How To Substitute Freshly Milled Flour for All-Purpose
Hi Friend,
Are you new to baking with freshly milled flour? If so, you’re probably wondering if you need special recipes or if you can use your old family favorites.
When I started baking with freshly milled flour, I picked up The Essential Home-Ground Flour Book by Sue Becker. This book is great for someone new to freshly milled flour and trying to please a skeptical family. While we haven’t found a bad recipe yet in this book, I still had family favorites that called for all-purpose flour I wasn’t giving up (hello zucchini cookies!). The good news is I didn’t, and you don’t have to either.
Freshly milled flour has 40 of the 44 essential nutrients. But can it be used in place of all-purpose flours in your family favorites? Yes, it can!
Substituting Freshly Milled Flour for All-Purpose:
Don’t throw out those family favorites yet! Yes, you can use freshly milled flour instead of all-purpose. But first you need to know what kind of wheat berries you are using; hard or soft.
Hard wheat tends to have a higher-protein content and a lower-moisture content.
Soft wheat tends to have a lower-protein content and a higher-moisture content.
It should say on the packaging the wheat berries come in. If not, ask the farmer. They’ll be happy to tell you about the wheat berries.
The first step to substituting freshly milled flour in your recipes is knowing what kind of wheat berries you have.
Substituting Hard Wheat for All-Purpose:
Because of the lower-moisture content, you can substitute 1 to 1.
So if your recipe called for 1 cup of all-purpose, you can use 1 cup of freshly milled hard wheat flour. Same with Kamut and barley.
Substituting Soft Wheat for All-Purpose:
Soft wheat’s higher-moisture content means you can’t do a 1 to 1 substitute. Instead you need to increase your freshly milled soft wheat flour by ¼ cup for every 1 cup of flour in the recipe.
So if the recipe calls for 1 cup of all-purpose flour (or pastry), increase the flour to 1 ¼ cups of freshly milled. If the recipe calls for 2 cups, you will need 2 ½ cups. This substitution ratio also works for spelt and rye.
Looking to give soft white wheat berries a try? Visit our shop now page. They make excellent soft breads, pastries, and cakes.
What if you are following recipe weights?
You prefer to weigh your ingredients instead of measure? No problem. Follow the weights in the recipe and you will be fine. No need to increase the amount of flour.
There you go! Now you can make those old family favorites while packing them with all the goodness freshly milled flour offers.
Bests,
The Sieverkropp’s