No, it’s not about ladies in freak shows. When Rick and Maggie came up for the day after Christmas they brought a couple of local flours from South Wales milled at Felin Ganol one of which is April Bearded.
As you would expect these are very soft flours plus they were so coarsely milled I put the through my little Kenwood mill attachment for a second grind.
I thought I’d start off by trying my basic wholemeal formula which I generally use with Doves – Wholemeal 100%, Water 67%, White Starter 28%, Salt 1.6% – with no concessions to the expected low gluten. 3 x 10 kneads, four hours fermentation with folds each hour, three and a half hours prove in a basket. The dough was getting stickier as we went along and tried to stick to the basket. Pretty much collapsed coming out of the basket:
Compare this with wholemeals from a few weeks back:
Tasted delicious!
Next up I’m going to pretend it’s rye – short fermentation and wack it in a tin till it looks ready.
The PArtisan Baker 