
>>I will owe my soul to the King Arthur Flour company. I discovered I have
>>a taste for chickpea flour.....
>Taste? How does it compare to wheat flour? Was this used throughout
>Medieval Europe? Or was this just a Middle Eastern item?
It appears in an 13th c. Andalusian recipe for Counterfeit Isfiriya of
Garbanzos.
David/Cariadoc
Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 19:56:31 -0400
From: "marilyn traber" <mtraber at email.msn.com>
Subject: Re: SC - chickpea flou rking arthur flour
King Arthur Flour has a website with online catalog. They also have a
country store if you want to drive up into the middle of Vermont
somewhere...]
margali
Date: Sun, 3 May 1998 09:12:50 -0500
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: RE: SC - chickpea flou rking arthur flour
> King Arthur Flour has a website with online catalog. They also have a
> country store if you want to drive up into the middle of Vermont
> somewhere...]
>