Food Talk And Fabulous Finds - Cooking with Whole Wheat Flour

Does anyone cook with whole wheat flour? I'm not taking about baking, but about cooking.

For example, I have a number of recipes that use flour as a thickener. The recipes always call for all-purpose flour, but I've wondered if I could sub whole wheat flour.

Or I recently found a recipe for Butternut Squash Gnocchi (http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1842372), but it calls for all-purpose flour (and 3 to 3 1/2 cups of it! :yikes:). Do you think I could sub whole wheat flour? Would it be safer to just sub whole wheat flour for half of the all-purpose flour?

I've used whole wheat flour as a thickener without problem before.

If you want to substitute whole wheat for all the flour in a recipe that calls for all purpose, then use whole wheat pastry flour. It's lighter in texture and has a lower protein content, so it works in place of all purpose flour better. I don't even have white flour in the house anymore. Just regular whole wheat and whole wheat pastry.

I use it too... never used the pastry, but the whole wheat is definitely more "flakey" that's kinda how I describe it. I used it in soup the other day....I think I would maybe not have used as much as I did. It wasn't bad or anything, but it was harder to mix in....harder to conceal the flaky texture. I think it just takes getting used to I think.

Thanks! This is helpful information! The next time I have an opportunity to go to a high-end grocery store (there are none nearby) or I'm ordering grains online, I'll have to pick up some ww pastry flour.

Yep - whole wheat pastry works well. I like the "white whole wheat" too - it's also lighter and affects taste less. But I only really keep WW flour in the house and use it in everything.

I was reading this thread the other day and decided to use regular whole wheat flour to thicken gravy. It worked just fine and added a bit of fiber to the gravy. The gravy was used in a pot pie with a whole wheat pastry crust. No one complained and it was all eaten up.