I love to bake bread, but this weekend I had an especially good time with my first bag of Abigail’s Oven Whole Wheat White Flour. For most of the week I was experimenting with Sprouted Whole Wheat Flour and baking bread, but Friday I picked up my first bag of this excellent flour.

After all twelve weeks of self-sheltering with the lousy flour I had been able to get online (or that our grocer might have had come in), this was truly exciting. But then when I started to make bread, I moved from being just excited to ecstatic.

The moment the water and this flour are mixed, the most pleasant fragrance wafts from the mix. You can actually taste it by the smell—a fresh wheat aroma that tells you, you are going to be eating something fresh from the field. This flour looked white, even when I set it side by side with my bread flour.

This flour has a lighter color and milder flavor than whole wheat and a softer texture that your family will love. No one who bites into a slice can tell it is whole wheat and my finished loaves look white inside, but take a bite and your taste buds know its real, full-flavored wheat.

The dough develops gluten quickly during the autolyse phase (see LESSON #2) and develops even better during the stretch and fold turns. And in a nice surprise, it handles well even with higher hydration.

This flour, as you may have read, is a white whole wheat variety that has no genetic coding for bran color, while traditional red wheat has three genes for bran color. One supplier explained that it might be easier to think of it as an albino wheat.

The term “white flour” has often been used to mean “refined flour,” so “whole white wheat flour” sounds like a contradiction in terms. But it really is whole wheat flour that includes the bran, germ, and endosperm, but made from hard white winter wheat. The bran of white wheat is not only lighter in color but it’s also milder in flavor, making whole white wheat more appealing to many people accustomed to the taste of refined flour.

Since this is whole-wheat, I am amazed at the crumb, crust, and flavor! I would swear I am using high-quality bread flour. And of course, since it is whole wheat flour, it has all the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber that all whole grain has. The whole thing leaves me giddy with enthusiasm for baking.

Coming back to this post sixty days later, I have almost already used two 50-pound bags of the amazing flour. For the first three weeks, I baked every day, but now I have settled back into my twice a week rhythm.

The startling thing is this, every time I give bread away (and that has been more than two dozen times in the last two months), I get compliments that it is the best bread I have ever made. Frankly, folks, it’s not me and my improving skill. The only difference is Abigail’s Oven Whole Wheat White Flour.

I just sent five pounds back to St. George with my sister-in-law on this last day in July 2020. But I have just enough left for my weekend baking. Then I will be back at the bakery picking up my third bag. Who knew that a 70-year old hobby baker would be using 50-pounds of flour every month?

Like I wrote in early June, this is the best flour I have ever make bread with and it has become a new addiction with me. When you can craft near perfection with ever bake, why would I ever stop?