Nel

May 22, 2009 at 11:06am

You wrote: "In yeast breads, this organic flour seems to give yeast a boost—maybe it’s extra minerals? Not sure...." I wonder if the organic white whole wheat simply has more naturally occuring wild yeast in it than other flours? I read somewhere that whole wheat flour has more wild yeast in it than more processed flours. Last year I made a sourdough starter with ordinary all-purpose flour, and it was OK; a little sour, a little bubbly, but nothing to write home about, and when I used it, it took hours and hours for a dough to rise. I got a package of whole-wheat flour that my father had grown and ground, and added a half a cup of that to my starter, and it exploded into life and became a much faster-acting 'leavening agent' than it had been before. Was it wild yeast in the home-ground whole-wheat flour? Even now, when I've neglected my starter for awhile and want to give it a kick-start, I add whole-wheat flour to it and it comes back to life faster than when I use all-purpose. So maybe there's just wild yeast in your organic white whole-wheat flour. It is more likely because it is a whole grain, there is more food from the starches in the flour, that are activating/feeding the the wild yeast. Sharon @KAF
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