My question:
Is there a way to get softer, fluffier biscuits or rolls out of whole wheat flour, without adding white flour? I've tried using vital wheat gluten and it helps a bit, but I just cannot get that perfectly soft fluffiness without using 1/2 white and 1/2 wheat flour.
One product that I really love, if you can find it at your grocery store, is King Arthur Flour White Whole Wheat. I use it in place of all-purpose white flour. I think KAF recommends subbing half the regular all-purpose flour with the white whole wheat, but I don't ever have regular all-purpose. I haven't done any really stringent comparisons, but I don't find that using all white whole wheat impacts my recipes in a particularly noticeable way, and it has almost as much fiber/nutrients as regular whole wheat flour does.
So you might try using that to make biscuits, and see how it does.
Also, speaking of bread products, the very best recipe for white bread (which I used to make rolls when I tried it out for Thanksgiving) also came from my King Arthur Flour Baking Companion cookbook. It had more ingredients than any bread recipe I've ever used, but it was so worth it. I had to go on a bit of a hunt for potato flour (which I did manage to find at one of my usual grocery stores), but I'm convinced that that and the small amount of butter were what made the bread so utterly fantastic.
Since I grew up making bread from the
Tassajara Bread Book and using only the whole-grainiest of whole grains, white bread (even made with white whole wheat flour) always feels rather decadent to me. There are definite benefits to slow-rising whole grain bread, but sometimes you just want some delicious and fluffy white bread.
