Freshly ground flour... sifting is your friend!

Instead of taking a nap on this fine Sunday afternoon, I'm writing a blog post. The reason for the writing itch is what I've had on my mind for a while: freshly ground flour.

I got a new grain mill last year, and have been enjoying freshly ground flour in all manner of baked goods, but it's taken me the longest time to figure out how to make decent, real sourdough bread with it. (When I say "real", I mean leavened using only sourdough, no commercial baking yeast.)

Why sourdough bread? I have a peculiar fascination with sourdough. (Read: I am obsessed.) There’s something empowering about not relying upon something I’ve purchased to raise my bread, but rather using yeast that I’ve cultivated from the air. I found this quote about sourdough and liked how it was worded:

Commercial "baking" yeast is a single kind of organism that belches a lot of gas really fast and transforms grain into something that's even less good for you. Sourdough is two organisms, wild yeast and bacteria, in symbiosis. Together they transform the grain to make it more healthful, more digestible, and also resistant to getting moldy or stale.

Okay, so do you get that sourdough is better for you? That's kind of why I'm a bit extreme when it comes to this bread baking. PLUS, I've noticed that when I eat unsoaked flour products, my nursing baby is more fussy.

So, back to my quest for the perfect loaf of sourdough bread. I'd made some sourdough doorstops the first several times I used freshly ground flour. Then I used the Urban Homemaker's 2-step soaked recipe, which worked pretty well... I had gotten a free e-book from her at some point, which contained the recipe. But not all the flour was soaked. (Remember... I'm obsessed!) Then I got a free e-book from Kitchen Stewardship which contained a recipe for Honey Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread which I liked. Still not perfect, but it was turning out better than my other sourdough version, plus, all the flour was getting a pretty good souring time.

But here's the deal...the grain mill doesn't grind the grain to a complete powder. There is fine powdery flour mixed with the crushed bran. The bran acts almost like little scissors on the gluten strands, which keeps the bread from having a bigger rise. I think that's what I've been fighting against, and have only recently had a lightbulb moment in thinking to SIFT the flour. Not sure how I came to that, but I saw this blog post about sifting out the bran, then adding it back into the bread, which some say really helped their final loaf. Somewhere else, I read to soak the bran in some type of fat, like lard or butter, before adding it back in.

Yeah... sift it. But how?

Well, I have this flour sifter that I got several years back that hasn't gotten much use. I've read that you should use these screens made especially for flour sifting... but I have this flour sifter. Soooo.... I figured I'd try it and see. Here's what the inside of my sifter looks like.

There's a handle on the side that you squeeze and it moves two wheels to sift around the flour... I mostly just end up shaking it to get the flour out. But it keeps the bigger bran pieces out, which I do one of two things with: 1. Bran goes into a recipe, like bars or cookies (or cookies that become bars because I can't seem to make cookies that don't become a flat pancake!). OR 2. Bran goes into coffee grinder, gets ground a bit finer, and gets thrown back into my pot of flour. (I wouldn't add it back into my flour grinder, because I think that's bad for the machine.)

So, it seemed to help lighten the loaf a bit, and helped it rise higher!

But, I haven't perfected this concept yet. A few notes...

--I tried soaking the bran in some soft lard and adding it back into the bread. I counted it as some of my flour, but I don't think I should've done that, because it didn't help the bread at all. Made it pretty dense.

--I have left out the bran before, which works very well.

--When grinding up the bran in the coffee grinder, it seems to work pretty well to add it back into the flour.

--I have a tendency to forget about my bread rising.... at least with sourdough, it's not quite as big of a deal as with commercial yeast, which rises a lot faster. But the last several times I've made bread, it rose longer than it needed to, so the loaves ended up falling a bit during baking.

--I need to coddle my sourdough starter a bit more before baking bread so it's at its peak performance when it gets used for bread. I'm going to try to keep my sourdough starter out on my counter a lot more so it's always ready. I found these two recipes, which call for a certain amount of sourdough starter, but no extra flour, so as long as I have plenty of sourdough starter ready, I don't have to think ahead to make these things: Sourdough Crepes (the link is to tortilla chips, but the crepe recipe is on there) and Sourdough Pancakes.

So, my sourdough bread is still a work-in-progress. I realize it will never be like the bread you buy in stores... but I'm okay with that. I don't want it to be! ;-)

Homemade Whole Wheat Pitas

I'm really excited to post about this, because I strayed from the directions a bit, and it totally rocked. I didn't want to stop eating these pitas.

These pitas are very similar to the pizza post I made last week, and based on my pita discovery, I'll probably be changing my pizza dough recipe to be more like my pitas.

Here's why I'm so excited: I made the pitas entirely with soaked dough and sourdough. That's right, no commercial yeast involved, just my wild yeast culture, which I like to refer to as my "Mankato Culture"--since I made it while living in Mankato! I basically followed the same recipe, but left out the commercial yeast, and it turned out great!

The process is much the same as the pizza dough. There are three parts: the soaker, the sourdough starter, and the final dough. And the amounts are slightly different, but the ingredients are the same.

For ease of use, I'll re-list all my instructions for the soaker and sourdough starter again. This is my adaptation of the pita recipe in "Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads".

Homemade Whole Wheat Pitas

Makes 6-8 pita rounds, depending on how big you want them

Three parts: Soaker, Sourdough, Final Dough

Part One: Soaker

1. Make the Soaker 12-24 hours before you want to use it. Mix the following ingredients in a bowl for about one minute, until the flour is hydrated and the ingredients form a ball:

• 1 3/4 c. whole wheat flour, preferably fine grind
• 3/4 c. kefir (or a mixture of water and lemon juice, whey, or yogurt... be creative. I used kefir because that's what I had)

2. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature 12-24 hours. If want to have it ready by the next afternoon, I'll usually mix it up in the early evening.

Part Two: Sourdough Starter

• 5 T. wild yeast starter (aka sourdough)
• 1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour
• 1/2 c. + 2 T. water

1. Mix these ingredients to form a ball of dough. Using wet hands, knead dough for about two minutes in the bowl. The dough should feel very tacky. Let dough rest five minutes, then knead again with wet hands for one minute. The dough will be smoother, but still tacky.
2. Place starter dough in oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap, leaving at room temp. for 4-8 hours, until doubled in size. When I made these pitas, I mixed up both the soaker and sourdough starter in the evening, set them on the counter, and let them go overnight.
3. When the starter has developed (about doubled in size), knead it for a few seconds to degas it. I use it immediately, but you could refrigerate it at this point to use at a later date, within 3-4 days. If you do put in fridge, make sure you take it out two hours before you use it to take off the chill.

Part Three: Final Dough

1. Since I wanted these for lunch, I started mixing the final dough around 8:30 or 9 a.m. Cut the sourdough and soaker together. In the book, it says to cut it up into 12 pieces, sprinkle with flour so they don't stick together, and mix together. What I do is stack them on top of each other and cut with a kitchen scissors, and then sprinkle these ingredients on top:

• 3/4 c. + 2 T. whole wheat flour (I used sprouted flour)
• 1 1/8 t. sea salt
• 1 T. coconut oil, melted

2. Knead these all together for about 2 minutes, until all ingredients are mixed evenly. Dough sould be soft and slightly sticky, if not add more flour/water.
2. Knead for an additional 1 minute, so dough feels supple but tacky. Form into ball and let rest on counter for 5 minutes. In the mean time, prepare an oiled bowl
3. Knead for another minute to strengthen the gluten, then place in bowl loosely covered with plastic wrap, and let rise 45-60 minutes.
4. Transfer to lightly floured surface and divide into 6-8 balls. Place on pan covered with parchment paper to rise another 45-60 minutes, or until 1 1/2 times their original size.
5. In the meantime, you should have your baking stone preheating in the oven for an hour before you actually want to bake your pitas. Heat the oven as high as it can go (mine is 500 degrees).

6. Roll out ea. ball into a flat disk 4-5 in. in diameter. Dust disks with flour and return to pan, stacking if necessary. Cover with cloth towel or plastic wrap and let rest for 5 minutes.

7. Go back to your disks, and starting from the center, roll out to the edges until they're about 1/4 inch thick. (The book says not to roll them any thinner... but I think I may be so bold as to roll them thinner next time. Although I did enjoy the full thickness of the resulting pita.) Dust disks with flour again and move to flat surface to rest, covered and undisturbed for 15 minutes.

8. Transfer pitas on to parchment paper, and then transfer on to stone using a flat baking sheet. I did four at a time because that's what would fit on my stone. It should take 2 minutes to begin puffing. After it puffs up, give it 20 seconds to finish baking then transfer to cooling rack. You don't want to let it cook too much longer, otherwise the top will get hard.

And that is how I make pitas. I hope to make some more this week!

The edges are a little jagged... I used a pizza cutter, and it didn't work as well as I'd envisioned...