Archive for January, 2009
Make ahead whole grain muffins
If your mornings are as rushed as ours are, there is a way to make a great warm, wholesome, whole grain breakfast without the long prep time. You can even use your own recipe!
First simply substitute the flour in your recipe for 100% freshly milled flour. It's whole grain and provides all the nutrients intended in the grain.
Now, get your recipe, a zip lock bag, a measuring cup or bowl with a lid.
In the zip lock bag, put all your dry ingredients and shake.
In the bowl/covered measuring cup, put all your wet/moist ingredients and mix.
Pop both into the refrigerator and in the morning, combine just until moist.
Place in greased muffin tins in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes!
Tah-Dah! Fast food that's good for you!
Millet, the under used grain.
Millet is not really bird seed. It looks like bird seed but it is a wonderful grain for human consumption as well.
What cannot be made with millet? Yeast breads. There isn't enough gluten in the grain to make a loaf.
What can be made with Millet? Many things.
Millet can be cooked and added into many multigrain dishes. It can be used by itself as a side dish. It be added to other grains or in bread for a little crunch like sesame seeds!
Millet is a low gluten way to add a cous cous side dish to your meals.
Prepare as you would rice in salted water or broth.
For a sweeter side, use apple juice for the liquid and add some dried fruits and almond slivers the last 3 minutes of cooking.
If you subscribe to our newsletter, we will have actual complimentary recipes using millet and many other grains that are out of the ordinary! Have fun discovering this under used grain.
Milling pastry flour at home to eat more whole grains.
A word about the 'pastry flour' from fresh milled grains.
You can mill pastry flour from soft wheat (vs. the hard wheat that make good loaf bread) but it will not be silky smooth like bagged flour because the hulls (aka: bran., fiber) are not separated. You could sift it to get some of them out, but then again that is tedious and may not be necessary. For a texture of a pastry good that we are 'used to' it may be that you would have to use 1/4-1/2 of the flour as bagged organic pastry flour (still missing vital oils and oxidized but does lack chemicals and bleach) and the remaining part as freshly milled (to at least add more nutrients and fiber). Otherwise, the pastry flour straight from the soft wheat as milled is a whole wheat and will be a bit more dense than say a croissant type texture.
The way I look at it, even if 1/2 the recipe is freshly milled soft wheat, then you are getting more nutrients and bran than the usual pastry flour with it's bleach and oxidized nutrients. Also if you go organic vs. regular bagged pastry flour, you are avoiding the chemicals and added synthasized viatmins that your body doesn't recognize anyway.
Happy Milling!
Donna Miller
http://www.millersgrainhouse.com/store
