Grains

I've spent all my years as a baker using All Purpose flour, Pastry flour and on occasion Whole Wheat Flour despite learning in school what happens in the process. Let's face it, anything fluffy and wonderful and well, white, is made with something overly processed. The unfortunate part about switching to whole wheat is that you are going to notice a taste difference (some more than others) and you're never going to get a nice perfect white sugar cookie. But here's some info to help you consider why switching might be a good thing. Pretty much all of my recipes will use whole wheat flour.
 
All Purpose flour is milled from only the center of the wheat berry. It has a protein content of about 12% and since all of the nutritional value from the bran is removed, it has nutrients added back into it, make it "enriched". 

Cake and Pastry flour is milled from a softer wheat than All Purpose and is finely milled with a protein content of about 8%. Not only does it have to have the nutrients added back into it, it is also heavily chlorinated. 

Stone Ground flour uses 100% of the wheat berry, but is quite course, hard to work with and can go rancid more easily since the germ hasn't been removed.

Whole Wheat flour uses  95% of the wheat berry. Only the germ (the fatty part of the berry) and the course bran is removed. It has a slightly higher protein content of 12-14%, and is a weaker flour which makes it have trouble forming gluten (that's why 100% whole wheat bread is tricky!). The benefit is that it keeps all the nutrients it started with in the flour.


I personally love the taste of whole wheat and have no trouble substituting it in my baking. You may have to get used to the taste. I use whole wheat flour because I don't grind my own, and this is about the best you can grab in the baking aisle in any given store. One thing to note is that all flours have additives, you can't get away from it unless you do grind your own. Azodicarbonamide and Ascorbic Acid are maturing agents added to change gluten to improve baking quality and Amylaze conditions the starch and converts it into maltose to ensure proper gas production during fermentation. Clear as mud? At least you have an idea what those long names are there for now!

*An important note. This is not going to be a gluten free blog, I haven't experimented with other flours, and since it isn't something I have trouble with, I'm not going to go there. If that is something you need, by all means go for it and good luck finding recipe's out there! I know there are a lot of people working on it and a lot of great blogs dedicated to it!