Whole Grain Cookies

A couple of days ago, someone shared a recipe for whole grain “Sugar and Spice Cookies” in a milling and grain book. We’re cutting out all storebought flour so I hadn’t made cookies in a while . . not that we need cookies! I wasn’t sure if I would sift the flour when making cookies. I will sift it when using it for a cake but it seems a bit counterintuitive to go to the trouble of buying whole grain, then milling it, then sifting out the bran and germ.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say (and I know Wikipedia has some info that can be disputed but, from what I’ve learned, this is true about removing parts of wheat):

Removal of bran is aimed at producing a flour with a white rather than a brown color, and eliminating fiber, which reduces nutrition. The germ is rich in polyunsaturated fats (which have a tendency to oxidize and become rancid on storage) and so germ removal improves the storage qualities of flour.

I’ve used storebought flour for most of my life and, no doubt, there will be times when I use it again but it makes no sense to sift it after I’ve ground it so . . I didn’t.

This is the recipe except the lady who posted it had substituted milled soft white wheat. She said she also added about 1/4 cup of barley to the wheat before milling. With home milled flour, we often have to add a bit more flour and/or let it all sit for a while for the flour to absorb the liquid.

I’m not a patient cook. The cookies on the bottom were the first ones I made . . nice little balls made pretty cookies. The next shelf up, the balls were larger . . hurry up and get this done. They all ran together and look like they were bars. The top shelf . . I mashed the remaining dough out on the cookie sheet. I was thinking about Stage Planks, along with hurrying the project along!

They were good and I will make them again. I’m going to experiment more with cookies, bars and muffins using all whole wheat.