Excerpt from an article in The Real Bread Campaign's True Loaf:
"Dan (Lepard) encouraged bakers to work with millers to select a type of flour suitable for the bread they planned to make. He also suggested that bakers explore the properties of flours from traditional mills ... ... exploring how the flour reacts - how it takes up water and how the gluten develops. From this, they should consider ... ... using these properties to decide what type of bread to bake, rather than trying to force a flour to produce a predetermined loaf for which it isn't suited."Makes sense. Even as home bakers we can adopt this approach, albeit less scientifically in order to use flours from nearer home. So lets see what Gilchesters and Blair Atholl mills have to offer instead of flour blended with Canadian or Russian wheat from other millers favoured by us foodies.
Hi Colin, I've used both flours in the past. Gilcheters grow there own wheat and mill it themselves. They using rare breed
ReplyDeletegrains from Denmark. There white flour tastes superb but looks a really strange colour. But the gluten strength is quite low so you don't get much rise. Blair Atholl mill doesn't use a locally grown wheat. Rami buys the grain in from a farmer down in southern England. But again the gluten strength isn't that high. It just doesn't get hot enough in the UK to grow a strong wheat flour.