? on yeast breads

[wilderness]

Seeing Tasty mentioning making bread today reminded me I have been meaning to post a question.  Have any of you ever added malted barley flour to your yeast breads.  A couple of weeks ago I bought a hamburger bun that I really liked so decided to check the ingredients to see if maybe it was an egg dough.  It wasn't but one of the ingredients listed was malted barely flour.  Then I checked some other bread that I had bought and it also had it.  In doing some research I found that you can substitute up to 1/4 of the regular flour with it.  It claims to give a softer dough, with a finer crumb and help to hold the freshness.

Bet

[nybirder]

Bet--I haven't tried it myself but had been thinking about it. What I have found is that, surprisingly, many brands of AP flour already have some malted barley flour in their mix. I also was confused about the differences between diastatic and non-diastatic malted barley flours which I see in the natural foods stores and bulk markets.

The cautions I have seen are to be very careful not to use too much and to also be aware of what kind of malted barley flour you have. There is diastatic, which has the original enzymes, and non-diastatic, which has had its temperature raised enough to kill the enzymes and is used for flavor alone.

If the flour you are using has diastatic malted barley flour in it already, you want to be careful about how much more diastatic you add, probably at the most 1/2 to 1 teaspoon per loaf. If you dissolve the flour in some of the liquid in the recipe and heat to near boiling you can destroy the enzymatic activity and use it only for flavor. I also see that diastatic malt powder is not called flour. Hmmmmm. Confusing.

If I understand things properly, the diastatic is good for whole wheat and similar flours that do not have diastatic malted barley already added.

So I would check the flour I'm using to see if it has added malted barley flour in it already and what kind before I decide how much to add. If I have non-diastatic MB flour, I would plan to use it for flavor. Adding 1/4 cup is a lot if you have diastatic MB flour.

Now, with that said . . . I bought some regular, non-malted barley flour to try as an experiment. Not having much gluten, I would expect that it makes a very tender loaf.

If you try it, let us know. I'm interested to see if it makes a difference.

Birdy