Using Chakki Atta instead of whole wheat flour?

Question

I bought a bag of chakki atta from an Indian grocery store. The back of the bag says that it's 100% whole wheat flour. It was cheaper than traditional American style whole wheat flour, so I decided to buy a bag to see how well it would work.

At home, the main thing that I noticed was that chakki atta looks different. The whole wheat flour that I'm used to is tan with dark flecks. Chakki atta is a more uniform yellowish tan without any flecks, or maybe the flecks are just really small. I've used it a few times in bread baking, and it seems to work well.

My question is, does anyone have a better idea of how packaged chakki atta is different from whole wheat flour, and what kinds of things it is good for?

Answer

In theory chakki is a flour mill, and chakki atta is flour fresh from that mill. Realistically of course nothing you find on your grocery store shelves is fresh from a mill.

Atta flour is made from hard wheat, which has a high gluten content. This means that your flour is probably better for bread than typical all-purpose whole wheat flour from the baking aisle. If it is hard white wheat this might explain the color, as ground white wheat doesn't look that much darker than all-purpose flour.

Like typical grocery store whole wheat flour, atta flour is coarsely ground. This may give your bread a more grainy texture (not a bad thing), and makes atta unideal for cakes, biscuits, and quick breads unless you like them with a coarse texture in the crumb. If you would like to use whole wheat for baking other than bread, whole wheat pastry flour is the usual suggestion (or grind wheat yourself to a very find grind).

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