Bleached or whole wheat flour?

[BrandonEnglish]

I was making some hardtack last night and when going thru several recipes I discovered there was a mix of using regular flour (bleached) and whole wheat flour. I am taking a guess here but I would think for the time whole wheat flour would have been more common and cost efficient to mass produce hardtack. Or for that matter maybe someone can shed some light on the subject of bleached flour in the 1860s, was it readily availaible and cheap? Thoughts?

Brandon English

[flattop32355]

Re: Bleached or whole wheat flour?

Check the search function. A number of threads have information on this subject. On one, it speaks to a combination of (I believe) pastry and general purpose flours as the closest to the original formula.

[mboyce]

Re: Bleached or whole wheat flour?

In my experience, whole wheat flour makes EXTREMELY hard hardtack.

[BrandonEnglish]

Re: Bleached or whole wheat flour?

Thanks for the responses! You are absolutely correct, I made some with whole wheat flour and it took tooth-duller to a whole other level. I'll stick with the general purpose flour from now on.

[Andrew Keehan]

Re: Bleached or whole wheat flour?

I do not have any information on period practices, but my guess would be that all-purpose (bleached) flour would be more desirable, because whole wheat flour would be much more susceptible to spoilage. The highly refined flour has had all the oils and the germ &c. removed, the same reason modern white bread lasts longer than whole wheat bread (unless its pumped full of preservatives).

[Western Blue Belly]

Re: Bleached or whole wheat flour?

Or you could all just use the period correct cracker flour, which to my knowledge cannot be bought as such but it can be copied / made with little effort.


Well after re-reading the replys I see Mr. Biederman gave away the answer to this little research project...

"A number of threads have information on this subject. On one, it speaks to a combination of (I believe) pastry and general purpose flours as the closest to the original formula."

To take that further it is 1 part pastry flour to 3 parts unbleached flour.

[Charles Heath]

Re: Bleached or whole wheat flour?

I was making some hardtack last night and when going thru several recipes I discovered there was a mix of using regular flour (bleached) and whole wheat flour.

Brandon,

Since you, here is a link to a fun and highly educational site that has information before, during, and after our period primarily in the form of cookbooks, but don't fail to look up Artemus Ward's milestone 1911 contribution.

Feeding America

Danger: One could spend weeks here and not see and do it all.

If you look up "Pastry Flour" on Google or other search engines, one thing will become clear, and that it is available (although not readily available from all grocer's shelves all the time), and can even be blended at home by using common cake flour and all-purpose at a 2:1 ratio. King Arthur and Red Mills are two, well advertised brands of pastry flour, and if you live in a retail bereft area, then mail order is an option.

Good luck.

[Bob 125th NYSVI]

Re: Bleached or whole wheat flour?

Unbleached regular flour works fine also. The King Arthur in the red bag works well.

And actually the best way to simulate "cracker flour" that I ever found was 1 part pasty flour to 3 parts regular unbleached flour (courtesy of CRRC2).

None of the original period recipes nor any QM documents I ever saw mentioned whole wheat flour at all. Maybe the south used it because they had to but the north doesn't seem to have.