Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Has anyone made pasta from white whole wheat flour? I'm trying to move towards whole grains and would like to know if any of you have tried this, and what you thought of the results.

Amy

A question I'd love to hear the answer to, too. I've been using it in bread (for white bread recipes) and cookies for about 6 months now and have had great results. I even made biscuits the other day with half white and half WWW. They turned out great.

Hi,

Yep, I've been making pasta with 50/50 www/ap and I think it tastes fine. I use it for fettucine and lasagna sheets and I use it even for Chicken and Dumplings (the flat thick boiled noodle type). I'm using at least 25% www in just about everything I make these days because I am also trying to get some fiber and nutrition upgrade wherever I can. I put www in my holiday cookies this year and in corn muffins this week. No duds yet.... but I don't use it at greater than 50/50.

The texture of 50/50 www/ap is a little "tougher" just like you find with the whole grain blend commercial pasta products (Ronzoni, Barilla). Not a problem if you like the tooth or you can alternatively just cook it longer for more tenderness.

I believe some of the commercial products have a higher than 50/50 proportion of whole grain (the stuff that appears near white in color also has rice, garbanzo flour and other exotics in addition to www) and others are 100% whole wheat (the dark stuff). But I think 50/50 with www/ap or the commercial "nearwhite" whole grain mix formulas taste much better than 100% ww (the dark stuff).

No one has complained so far.... Give it a try.

I also have made it with 50% whole wheat flour. I find that the dough is a little tougher to roll (tends to break more when making something like spaghetti), but nobody notices the difference and I think I actually prefer the taste. It makes a great lasagna.

JesBelle, I'm curious to know how you used www for cookies, and which kinds you have tried it in. Do you use the 50/50 combo? And I'm sure it turns out better in some recipes than others. I'd love to hear your experiences.
Thanks, Gayl

I used a 50/50 blend in all of them except gingerbread cookies (more like 60/40 www/ap flour) and coal cookies (100% www).

They all turned out great. No-one even seemed to notice the difference.

Thanks! I'll try them....

All,

I've considered trying this. Mind you, regular flour is only 1/2 of my pasta dough anyway (the other 1/2 is semolina), so I couldn't go over 25% WWW. I have tried adding regular whole wheat flour to pasta before, and the results were awful; I decided I'd rather eat less pasta than tolerate the cardboard flavor of whole wheat pasta.

In a related note, I have been making sushi and Japanese food with partially-polished rice; that's rice with 50% of the bran removed, but not all of it. It's quite good and the bran doesn't mar the taste or texture of the sushi at all. You can get this kind of rice from gourmet Japansese food suppliers.

I've also discovered that brown rice works great with Indian curry.

I'll keep an eyeball peeled for that. I don't really love brown rice. Methinks the little Korean grocery around the corner may have it. And some of the best fresh Kimchi around. Just the smell of the Kimchi counter is nirvana.

I made pierogi last night with a 50/50 blend of white whole wheat and AP flours. They turned out great. They seemed a tiny bit tough at the edges, but that may have been a process problem rather than an ingredient problem.