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It's been so long since I used any vital wheat gluten that I don't even remember how far back. I still have some in the freezer. I found that since I mostly use KAF flours for breadmaking, that I just don't need to add any gluten. I also have lower protein flours on hand for things like cookies, biscuits and cakes.
As I recall, the nutrients label on the Bobs Red Mill VWG package said it was 85% protein. But it may be that not all the proteins remaining in VWG are the two gluten proteins.
I'm going to see if my wife can check out a copy of Posner & Hibbs, the primary textbook on wheat flour milling science, from the UNL library next week.
Next time I'm in the Pittsburgh area, I may see if I can get a 50 pound bag of clear flour at Stover & Company. $15.73 plus tax. (Having them ship it to Nebraska would cost a lot more.)
Clear flour is quite a bit higher in protein content than AP flour, so one might expect that it is higher in gluten, but it is also higher in small pieces of bran and wheat germ, both of which have a negative impact on bread structure, and both may contribute non-gluten protein.
The usual explanation for bran impacting bread structure is that the sharp pieces of bran cut the gluten strands. I don't know if that has been microscopically confirmed.
I've not seen a specific explanation for why wheat germ would affect structure/rise, but I know from repeated experiments that adding wheat germ to a recipe causes it not to rise as much.
The United States Department of Agriculture's Food Database says a cup of AP flour is 125 grams, which is 4.41 ounces. They don't have an entry for (first) clear flour.
I've done numerous experiments measuring flour, depending on the accuracy of one's measuring cups (many are terribly inaccurate) and how you measure out the flour you can get anywhere from just under 4 ounces to well over 5 ounces per cup. Personally I find most recipes given in cups work pretty well at 4.25 ounces per cup.
I have not found a place on the BBGA website (I am also a member) where they give the weight of a cup of flour, all the recipes I've looked at on their website and in their magazine are in baker's math formulas. Since I nearly always weigh the flour in bread and their recipes have to be scaled down for home use anyway, that's not a problem for me.
I think the primary reason for blind baking a full-sized crust is so that the crust gets fully baked, even in the very center. (A soggy not-quite-fully baked center is not good.)
With a small diameter pie (probably anything 6 inches or smaller), the center of the crust doesn't take as long to get fully baked, so there's no need for blind-baking.
I've never made or (as far as I know) ever had Anzacs, what are they like? They look sort of like oatmeal cookies in this recipe:
Anzac BiscuitsCass, what weight/cup did you use for the first clear flour in computing the hydration percentage? King Arthur says it is lighter than regular flour, 3.75 ounces per cup compared to 4.25 for AP or bread flour.
I wonder what the point to putting the caraway seeds in the sponge is, perhaps so that it acts as a bit of a soaker as well? It's not like caraway seeds are going to impact yeast growth much, except maybe absorbing some of the water.
I haven't played with my Bakers Math Calculator (in development) in over a year, but I added Clear flour and Caraway seed to the list of ingredients it knows and this recipe comes up as 62.7% hydration.
I doubt the size of a packet of yeast has changed since the 1950's, and I am fairly sure the potency of either active dry yeast or instant dry yeast has changed in that time frame.
0.75% to 1.25% of the total flour weight is a good starting point for how much yeast to use when developing or analyzing a recipe. If a pre-ferment (biga, poolish, etc) is being used, that usually means you can use less yeast.
Interesting that even with several stories on him, nobody has a recent picture of James Leprino. I wish more billionaires were like that. 🙂
I don't think pre-baking is as important, possibly not necessary at all, on mini-pies.
I'm to the point where for most recipes I use half the yeast it calls for.
I'm not convinced that all blowouts are a matter of 'too much yeast', though.
My big scale can do .05 ounce or 1 gram increments. Since there are 28.3495 grams per ounce, the 1 gram increments are slightly more precise. But I don't think it makes much difference whether you are measuring 3 1/8 ounces as 3.10 or 3.15 instead of 3.125.
Most of the time I use ounces, but I have one bread recipe I'm developing that uses grams, and my pie dough recipes (from SFBI) are in grams. I even have a micro-scale capable of measuring in 1/10th of a gram increments for measuring things like salt.
It sort of depends on the recipe, and not that many are written in grams yet.
Interesting, most oatmeal cookie recipes say to use old fashioned oats rather than quick oats.
I made Austrian Malt Bread instead, I still think it's the best bread for BLT's, and there have been some good local-grown tomatoes at the farmer's markets already.
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