My goal is to be using no storebought flour by the end of the year. I want to be able to grind 100% of the flour we use from the various grains we keep on hand. I’m not sure I’ll ever be as confident using whole grains. With all purpose or bread flour, I can add most anything I want to add to the dough and because I’ve made bread for so long, I know whether I need to add more liquid or more flour or let it rise more. Maybe some day I’ll get to the point where I can do that with the various grains. I don’t feel like I’m there yet and sometimes I’m a bit nervous about the end product but this is how we learn, right?
Vince will eat anything. If I make biscuits that are totally crumbly, he wouldn’t care. If I make bread that’s hard as a rock, he doesn’t care. That gives me a bit of freedom to experiment.
Barley is one of my favorite grains and I had not tried making biscuits with barley so this morning I used sprouted barley to mill and made my regular biscuits with half barley flour and half hard white wheat flour.
They were great. I love the somewhat sweet and nutty flavor the barley adds. I also love that by the end of the year (probably by the end of September), all the storebought flour will be history at our house.
I feel like there are so many different kinds of grains and so many uses for them, I’ve missed out on so much buying white flour at the store and not cooking more all my life with whole grains.