If you’ve been thinking of grinding grain to make your own flour, or are already doing it, The Essential Home-Ground Flour Book would be a handy resource. With advice on choosing the right mill, detailed descriptions of more than a dozen grains, and a discussion of bread making equipment, this is a comprehensive guide. Also included are 100 recipes for yeast breads, quick breads, muffins, cookies, and pastries.
The Essential Home-Ground Flour Book would be a handy resource for anyone thinking of grinding grain to make their own flour.
And if grinding your own flour at home isn’t already on your radar, I suspect reading this book would have you seriously considering it. Author Sue Becker, who has a degree in food science, has been teaching about the benefits of whole-grain nutrition for almost 25 years. She makes a strong case for the health and other benefits of making your own baked goods using freshly-ground grain over store-bought flours. And she says that “once you taste the difference in breads baked with home-ground flour there will be no turning back.”
Real whole grains are nearly perfect foods that have the ability to sustain life and promote health, says Becker, but once the protective bran layer is broken open during the milling process, the nutrients begin to deteriorate rapidly.
Becker argues that commercially produced whole-grain products are not as healthy or flavourful as those made at home using freshly-ground flour. To produce “whole grain” flour, most commercial millers follow the process for making refined white flour, removing the bran and germ portions (which contain the flavour and nutrients) and then returning them to the resulting white flour minus the oils that can cause the flour to spoil. However, these oils contribute to the flavour and texture of the bread, she says. Commercial “whole-grain” baked goods may also contain chemical preservatives, dough conditioners, multiple sweeteners and other additives.
This book also includes a history of the flour-milling industry. White bread became a staple food after the invention of the steel roller mill which removed the bran, the germ and the oils which cause flour to spoil. Soon after doctors began diagnosing “white-bread diseases” caused by nutrient deficiencies, says Becker.
- Helen Lammers-Helps