Flour tests

We’ve been experiencing with various flouras available to us here for the past few months. We don’t have a lot of quality options. I did however find a new brand at Walmart a week ago that claims to be organic. I really have no idea if that will make a difference or not, so today I’m making two loaves. One of which will be our control with the flour most often used in our house which is Los Gallos. It runs about 9 pesos per kilo which is roughly $0.50. The organic option is called San Blas and, if I recall correctly, was about three times that price for 4/5 of a kilo.

I’m doing Reinhart’s lean/straight dough method. I noticed the organic flour is much darker than the control. So much so that Yun initially thought it might be whole grain. But I’m pretty confident that’s not the case.

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They both mixed up the same with no problems. The directions call for 4 stretch and pulls with 20 minute intervals between.

And I’ve already made my first mistake. I accidentally did a second stretch and pull out of sequence as I was confused working with two loaves at the same time. So the organic flour had a second stretch and pull approximately 10 minutes earlier then it should have. I’m just going to move forward as though I didn’t do that which will amount to a fifth stretch and pull for the organic loaf.

Now we wait 90 minutes for it to rise.

And into the bannetons for an hour more to proof.

And into the oven.

And out of the oven.

As it turned out, the cheaper flour had a better raise and a darker color.

The results.

Yun was right, the “organic” flour was whole grain. It’s a bit surprising it raised as high as it did.

The whole grain tasted better. It was surprisingly pretty good. It also smelled better. The Los Gallos control wasn’t bad, just offered nothing spectacular or special. Neither loaves had large air holes. I still have yet to figure out why I am not achieving those.

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