Exotic flour

Attentive readers will recall that I bought some exotic flour in October, from a water mill on the Devon-Dorset border, as found at reference 2 and as noticed at reference 1. Flour which has now reached the top of the heap and was tried out for the first time yesterday. Batch 539. That is to say I used 12 ounces of the stuff to health-up the 40 ounces of Canadian white, instead of the usual 12 ounces of Canadian stoneground wholemeal, from Waitrose.

The dough was very soft and silky. The first rise was fast, three and a half hours as opposed to the usual four. Second knead normal. The second rise was very slow, four and a quarter hours as opposed to the usual two or three. Furthermore, the tops of the loaves were a little lumpy, rather than smoothly rounded. And then, instead of rising a bit more during the cooking, while shrinking away from the sides of the tins, these loaves sank a bit during the cooking and shrunk away from the sides of the tins. With some residual lumpiness visible right.

But an hour out of the oven the bread tasted very good, with a rather different crumb. Not better or worse in that regard, just different.

We will see how we get on as the first loaf proceeds. And how will the second loaf thaw? Will I be tweaking the recipe slightly for the next batch? Will we be buying any more of this flour next time we are in range of the water mill?

In the meantime, I shall wonder about what stoneground wholemeal from Canada means. Do they have modern factories using stone wheels for grinding, rather than the more usual steel rollers? Or do they still do water mills in Canada? I shall also wonder about the stone content of the flour, with the stones needing to be sharpened every few months, with all the stone grindings presumably getting lost in the flour. Whatever would the health and safety people say if they knew? A problem which does not arise with steel rollers, with there being no iron filings that I am aware of.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/10/to-lyme-regis.html.

Reference 2: https://www.townmill.org.uk/.