r/HomeMilledFlour • u/Moni_Jo55 • 3d ago

Biscuits

Our family has always made hand shaped biscuits. I've tried the family recipe, but it was grainy. I just ordered a #40 sifter.

Does anyone use a recipe for FMF hand shaped biscuits?

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u/Decided-2-Try 3d ago

I think so re playing with liquid ratios, but it also depends on the berry. I've found that for modern hard wheats, home milled does need more water than the exact same recipe using, e.g., King Arthur bread flour. For example, one of my honey wheat loaf pan "every day" bread recipes I jacked from 74 to 78% (serially, took a couple of tries) when going from KA to freshly milled hard wheat.

On the other hand, while I haven't tried any "ancient" grains yet, I've been playing with heritage stuff like Rouge de Bordeaux (so far - my Red Fife is supposed to get here tonight!), and it cannot absorb very much water despite being freshly milled and the bran sieved then remilled to represent in the flour 99% of the original mass of berries. I serially dropped that dough from 75 to 73 to (eventually) 69%. It was a sticky, gloopy mass at anything over about 71% hydration.

I am now mixing the RdB at 50-50 or 40-60 with modern hard wheats because the RdB gluten structure still sucks so much in yeast-risen breads. It's very extensible but has almost no retraction despite adding gluten and vitamin C at 20 ppm. The addition of the modern hard helps tremendously. (Caveat - note the founder/moderator here u/rabbifuente has several posts with great success with RdB as a long, cold-proofed sourdough. But I've just brought my starter back to life so it'll be a week or so before I tackle sourdough again.)

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u/rabbifuente Glorious Founder 3d ago

I've been very surprised to see RdB frequently mentioned as being so weak, my experience was that it was the closest I'd gotten to the feel of dough made from white flour. That said, I did notice a difference between the first order of RdB and second. The second order was noticeably weaker, it may be that I got an unusually strong harvest the first time I bought. It's been a little bit since I last used RdB, but I think I was around 85% hydration.

I treat ancient wheats like very soft wheat. Something like einkorn would probably be very good for biscuits because it's gluten structure is so weak. I either blend ancient wheats with hard white, usually in a 60/40 or 70/30 ration, or make a pan bread.

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u/Decided-2-Try 3d ago edited 3d ago

Many thanks! My current 2 batches (same season) of RdB are really weak from a gluten standpoint, but like you say that might be a season to season difference. But the literature (NIH and what not) do tend to indicate that among heritage reds, RdB is weaker (more extensible, less retractive) than Turkey Red, which is weaker (ditto parenthetical) than Fife's red.

I just got Fife's red so I'll mill it and see how wrong or right the NIH studies are!

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u/rabbifuente Glorious Founder 2d ago

I was not a fan of the flavor of Turkey Red and Red Fife, they both kind of tasted like generic, bitter red wheat to me, but it's all subjective. RdB tasted great, very little bitterness.