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FrontRangeLiving.com -> Cooking -> Bread
 THE
STORY OF BREAD: FROM THE MILL TO THE ARTISAN BAKER
By Niki Hayden
Modern day wheat miller, Len Wunderly, reaches into the innards of machinery
to pull out a handful of crushed wheat. He scrapes the speckled powder between his
palms, spreading it finely from the tips of his fingers down to the thumb,
searching for flaws by sight and feel. Like fine wine
making, flour milling must be tested and tinkered with finesse. But unlike the
wine master who employs taste and smell to test the fermenting process, the
miller relies upon the sensitivity of his hands.
A mill is where bread begins, where the flour is crafted and blended,
measured and sifted. In a huge warehouse filled with the din of machinery, tubes
carry cracked wheat kernels, whooshing from one giant steel canister to another.
Trucks filled with hard red winter wheat rumble in from Nebraska, Kansas and
eastern Colorado, all destined for Platteville.
The town of Platteville stretches alongside Hwy 85 where silos are
strung like beads on a string, firmly linking a hub connecting farms and rails.
Six of these silos make up the Rocky Mountain Milling Company, where wheat
berries arrive daily.
 MODERN
DAY MILLING
The first room cleans the wheat. "You’d be amazed at what comes in
with wheat," Len says, yelling over the clamor of machinery, "we call it cats and dogs, but really it’s
rocks and chaff. The combine can’t do everything."
Len studied milling at Kansas State, the only college in the nation to offer
such a major. He’s from a farm family and says that the miller’s role is to
make sure flour and machinery work in perfect harmony. Profit in flour is
largely tied to the efficiency of milling. Extracting even two or three percent
more flour from the berry can make a difference in thousands of dollars.
 The equipment used is more compact these days, he says, "mills used to
be five stories high," which now might be one or two stories. Like
computers, the technology is creating efficient, smaller, more tightly
controlled equipment. Even so, it takes the miller’s hands to accurately gauge
the results.
It’s when we move to the milling rooms that Len’s expertise takes over.
He bends over one machine and opens a small door. Wheat is rolling through a
grinder. Throughout the milling process, Len will reach for a handful of crushed
wheat. First it’s filled with bran and wheat germ with tiny particles of
flour.
"When you first try to feel flour in your hands, it doesn’t feel like
anything," says Adrienne Dimmit, the lab manager, "It takes time, but
eventually if you know what to look for, you understand the method."
Giant steel boxes heave and gyrate, crunching the berries. As the process
moves to refinement, the flour is more predominant, soft and powdery, with the
entire room smelling slightly of baked bread. Len spreads flour along the palms
of his practiced hands, he’s looking for an efficient process where none of
the wheat is being wasted, where bran and germ has been separated to his
satisfaction.
FLOURS VARY
Some bins are for organic flour, set aside and milled mostly for artisan
bakers. The bulk of the flour--hard red winter wheat from Nebraska and Kansas--will be milled and sent to major bakeries. By the time home bakers pick up a
one-pound bag of flour in the supermarket, it’s a silky powder that rarely
invites closer scrutiny. But flour, like wine, comes in several varieties. And
some are not interchangeable.
A
soft spring wheat is grown in the Midwest—Michigan, Missouri, Ohio—for
pies and pastries. Durum comes out of the Dakotas. We know durum by the name of
semolina, the flour best suited for pasta. But our ordinary bread is from
America’s breadbasket of Nebraska, Kansas, Texas and Colorado. "Turkey
red wheat," Len says, "grown by German settlers who arrived in Kansas
and brought the wheat with them."
Each of these flours can be blended into specialty flour: low-gluten for
pastry, high-gluten for pizza and pasta, all-purpose for tortillas, whole grain
for hearth breads. Adrienne tests flour in the lab, checking such esoteric facts
as ash level, which is the amount of bran left in the last of the
milling process.
She’ll also check protein levels, the gluten that allows for
stretching and hand manipulation. If the gluten is low, the dough will break
apart easily—that’s the dough that makes the best pastries, pies and
biscuits. High-protein, or high-gluten dough, holds a rustic loaf together. And
the highest of all, semolina, will allow pasta to be stretched and strained
through machinery without breaking apart.
"I test all the flour that we make and send out for moisture, ash,
protein, enzyme activity, physical testing (stress and strain)," Adrienne
says. Most artisan bakers who specialize in rustic breads are looking for wheat
with a high ash rating, or a little of the bran left in the flour. "It
gives people who are using a natural fermentation a different flavor and color
to the bread—a creamier, more rustic bread crumb."
CHOOSE THE MOST APPROPRIATE FLOUR
Choosing the right kind of flour is essential for commercial bakers. Bagels
are manipulated and stressed. They require high protein. Pie dough would be
tough with the same flour. Pies and biscuits requires low-protein flour so that the butter
or oil will create layers without intense handling. For most bakers, Adrienne
says, you can use all-purpose flour if you know what to expect: "Look for
artisan-style or high-extraction flour," if you want rustic
breads. For frequently manipulated bread like bagels, add
high-protein flour called vital wheat gluten. It will also strengthen the dough
for whole wheat that includes wheat berries, nuts and seeds incorporated into the bread.
It’s possible to find vital wheat gluten in supermarkets. The instructions
will tell you to add about one tablespoon for each cup of flour. Suddenly pizza
dough is stretchy and springy. It takes muscle to roll it out, but you’ll get
the thinnest, crispiest dough possible. See the recipe that follows.
LOW-GLUTEN FLOUR MAKES THE BEST PASTRIES
"Part of the toughening process in
pastries is that you don’t have the flakiness. For pastries look for
low-protein, soft wheat, those all are clues," Adrienne says. Soft spring
wheat is a different wheat from the hard red and grows best in the soil and
spring weather of the eastern Great Plains.
There's nothing the equivalent of vital wheat gluten that would lower the protein
content of flour. Search the supermarket shelves for the right terms: soft
spring, low-gluten, biscuit or pastry flour. Rocky Mountain Milling sells a soft
spring wheat under the name of "Snowdrift" in a 50-pound bag. Other
mills sell low-gluten flour on their websites. See below.
Even cake flour may not be appropriate. Cake flour is chlorinated. This is
not the same process as bleached flour, where benzelperoxide is used to promote
shelf life. Fewer millers are bleaching flour now and Adrienne says that Rocky
Mountain Milling only bleaches flour when a customer requests them to.
"Cake flour gives it the fine crumb of a cake," she says, because of
the process. "Since pies, biscuits and pastries don’t rely on a crumb texture, look for
soft spring low-gluten wheat instead."
THE CRISPIEST PIZZA DOUGH
- 1 package yeast
- 1 1/4 cup lukewarm water
- 1 Tab. honey
- 3 cups flour, white
- 3 Tabs. vital wheat gluten
- 1 Tab. salt
- 1 Tab. olive oil
- extra flour for rolling out the dough
Proof the yeast in water and honey. Let sit until the mixture begins to
foment and show action. Add the salt, flour and gluten, one cup of flour and one
tablespoon of gluten at a time. Knead until the dough feel soft and pliable. The
gluten will make the dough springy. Roll the dough out on a well-floured
surface. It will roll very thinly. Add your toppings and bake on a baking stone
in a 450-degree oven until the edges blister and begin to brown.
Helpful websites:
Colorado State University Extension sites:
www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/columncc/cc961114.html
Organic Alliance: www.organic.org/
Bread Bakers Guild of America: www.bbga.org
Rocky Mountain Milling: www.rockymountainmilling.com
King Arthur Flour (based in Vermont): www.kingarthurflour.com
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