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Comment by girzel | Hacker News Reader

I knew I'd fallen down the rabbit hole when my dad and I started going in on 50lb sacks of wheat berries from Eastern Washington (I'm in Seattle). I can't remember, I think it's like 20 or 30 dollars a sack. I have a mill attachment for a KitchenAid, it's not awesome but it does the trick. My dad bakes 100% ground berries (so completely whole-wheat, by definition), but I mix it with bread flour -- using whole wheat to feed the sourdough starter.

It produces an absolutely incredible flavor. If you give it a slow proof and bake in a cast iron dutch oven, you get these amazing cinnamon and nut smells as it bakes. Just the most delicious bread.

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Do you do anything to increase the gluten? When I've tried whole-wheat bread, it just kind of falls apart when sliced. I've tried adding "Vital Wheat Gluten", but even a tablespoon to a loaf didn't seem to help. Thanks!

Try soaking your flour overnight to hydrate the bran, which otherwise can slice up the gluten network. Also, if you're kneading and the surface splits, stop let it sit for five to ten minutes so the gluten can relink before you continue.

I think home-ground whole-wheat flour has to have more gluten than pretty much any other flour out there...

Are you putting a whole bunch of other stuff in there? There's a reason fat is called "shortening" -- it breaks the gluten strands, and makes the bread crumbly. Unless you're putting a whole bunch of butter or some other fat into the flour, I can't imagine why it would be crumbly.

What are your ingredients?

Whole-wheat flour has everything that white flour has (including gluten), plus more. If you remove the "more", the proportion of gluten in the whole goes up.

The "more" also includes fat, as well as other things which might interfere with gluten formation.

Sounds like your hydration was too low or you didn't develop the gluten with enough rest & kneading.

Search SeriousEats for Bravetart's (aka Stella Parks) 100% whole wheat bread. It uses a food processor to knead the bread in around 75seconds. No VWG. Taste is phenomenal.

As I understand it, the principle shenanigans going on with commercial flour is that they add enzymes (if you're doing this at home, it will be malt) to the flour before you take it home. Unless I'm quite mistaken -- please tell me if I am -- the whole point of a slow/retarded proof is to give the enzymes a chance to break the starch down into component sugars. When more sugars are broken out, you get both a nicer taste (it's sweet!) and a more beautiful crust (the sugars caramelize/brown).

But with home-milled flour, are there no enzymes at all? What happens to the slow-proofed dough?

I bake my own bread precisely so that it’s not sweet, like the store-bought cake bread.

Oh I don't mean the bread itself is sweet like sandwich bread, but that there's a slight hint of sweetness, which doesn't overwhelm any of the other flavors.

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