Wheat Montana Premium Flour

[jeeks]

Anyone had any experience with this flour? It states it's the highest protein flour available. I've used their Bronze Chief Whole Wheat flour for bread with excellent results. It looks to be readily available, too. You can find out more about it at wheatmontana.com.

[Pete-zza]

jeeks,

There has been little written on the forum on Wheat Montana, but you might note Reply 2 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3350.msg28581.html#msg28581.

Also, a while back, while I was trying to find a source of high-gluten flour for one of our members in Canada, I did speak with a representative of Wheat Montana about their high-gluten flours. Whereas high-gluten flours from King Arthur (KASL) and General Mills (e.g., All Trumps) are milled from hard red spring wheat, Wheat Montana's high-gluten flour is milled from hard white spring wheat. But the two high-gluten flours they sell (I believe they are the Prairie Gold and Natural White) have comparable protein levels to the other high-gluten flours, in the 14-14.5% range. If you are in Montana, you are in good shape because the Wheat Montana flours are sold in many places at the retail level, and through distributors if you are looking for the 50-lb. bags.

Peter

[jeeks]

Thanks, Peter

I live in the Kansas City area and this flour is sold in Walmarts and a couple of large grocery chains. I'm going to buy a 5 lb. bag and see how my pizza dough turns out.

Thanks again, jeeks

[Pete-zza]

jeeks,

I hope you will let us know how the flour works out for you.

Peter

[jeeks]

jeeks,

I hope you will let us know how the flour works out for you.

Peter

I will. Friday is pizza making night in our house. BTW, in your first reply you said to pay attention to post #2 in your link. That was made with something called Montana Sapphire. That's not a Wheat Montana product as far as I know.

[Pete-zza]

jeeks,

If you go back to Reply 2, you will see that the Sapphire flour was referenced only in the title, not in the text itself. If you read the two posts that preceded Reply 2 you will see what I mean.

Peter

[jeeks]

jeeks,

If you go back to Reply 2, you will see that the Sapphire flour was referenced only in the title, not in the text itself. If you read the two posts that preceded Reply 2 you will see what I mean.

Peter

Ah, I got it. I was looking at post #2, not reply #2.

[jeeks]

Tried this flour on Friday with some interesting results. I make dough in a food processor with a dough blade. The first thing I noticed was the flour seemed to be more "fluid" during mixing. I assume it's the coarseness of the grind compared to what I used before (mainly large mill bread flours). The dough came together nicely and I let it rise until it doubled in size.

I rolled out the dough with a rolling pin and noticed it had ALOT more elasticity than I'm used to. That makes sense since it's a higher protein flour. I rolled the dough out to about an 8" circle and let it rest/relax. After about 15 minutes I was able to get it to about a 14" circle without the dough contracting (I like thin crust pizza).

Cooking the pizza was exactly as I have done before. I set the stove to its highest temp (550) with a pizza stone on the middle rack. I use parchment paper for easier handling and cooked the pizza for about 8 minutes.

The dough rose nicely during the bake and the edge was a golden brown when I was done. I let the pizza rest for about 5 minutes before I cut it and it smelled so good I could hardly wait to get a bite.

The crust was definitely an improvement over what I have previously made. It was crunchy and chewy, but the best part was that the pieces didn't droop under the weight of the toppings (even with the large quantities I use).

I'm sticking with this flour in the future. It's definitely an upgrade from others I've used in the past.