Whole-Wheat Pastry Flour: The Israel Story

When it comes to cooking and baking, you can usually find everything you need here. But there are exceptions. Here's a question (with my answer) from one of my Israeli readers that I want to share with everyone.

Hi Chana,

What is whole-wheat pastry flour called in Hebrew? Where do you get it? In my local health food store they have two types of wheat flour, 100% whole and 70%whole. As far as I can tell 70% is as whole as white flour. Am I missing something?

Rivka


Dear Rivka,

This sounded like a pretty straight-forward question, until I started looking into it. It seems that not all flour is necessarily what it appears to be!

I called the chief food technologist at Stybel, the large flour producer in Israel, who was extremely helpful. In addition, I contacted health-food store managers in Tel Aviv and Beer Sheva as well as a company that produces stone-ground whole-wheat flour.

Let’s start with whole-wheat pastry flour. In the US, it’s 100% whole-wheat flour made from soft winter wheat. That means it’s lower in gluten than regular whole-wheat flour, making it especially good for cakes, cookies, muffins and biscuits. Unfortunately, it’s not produced in Israel. The Stybel technologist said that they could easily produce it here if people wanted it, but right now there’s no demand.

At one time I used קמח מלא מנופה – sifted whole-wheat flour, in place of whole-wheat pastry flour. It was less gritty than regular whole-wheat flour, which indicated that it had indeed been sifted. But apparently there’s no standard definition for this flour. My contact at Stybel refused to even talk about it, as to avoid speaking badly about any other flour company! A health-food store manager who sells it in Beer Sheva told me that it was 70% whole-wheat flour – whole-wheat flour with 30 % of the bran removed (sifted out).

That brings me to 90% and 70% whole-wheat flour. In my mind, that sounds like 90 or 70 percent whole-wheat flour mixed with 10 or 30 percent white flour. Wrong!

These are blends made mainly of white flour, with wheat bran and germ mixed back in.

What are your options for baking whole-grain cookies, cakes, muffins and biscuits in Israel?

Stybel’s #6 flour is 100% whole-wheat. Their #8 is 100% organic whole-wheat. For cakes and cookies, you could mix your own blend using either of these together with their cake (#5) or cookie (#4) flours, or an all-purpose white flour (Stybel #1 or any house brand).

I’m very happy with the organic whole-wheat flour I buy from a company in Itamar. (They’re part of a Yesha cooperative of small businesses that deliver here every few months.) The owner told me that he uses soft wheat and grinds it twice in an electric-operated stone grinder. Sometimes I mix it with white flour. But it’s fine-grained and light and gives wonderful results in non-yeasted baked goods. It also makes delicious bread.

Given that it’s made from soft wheat, I’d say that this is the closest to whole-wheat pastry flour you’ll find in Israel. An added benefit is that it doesn’t need to be sifted (to check for insects) before using, since it’s kept under constant refrigeration from just after grinding. It also needs to be stored in the refrigerator or freezer once you bring it home.

I hope this answers your questions. Happy and healthy baking!

Chana