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Converting Cake, Cookie, and Pastry Recipes to Whole Grain Flour
A lot of people think baking cookies, cakes, and pastries with whole grain flour requires new recipes and complicated techniques, but this really isn’t the case. Since I got a countertop grain mill almost five years ago, I’ve been making most of my sweet treats with whole grain flour, sometimes with a minor hydration adjustment and sometimes with no adjustments at all. I switched to whole grain flour because I want all the nutrients and fiber (especially when I’m eating something sugary) and because I love the flavor of different wheats and the freshness of just-milled flour.
I was able to convert family recipes and pretty much any other recipe I happened to crave simply by paying attention to the thirstiness, gluten strength, and taste profile of different wheats. I’ll describe these considerations in detail below and share my whole grain rendition of Inspired Taste’s Incredibly Moist and Easy Carrot Cake. For a comprehensive list of Breadtopia’s recipes for both breads and sweets that use only whole grain flours, scroll to the end of this blog post: Homemilliing with my Mockmill. I’d also love to hear about your whole grain baking experiences and favorite recipes in the comments.
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Hydration
When you substitute whole grain flour into a refined or “white” flour recipe, you usually need to increase the liquid by a small amount. This is to account for the extra absorptive bran and germ in the whole grain flour — so the end result isn’t dry or crumbly. Cake, cookie, and pie crust recipes usually have liquid in the form of water, milk, or vanilla extract. Oil, butter, sugar and eggs also contribute to hydration, but they’re not ideal for adjustment because of how they further influence flavors and textures. I will talk more about the latter two in the gluten section below.
If you’ve already made a particular recipe with white flour in the past, it’s easier to know if you’ve reached the target batter/dough consistency when you add extra liquid. However, if you’re new to the recipe, you can still substitute in whole grain flour using the following guidelines:
Add 5-15 grams more liquid (1 tsp to 1 Tbsp) if you’re using a red wheat variety (except spelt), emmer, hard white, durum, khorasan/Kamut, and rye.
You can usually skip adding extra liquid with spelt, soft white wheats, and einkorn. I sometimes use extra large eggs and actually subtract 5-15 grams water when I’m working with einkorn because the binding power of eggs is helpful with einkorn.
Cookie recipes often have vanilla extract as the only frank liquid. You can add extra vanilla extract, or you can simply use water if you don’t want the additional vanilla flavor or expense. Note that with both whole grain cookie dough and pie crusts, you should not skip a dough chilling stage, because this rest will help hydrate the bran and make for a more tender result.
Gluten
It’s difficult to roll out a thin sheet of dough when you’re working with the bran and germ of the wheat berry, so you should use a stronger wheat for pastries like croissants. I’d pick a hard red wheat (hard red spring wheat, sprouted hard red spring wheat, yecora rojo, bolles, rouge de bordeaux) or a combination of a hard red wheat and hard white spring wheat. You might try spelt as well as it is very extensible (stretchy). I find Breadtopia’s spelt feels about as strong as a hard red wheat if I keep the hydration low. Another option is to boost your dough’s strength with vital wheat gluten — you can see a paper-thin windowpane in the photo gallery of this whole wheat hokkaido milk bread recipe.
I also prefer to use stronger wheat varieties alone or combined with medium-gluten wheats when making cinnamon rolls and other bread-like sweets, such as these whole grain chelsea buns with rouge de bordeaux flour.
For flakiness, ease of handling, and mild flavor, I make pie crusts with wheats in the mid-to-high gluten range: red fife, turkey red, hard red winter, hard white spring, and white sonora. It’s tricky to make lattice tops with whole grain dough but not impossible. Here is an apple pie with a whole grain white sonora crust.
For whole grain pop tarts, I went with hard white spring wheat over a test bake with emmer because of the stretching and maneuvering of the dough sheets.
I often pick softer wheats like pima club, soft white wheat, and white sonora wheat (medium strength) for cookies and cakes because the results are tender and need little or no hydration adjustment. Cookie and cake recipes usually advise against overmixing so you don’t develop gluten and end up with a tough crumb. This is why you’re usually instructed to “fold in” ingredients. With whole grain flour, you can be free of this concern even if you’re using a higher gluten wheat. Check out this delicate and moist crumb on Ina Garten’s chocolate cake where I substituted whole grain soft white wheat and ganache instead of buttercream frosting.
Emmer, durum, and khorasan/Kamut tend to be as thirsty and high protein as hard red spring and hard white spring wheats, but they don’t develop a strong gluten network, so I also use them in cakes, cookies, and biscotti rather than rolled-out crusts. I also like these wheats paired with all purpose flour for pasta e.g. this ravioli dough. Here are biscotti with whole grain Kamut flour.
Einkorn has quite weak gluten and is not thirsty, so as I noted above, I might use eggs that are extra large and reduce a different liquid in the recipe by 5-15 grams. Eggs have binding power, which can act a bit like gluten. Sugar is also a binder, but einkorn wheat is sweeter than all purpose flour in my opinion, so increasing the sugar doesn’t make sense from a flavor standpoint. These chocolate mint cookies with einkorn flour are a little tricky to scoop onto the baking sheet but they come out perfect.
Rye is even lower gluten than einkorn and also slippery-sticky. It is the only flour in these Tartine salted chocolate rye cookies, which are held together by chocolate, eggs, and sugar. Both einkorn (above) and rye can stand on their own with plenty of chocolate as a binder.
I also like to mix rye and einkorn with other whole grain flours, like in these ginger snaps with whole grain red fife and rye flours and the carrot cake recipe below (einkorn and red fife).
Flavors
This article goes in depth into the flavor characteristics of different wheats, but there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to flavor choices. Additionally, the characteristics of a wheat variety will vary depending on the farm it’s from, the harvest year, and more.
Personally, I think it’s fun to use wheats with baking spice aromas, like rouge de bordeaux and red fife, with recipes that call for these spices anyway e.g. carrot cake. Bono rye has a floral grassiness, which might make it extra tasty in this apple cake. I find khorasan/Kamut to be buttery in flavor, so I think it works well with shortbread cookies.
Sprouted flours are a touch sweeter than non-sprouted, and likewise einkorn brings a sweet nuttiness to the strawberry-rhubarb crumble below. I think emmer would have a similar flavor-add to einkorn but it is more thirsty.
Carrot Cake with Whole Grain Red Fife and Einkorn Flours
I've used red fife and einkorn whole wheat flours instead of all purpose flour in this carrot cake recipe by Inspired Taste. These flours add baking spice aromas and a sweet nuttiness along with all the fiber and nutrients of whole grains. With a little extra vanilla extract and a teaspoon of water, you'll compensate for the extra thirstiness of the red fife flour. Other changes to the original recipe unrelated to the whole grain substitution include a different ratio of white-to-brown sugar, a more traditional cream cheese frosting, and my one bowl cake mixing method.
Ingredients
For two 9" round cake layers
Cream Cheese Frosting
Instructions
Cake
Frosting
Assembly
Storage
Shopping List
Heirloom Red Fife Wheat Berries
Red Fife Whole Grain Flour
Einkorn Wheat Berries
Einkorn Whole Grain Flour
Expandable Cooling Rack
USA Pan Round Cake Pan — 9-inch
$21.99Magnetic Measuring Spoons
$17.00Breadtopia’s Choice Kitchen Scale
$18.00Stainless Steel Mixing Bowls — Set of 3
$39.99Converting Cake, Cookie, and Pastry Recipes to Whole Grain Flour