A grain of truth
Jan. 17th, 2016 06:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spacealien_vampMy parents arrived on January 6 for an extended visit, and I've been spending a lot of time doing things with them. In particular, we're playing a lot of things from my game collection, particularly games that have been sitting lonely on my shelf for a long time due to lack of opponents.
I have also devoted a lot of time to making whole grain breads, grinding the flour fresh with my Vitamix. I have mostly been using Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads cookbook as a resource. The "Multigrain Struan" recipe is amazing, particularly when I pair it with homemade yogurt for the "soaker" component. The process is more time-consuming than the "5 minutes a day" method, but the results are delicious. I've also made a sourdough rye starter and baked a couple of rye loaves that turned out pretty well.
I am enjoying baking with freshly ground flour so much that I'm going to try growing one raised bed of Magic Manna corn this summer. Ordinarily, I would say growing corn in a small garden is a poor use of space, partly because it's a wind pollinated crop and underperforms in small patches, and partly because so much is already commercially available. However, this specific variety was developed especially to make excellent quality corn flour, and it isn't really available to purchase otherwise. It will be an interesting experiment.
I have also devoted a lot of time to making whole grain breads, grinding the flour fresh with my Vitamix. I have mostly been using Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads cookbook as a resource. The "Multigrain Struan" recipe is amazing, particularly when I pair it with homemade yogurt for the "soaker" component. The process is more time-consuming than the "5 minutes a day" method, but the results are delicious. I've also made a sourdough rye starter and baked a couple of rye loaves that turned out pretty well.
I am enjoying baking with freshly ground flour so much that I'm going to try growing one raised bed of Magic Manna corn this summer. Ordinarily, I would say growing corn in a small garden is a poor use of space, partly because it's a wind pollinated crop and underperforms in small patches, and partly because so much is already commercially available. However, this specific variety was developed especially to make excellent quality corn flour, and it isn't really available to purchase otherwise. It will be an interesting experiment.
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no subject
Date: 2016-01-18 08:10 pm (UTC)From the page about the corn:
This is a very pure flour corn but if by chance any flint or sweet corn kernels appear do not save any planting seed from that ear.
How are you supposed to tell? Do they look different?
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Date: 2016-01-18 11:55 pm (UTC)The multigrain tastes a lot like mildly sweet cornbread, but it has enough wheat in it to hold together in slices for sandwiches. It's really good.
I'm still experimenting with different rye recipes, trying to get one that's just right.
I made a tasty whole wheat pizza crust over the weekend. It was stretchy enough to roll out well, but not elastic, so it kept its shape and didn't snap back after rolling the way white flour dough does. Very handy.
How are you supposed to tell? Do they look different?
Probably. I suspect there's a good chance they'd be yellow. I'd be more worried if any of my neighbors were growing corn that could spread pollen, but they aren't.