Meditrina

I need the help of all the cooks and bakers here at TFP. I had to buy whole wheat flour for my daughter. She had to make hardtack as an extra credit project in social studies. Of course, she only needed 2 cups. So now I have 5lbs (minus 2 cups) of whole wheat flour and I don't know what to do with it. I do not have a bread maker. Can I use it in anything that calls for flour? Any suggestions and/or recipes will be greatly appreciated.

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Hektore

With the exception of certain kinds of pastries and deserts, you should be able to substitute 50% of the bleached white flour in a recipe with whole wheat flour without hurting anything. It will just make anything you use it in somewhat more dense and chewy, which is why it's not appropriate for super soft/smooth dessert applications.

As an alternative, now would be a great time to learn how to bake bread without the bread machine. Pizza dough is another good use of excess flour. Once you get a solid recipe down for either you can freeze the excess dough for months a time without hurting anything. Just thaw, warm and bake.

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Baraka_Guru

Try making quick bread. For example:
Honey Whole Wheat Scones - Recipes - Quick & Easy - Canadian Living

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snowy

I'd actually recommend using a third of the flour as whole wheat flour instead of half like hektore recommended. He's right in that it will make things more dense and chewy, and not always in a way that has good results for a home baker's preference. Replacing only a third of the flour makes using whole wheat more workable in more recipes. You shouldn't use it anywhere where you would use pastry flour (low-gluten flour) but you can use it anywhere you'd use all-purpose, bread, or high-gluten flours.

In terms of baking bread, you will have to increase the amount of yeast used in the recipe slightly to compensate for the use of whole wheat flour if you do a 50/50 mix of white and whole wheat. When I bake our bread for the week here, I do a 50/50 mix but increase the yeast used from 2.25 teaspoons to 2.5 teaspoons (another reason to never buy yeast in packets). This is less of an issue with using whole wheat flour in pizza dough, as you're only doing one rise.

I'd say experiment with ratios. That is what led me to my 1/3 of the flour strategy--now I can sneak whole wheat into all sorts of things you'd never expect whole wheat in. And who knows--you might find, like I've found, that having all kinds of specialty flours on hand is not such a bad thing after all (at last count, I had six different different flours, and am adding a seventh to the collection [high-gluten for bagels] as soon as my kitchen is back together).

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Meditrina

Thanks! I would like to try the quick bread recipe. and I will try to make pancakes using some of the whole wheat flour. Maybe the kids won't even notice. I really do want to start cooking/baking on the weekends. This will be a good start.

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"Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles." ~Alex Karras

Hektore

Ahh, Pancakes

I have used this recipe and it was a big hit with my wife, blueberries aren't in season right now so I just leave them out. Still pretty good. I also just sub granulated sugar for the artificial sweetener.

http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/whole-...es/Detail.aspx

Ingredients

* 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
* 2 teaspoons baking powder
* 1 egg
* 1 cup milk, plus more if necessary
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 tablespoon artificial sweetener
* 1/2 cup blueberries

Directions

1. Sift together flour and baking powder, set aside. Beat together the egg, milk, salt and artificial sweetener in a bowl. Stir in flour until just moistened, add blueberries, and stir to incorporate.
2. Preheat a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat, and spray with cooking spray. Pour approximately 1/4 cup of the batter into the pan for each pancake. Cook until bubbly, about 1 1/2 minutes. Turn, and continue cooking until golden brown.

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The advantage law is the best law in rugby, because it lets you ignore all the others for the good of the game.

genuinegirly

I've found that whole wheat pancakes are delicious if you add oats. I pulverize rolled oats with my food processor and substitute it for a quarter of the total required flour. Also, it makes them significantly more fluffy (a real problem with whole wheat) if you separate the eggs and whip the whites a little before mixing them in with the rest of the batter.
Snowy gave some excellent advice, she has the ratios down to a science. I'm not entirely sure why, but when I'm making bread, if i substitute gluten in place of some small portion of the whole wheat, I end up with a better rise and fluffier bread overall.

spindles

Using frozen berries in this kind of recipe works really well - we have banana/blueberry pancakes all the time, with frozen berries. Don't even thaw them - straight from freezer into the mixture.

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