Yesterday I got my latest shipment of wheat: A high-extraction bread flour and 100% whole white wheat flour. Both were produced by Azure (azurestandard.com) and milled with their Unifine mill.
I first ran across the Unifine milling process while researching sources for Type 85 flour, which is a “tweener” flour; not quite white, not quite wheat. With Type 85 flour, 85% of the wheat grain is extracted in the milling process, providing for a flour that works like bread flour (usu. around 62-65% extraction), but has much more intrinsic fiber and nutrient retention.
I stumbled upon the Unifine Mill website, thinking that it was an actual miller. Intrigued, I read through all their information, and then changed my search for millers that used the Unifine mill. And that’s how I found Azure.
I haven’t yet opened the bread flour, but I opened up the white whole wheat flour and baked with it today. The thing that struck me immediately was the texture of the flour. It is so fine that it feels like bread flour! It’s absolutely silky smooth, and it’s light in color. But you know it’s whole grain flour once it gets wet – it turns much darker. But I can’t believe how nice the texture is and that’s due to the Unifine milling process. It produces really fine whole grain flour, but still retains all the nutrients and fiber!
I just baked a 50-50 loaf, making an overnight poolish from the white whole wheat flour. It turned out amazing!
With that amount of whole grain flour, I was expecting a bit of a grainier texture in the crumb. It’s smooth! Absolutely smooth! #mindblown For the savvy out there, yeah, I didn’t get a big oven spring out of it because I baked the loaf way early so I could feed my wife. It was only three hours into a 12-hour cold proof. On the positive side of things though, the texture was unlike any loaf I’ve done with partial or even 100% whole wheat. No graininess, no grittiness. As smooth as if I baked it entirely with bread flour!
Needless to say, I’m completely sold on this flour. If you can find flour produced by the Unifine process, try it out. You will NOT be disappointed!
