Shree Ganesh Chakki Atta 5Kg

Indian wheat is high in protein and belongs to the aestivum variety used by everyone in the world for making great bread. So whole wheat bread loaves in India should work, right? Why my atta bread just doesn’t work the way I want it to? Why is it dense and crumbly? I used to bake good soft and fluffy 100% percent whole wheat bread when I was abroad and suddenly after moving back to India, the same recipe would give me horrified loaves. I wanted to know why. After a lot of research, I am posting this article so it might be helpful to all bread bakers in India. The culprit of bad loaves is flour. It is all about the unique milling process in India that is different from the rest of the world. So let’s first try to understand how Indian milling is done.

The milling process:

Indian wheat flour is mostly ground in stone mills popularly called chakkis. Chakki is nothing but a pair of stones, of which, one is stationery and the other is a rotating stone. Stone mills generate considerable heat due to friction. The heat causes what is called STARCH DAMAGE. It also results in considerable damage to the protein in comparison to other milling techniques. The chakki atta is preferred more than the roller mill atta for the texture and taste of the Chapati/Roti (flat bread of India). Indian atta is a very very finely milled wheat flour. It works wonderfully well for making Indian flatbreads and chakki is the most preferred milling process for Indian bread. Stone grinding breaks the starch sufficiently to release extra sweetness while burning it slightly to give added flavor to Indian flatbreads. Both methods of milling generate heat. Roller mills generate more heat than chakki and thereby some nutrition and vitamins are lost. But it has less damage to the starch and protein in the flour as it cuts the flour into small particles. But Chakki alters the starch (the force is intense) which is not good for western bread making but great for Indian bread chapati/roti.