As I'm getting things organized for my black bread baking, I decided out of curiousity that I would check out my pumpernickel flour. I opened the bag up and thought, huh, that looks just like the stone ground rye flour that I have. So I went and got that bag to compare. Yup, they look and feel almost identical. In fact the pumpernickel seems a bit more finely ground than the stone ground rye. Hmmm.
So then I decided to open up the medium rye flour for comparison. Wow, what a difference. Much less grainy. About half way between a white flour texture and the other two. That explains why some the rye recipes I tried that were intended for medium rye didn't do too hot with the stone ground rye. Big difference.
Maybe I'm getting a little more understanding of the baker blogger who said there were no standards for rye flour and it varied by brand quite a bit. My pumpernickel and medium rye is from King Arthur and my stone ground rye is from Hodgson Mills. I'm sure there could still be real differences in how the pumpernickel and stone ground rye bake up (i don't think i can tell the difference between bread flour and all purpose by look and feel). For now though, I'm just going to hope I have discovered a way to effectively get pumpernickel flour without mail order!
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