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Hard red winter wheat

Hard red winter wheat has ample protein content to yield the necessary amounts of gluten, the elastic component of a dough that can capture and hold carbon dioxide (the gas produced by yeast that raises your dough) for most yeast bread baking, yet is mellow enough to use in other baked goods including muffins and scones. Planted in the fall in the prairie states, hard red winter wheat lies dormant under snow cover during the winter and continues growing until harvest in late spring. It gets its red color from pigmentation in the bran layer of the wheat berry.

After eons of farmers and then scientists isolating and encouraging the genetic development of more “user friendly” characteristics, there are over 30,000 varieties of wheat today, each with its own merits. Most simply, we can classify current wheat varieties as some combination of each of the following: hard or soft, red or white, winter or spring.

• Hard wheat has a higher protein content than soft wheat and thus produces more gluten, the elastic component of a dough that can capture and hold carbon dioxide. Therefore, hard wheat is critical for yeast-leavened baked goods, but is also appropriate for a wide range of baking.
• Hard winter wheat is planted in the fall, mainly in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and other prairie states. It grows until it’s about five inches tall, and then with the onset of winter and cold weather, it becomes dormant under snow cover, and continues growing the following spring. It’s harvested in late spring and early summer. The protein content of hard winter wheat ranges between 10 and 12 percent.
• Hard spring wheat grows predominantly in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Montana, as well as in Canada, where the climate is more severe. It’s planted in the spring and harvested in late summer and early fall. Generally, the farther north you go, the more spring wheat you’ll find and the greater the levels of protein – generally 12 to 14 percent.
• Soft wheat has a larger percentage of carbohydrates and thus less gluten-forming protein. Soft wheat can be red or white, and is almost always winter wheat. Soft winter wheat is grown primarily east of the Mississippi, from Missouri and Illinois east to Virginia and the Carolinas in the South and New York in the North. There are also important crops of soft white wheat in the Pacific Northwest. Soft wheat is used to make cake and pastry flour.
• The color of wheat relates to pigments found primarily in the bran. Both hard and soft wheat can be either red or white. White wheat varieties simply lack the pigment that gives red wheat its dark color.

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Heart of the wheat berry?

Our white flours are milled from the innermost heart of the wheat berry, avoiding the dark mineral particles near the bran (outer layer of the wheat kernel) and germ. The heart of the berry contains the lightest color and the richest, gluten-producing protein.

Some flour producers mill closer to the bran so they can get more flour out of a bushel of wheat. Then they bleach the flour to eliminate the darker flecks of bran left in their flour, giving it the appearance of pure white flour. Yet bran left in white flour affects baking performance because its hard, sharp edges cut through gluten strands, making it more difficult to develop good structure in your baked goods.

By avoiding the outer layers of the wheat berry, we both ensure there are no particles of bran to reduce the rising performance of our white flours, and eliminate the need to bleach the flour to mask darker flecks.

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