Learning All Over Again

So, my 50# bag of wheat arrived this morning--timely because we are nearly out of sandwich bread.

So after work I set up the grinder and got started. The grinder itself works great: took a little less than 15 minutes to grind the 6-1/2 cups of flour I needed. Probably would have gone faster normally, but the girls wanted to help. I decided that since I had no idea if the flour was fine enough, or what would happen with 100% whole wheat flour, now was not the time to try a new recipe.

I chose my standard 4-ingredient sandwich bread recipe, because I have that one completely down. Any aberration in the result would show the difference between white bread flour and whole wheat. A-a-a-nd, like I guessed, I got whole wheat doorstops. Well, not really (I've certainly baked worse) but they didn't rise much and so were overly dense. My standard recipe wasn't intended for this kind of flour.

Next, I'm trying a 100% whole wheat recipe from KAF (King Arthur Flour). These guys are the ones who mill most of the flour that artisan breadmakers use, so I trust them. The dough includes honey, oil, and dry milk, and it had a really odd consistency. It rose, though, though not quite as much as my white bread flour, and I'm interested to try it.

It's in the oven now...