Norfolk & Better grow, harvest and stone-mill their own wheat on their Norfolk farm in Carbrooke. A few days ago, I purchased a small bag to try.
Sourdough bread and butter is included with all my meals and once or twice a month I bake sourdough for sale for the local community. I’ve been baking sourdough for over 9 years. I am always on the lookout for local produce, so I was very excited to try their strong white flour.
Working with stone ground flour can be tricky. Due to the nature of the milling, more natural enzymes can stay in the flour. This will result in more vigorous dough activity, better flavour and more health benefits than a roller-milled white flour. The colour is light creamy. This type of flour will never give you a “pure white looking” bread crumb. When mixing the dough with water, it can look like it can take more, but after 20 minutes it can slacken off.
The protein content of the batch I got was 12.5%. This is considered a middle range flour strength. Here is the formula I used.
100% Norfolk & Better white stone ground flour
65% water
20% starter
2.5% salt
First time working with a new flour I’m extremely vigilant about how much water it can take; I’ll keep it on the lower side. It was borderline to add more and at this point I could not judge how the dough would react while proofing if I’d added more with the salt. Looking at the baked crumb, it could have taken a bit more, like another 5%. The dough was good to work with; however the fermentation needed a bit of time to kick off. Bulk was 5 hours and it spent 20 hours in the fridge after shaping.
The crust is crunchy and delicious, it has a good bite without being too chewy, the colour of the crumb is buttery, the texture is very light and super soft. The flavour is subtle, very pleasant and characteristic of stone ground flours. If you tasted two breads next to each other with different milling method flours you will know what I mean.
Under-proofed sourdough breads made with stone ground flour can have a dense crumb, a heavy feeling when lifting up and a raw taste. The over-proofed version will be light but flat like a pancake with tiny holes in the crumb. The flavour will be beautiful though. In my opinion, the flavour of any type of sourdough is much better when the dough is over-proofed than under-proofed.
Overall, a great local flour to work with, but to bake with it confidently I need a minimum of 3 or 4 more bakes. So a trip to the farm is very much due to pick up more…
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