Commercial flours in consumer sizes

[andiesenji]

I still do a fair amount of baking and while KAF is pretty good, they don't have the specialty flours that commercial bakers use.

 

I discovered The New York Bakers a while back and have been very pleased with the flours that in my opinion produce better results

than most flours for baking artisan breads, rye breads and etc.  They also have fresh yeast in 1-pound blocks.

 

They are in San Diego, so for west coast hobby bakers, the shipping is reasonable and quick.

I placed an order on Sunday July 30, and it was delivered at noon yesterday, Tuesday, Aug. 1.

 

My order consisted of  5 pounds each of the following

Bay State Wingold Dark Rye Flour

Bay State Fine Rye Meal

Miller First Clear Flour - unbleached

NYB Craft Flour Type 65

and 8 ounces of

Fawcett's Crystal (Red) Rye Malt (whole grain)

 

Total cost, including shipping was $53.76   

Edited August 3, 2017 by andiesenji (log)

[DesertTinker]

Uh oh! Now I'm in trouble! 

 

Thank you, you are how I want to be when (if) I grow up.

 

Edited August 3, 2017 by DesertTinker
Clarification (log)

[JoNorvelleWalker]

It's been about a year since I looked into it but I found a dealer who sold repackaged commercial KA flours in consumer size bags.  Shipping was a problem.  I even called KAF about buying their commercial flour in the commercial bags.  The person I spoke with at KAF said they don't sell their commercial flours through the catalog but that I might be able to buy from a KAF distributor.

 

I have no way to get myself to the local KAF distributor's loading dock, can't fit fifty pounds of flour in my backpack, was completely overwhelmed by the complexity and gave up.

 

Amazon is happy to ship me KAF organic all purpose which is what I use most.

 

[Lisa Shock]

I belong to a local gardening group on facebook. We meet every so often to trade stuff, everything is free, and we often trade in things other than produce. If people can find such a group locally, it may be worth your while to ask a number of people to split a bag purchased from Restaurant Depot, or some other wholesaler. -Like an old school co-op.

[andiesenji]

2 hours ago, Lisa Shock said:

I belong to a local gardening group on facebook. We meet every so often to trade stuff, everything is free, and we often trade in things other than produce. If people can find such a group locally, it may be worth your while to ask a number of people to split a bag purchased from Restaurant Depot, or some other wholesaler. -Like an old school co-op.

The one time I split a 50 pound bag of pastry flour with two other people, one of them bought it and divided it into 20 for me, 20 for them and 10 for the third person.  I picked it up on Saturday took it home and dumped it in one of my big Cambro containers.  The following Saturday I prepared to use it and it was full of weevils.  That was the last time for that experiment.  Ever since I have purchased only from legit vendors.

 

[Cyberider]

I've had good luck with New York Bakers, too.  The proprietor's books on rye bread and Jewish Bread Baking are very interesting.

 

Too hot to do much baking right now in the AZ desert and I'm still working but expect to do much more soon when I'm retired, or at least partially retired, and the weather is cooler. 

[andiesenji]

3 hours ago, Cyberider said:

I've had good luck with New York Bakers, too.  The proprietor's books on rye bread and Jewish Bread Baking are very interesting.

 

Too hot to do much baking right now in the AZ desert and I'm still working but expect to do much more soon when I'm retired, or at least partially retired, and the weather is cooler. 

I use the bread machines during the day to mix, knead and raise the dough then plop it into a plastic bag and into the fridge.  I do my baking at night during the summer months.  It usually gets cool here after sundown, not so much when we have the monsoon, like now, but cool enough to bake.  I nap for most of the afternoon so I can stay up in the wee hours.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

4 hours ago, andiesenji said:

I use the bread machines during the day to mix, knead and raise the dough then plop it into a plastic bag and into the fridge.  I do my baking at night during the summer months.  It usually gets cool here after sundown, not so much when we have the monsoon, like now, but cool enough to bake.  I nap for most of the afternoon so I can stay up in the wee hours.

 

This brings back a vivid memory from almost thirty years ago:  In those days I worked in the next town over.  And I am not a morning person.  Often I'd be walking home from work at 4:00 am (it was a five mile hike over a mountain, but I was younger then).  Everything else in the whole world was asleep but I'd pause to watch the baker with her bakery door open while I took in the fragrance of her bread.  I'm not sure which was more sexy.  I prayed she didn't notice me.

 

The bakery is long gone.

 

[lindag]

I just don't think there's any aroma that can compare to that of freshly baked bread.

I've been inspired all my life by the smell of my Mother's  loaves and it's what's kept me baking all my life.

[andiesenji]

9 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

This brings back a vivid memory from almost thirty years ago:  In those days I worked in the next town over.  And I am not a morning person.  Often I'd be walking home from work at 4:00 am (it was a five mile hike over a mountain, but I was younger then).  Everything else in the whole world was asleep but I'd pause to watch the baker with her bakery door open while I took in the fragrance of her bread.  I'm not sure which was more sexy.  I prayed she didn't notice me.

 

The bakery is long gone.

 

That is how I began my work life.  My mother owned a bakery in a Wisconsin village of only 1200 but surrounded by farms and lake resorts.  I was fifteen when I started working after school from 4 to 10 and then 4 to midnight when I turned 16. After I graduated and went to bakery school, I worked from 9 at night to 7 a.m. with two 1 hour breaks while the bread was proofing and again when the sweet rolls and raised doughnuts were proofing.  And about half the time I would have to take one of the delivery vans out at 5 a.m. to make runs to the local stores with our packaged breads and to the lake resorts with breads, rolls, sweet rolls, danish, coffee cakes and cakes.  I had Saturday nights off because the bakery was not open on Sunday until the spring of 1957 when my mother decided to grab the after church crowd with bakery and deli items.  

I decided working seven days a week was not for me so that July I enlisted in the Army (WACS) as a baker but they had other ideas for me, after taking all the written tests and then some more advanced tests, I was sent to x-ray school.  

The few times I pulled KP during basic training, since I was an experienced baker, they put me to work at what I knew, instead of cleaning garbage cans and scrubbing the kitchen floors.

This is a photo of me waiting for my mother to get out of the way so I can finish unloading the regular bread from the oven.  She had something else on one of the trays and was checking on it.  That is a 16-tray, core-fired Petersen rotating oven.  The trays (shelves) rotated around the 6 inch burner pipe down the middle, just like a Ferris wheel.  

[chromedome]

21 hours ago, andiesenji said:

This is a photo of me waiting for my mother to get out of the way so I can finish unloading the regular bread from the oven.  She had something else on one of the trays and was checking on it.  That is a 16-tray, core-fired Petersen rotating oven.  The trays (shelves) rotated around the 6 inch burner pipe down the middle, just like a Ferris wheel.  

We had one of those in the bake shop when I was going to school, though I believe it was removed the following summer when the Culinary Arts department got a multi-million dollar facelift. 

 

The small view window was a magnet for the handful of my classmates who'd never baked before, especially during the introduction to yeast doughs (you have to admit, watching "oven spring" happen in real time is pretty cool for a novice). 

[andiesenji]

2 hours ago, chromedome said:

We had one of those in the bake shop when I was going to school, though I believe it was removed the following summer when the Culinary Arts department got a multi-million dollar facelift. 

 

The small view window was a magnet for the handful of my classmates who'd never baked before, especially during the introduction to yeast doughs (you have to admit, watching "oven spring" happen in real time is pretty cool for a novice). 

The view window on this one was at the end to check on the burner feed.  It was in the access door at the end where, when it was stone cold, we went in to scrub the exterior of the burner pipe, sweep all the stuff off the trays and off the floor of the oven.  

When running at "normal" speed, it took exactly 12 minutes for a tray to make a full rotation and two rotations were enough to fully bake bread in pans.  At slow speed a full rotation was 16 minutes and that was enough for unpanned loaves, rolls and etc.  

[chromedome]

Ours was at the front, and was about the size of an old-school 12" or 13" television screen. I don't remember the rotational speed, but I suspect it was quicker than that. 

 

One of my classmates convulsed the rest of us one day when, as she bent over to squint through the window, she called out "Oh, look, my buns are getting puffy!"

 

(It sounded funnier in a room full of sleep-deprived people.)

[andiesenji]

6 hours ago, chromedome said:

Ours was at the front, and was about the size of an old-school 12" or 13" television screen. I don't remember the rotational speed, but I suspect it was quicker than that. 

 

One of my classmates convulsed the rest of us one day when, as she bent over to squint through the window, she called out "Oh, look, my buns are getting puffy!"

 

(It sounded funnier in a room full of sleep-deprived people.)

The later ones - this one was installed in 1949 - had multiple smaller burner pipes that produced more heat nearer to the trays  so things baked more rapidly.  We had them at Dunwoodie when I attended baking school there and the trays had backs that kept stuff from falling into the innards of the oven so they were swept from the outside.  They also had "kicker bars" so the doors could be opened by using a foot which was a help if one had both hands full of product.  

[gulator]

I've been baking my bread for quite a while and recently found Great River Organic Milling, Organic Whole Wheat Bread Flour, grown in the USA. Excellent quality  

[andiesenji]

On 8/6/2017 at 2:10 PM, gulator said:

I've been baking my bread for quite a while and recently found  Great River Organic Milling, Organic Whole Wheat Bread Flour, grown in the USA. Excellent quality  

It IS of excellent quality but I, and most other hobby bakers, can't use 25 pounds of flour at a time.  I like a variety of flours so being able to buy the "good stuff" in 5 pound bags is a huge plus.  That's why I like this supplier so much. 

Back in my catering days I bought my flour from a commercial supplier in 25 or 50 pound bags, all purpose, pastry flour, first clear flour, whole wheat, rye and Italian 00 pizza flour.  I had the roll-around bins and a commercial oven (Blodgett 10 tray).

 

Edited August 12, 2017 by Smithy
Adjusted Amazon link (log)

[scott123]

On 8/3/2017 at 3:59 AM, andiesenji said:

The one time I split a 50 pound bag of pastry flour with two other people, one of them bought it and divided it into 20 for me, 20 for them and 10 for the third person.

 

 

I've been looking for small, reasonably priced quantities of pastry flour for decades.  A couple weeks ago, I found an acceptable analog.

 

https://www.walmart.com/ip/White-Lily-All-Purpose-Flour-5-lb/10535905

 

At 8-9% protein, it's a titch higher than your average pastry flour, but it should be low enough for my needs, and, with ship to store, it's dirt cheap.

[scott123]

While we're on the topic of commercial flours in consumer sizes, if anyone comes across mail order 12.7% - 13.3% protein bromated flour (can be beached or unbleached) please drop me a line.  I have at least 30 friends west of the Rockies who'd be ecstatic to find a source for this.

Edited August 7, 2017 by scott123 (log)

[andiesenji]

39 minutes ago, scott123 said:

 

I've been looking for small, reasonably priced quantities of pastry flour for decades.  A couple weeks ago, I found an acceptable analog.

 

https://www.walmart.com/ip/White-Lily-All-Purpose-Flour-5-lb/10535905

 

At 8-9% protein, it's a titch higher than your average pastry flour, but it should be low enough for my needs, and, with ship to store, it's dirt cheap.

I used White Lily for decades but after it was purchased by Smuckers and the milling moved from the Tennessee mill, the quality went down significantly. The same thing happened to Martha Washington. 

 

 I use Odlumss Cream flour and Odlums Self-Raising flour.  It is an Irish product.  

[scott123]

Just now, andiesenji said:

I used White Lily for decades but after it was purchased by Smuckers and the milling moved from the Tennessee mill, the quality went down significantly.

 

Drats.  May I ask what aspects of the quality went downhill?

[andiesenji]

46 minutes ago, scott123 said:

While we're on the topic of commercial flours in consumer sizes, if anyone comes across mail order 12.7% - 13.3% protein bromated flour (can be beached or unbleached) please drop me a line.  I have at least 30 friends west of the Rockies who'd be ecstatic to find a source for this.

 

Since all the articles about potassium bromate linked to cancer in rats, several manufacturers are no longer adding it to products.

There are several vendors on ebay that sell it - so you can add it to first clear flour or other high protein flours.  

 

[scott123]

1 hour ago, andiesenji said:

Since all the articles about potassium bromate linked to cancer in rats, several manufacturers are no longer adding it to products.

There are several vendors on ebay that sell it - so you can add it to first clear flour or other high protein flours.  

 

 

Yes, I'm familiar with those studies When I come out with my book on pizza, the inherent safety of bromate (in pizza) will get it's own chapter.

 

That being said... much like I dissuade people from eating raw dough made from bromated flour (including failed launches where the dough folds over itself), the idea of rolling your own bromated flour doesn't give me much of a warm fuzzy feeling.  The scale required would have to be incredibly precise to measure the parts per million, and, even with that, I would be too concerned about potential mismeasurement.

 

Thanks, though.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

7 hours ago, scott123 said:

While we're on the topic of commercial flours in consumer sizes, if anyone comes across mail order 12.7% - 13.3% protein bromated flour (can be beached or unbleached) please drop me a line.  I have at least 30 friends west of the Rockies who'd be ecstatic to find a source for this.

 

 

How can brominated flour be unbleached??

 

[scott123]

Just now, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

How can brominated flour be unbleached??

 

 

Bromate is a dough enhancer, not a bleaching agent.  Most of the distributors that I've come across carry the bromated bleached versions of the flours, but, for most millers, bromated unbleached is an option.

 

 

[andiesenji]

10 hours ago, scott123 said:

 

Yes, I'm familiar with those studies When I come out with my book on pizza, the inherent safety of bromate (in pizza) will get it's own chapter.

 

That being said... much like I dissuade people from eating raw dough made from bromated flour (including failed launches where the dough folds over itself), the idea of rolling your own bromated flour doesn't give me much of a warm fuzzy feeling.  The scale required would have to be incredibly precise to measure the parts per million, and, even with that, I would be too concerned about potential mismeasurement.

 

Thanks, though.

Just sayin'  - If you want the enhanced "oven spring" of bromated flour that is one solution, if you can't find it.