"flour" news and stories

You may remember a few weeks ago that I brought you some information on starting your own sour dough culture. That is a very worthy pursuit, but even I admit that it can be hard to maintain and can be wasteful unless you make a lot of bread. But you want that great, complex taste that comes from the long development of yeast, right?

Well, there's a solution to that problem: preferments. Preferments are mixtures of flour, water, and very small amounts of yeast that are generally allowed to develop overnight. This way, you get highly developed yeast and organic acids without having to constantly feed a starter culture. There are four basic types of preferments. Keep reading to kind out all about them.

If you haven't heard about rising food costs by now, I'm sure you must have noticed them for yourself in the supermarket. Flour prices have gone up by 15 to 25 percent, but King Arthur Flour has some good news.

Baker's Banter, the blog aspect of the King Arthur Flour website, posted a letter from Michael Bittel, Senior VP and General Manager, yesterday that announced an immediate decrease in the price of their flours. It seems that the popular flour miller made some smart buying decisions, which allowed them to buy a good supply of wheat for less, so they're passing that savings on to the consumer.

King Arthur is lowering the prices it charges to retailers on it's Unbleached All Purpose, Unbleached Bread, and Traditional 100% Whole Wheat Flours. So look for lower prices in your local supermarket, and if you don't see them you know it's not King Arthur's fault.

A festival of scrapes/green garlic - the flower shoots of the garlic bulb - featuring green garlic dip, green garlic souffle, penne with green garlic and pancetta, chicken with green garlic aioli. Lots of recipes!

Picking the food for your same-sex wedding reception? A lot like picking the food for your heterosexual wedding reception. Who would have guessed?

The White Lily flour plant is moving from Knoxville to the midwest after 125 years; Southern bakers are freaking out that their biscuits won't ever be the same.

The Minimalist makes paletas, Mexican-style popsicles, with the adorable mini-Minimalist.

Eric Asimov discusses the brunello di Montalcino scandal, wherein unapproved grapes went into the wine.

David Karp, the Fruit Detective, talks apricots. Try the ultra-sweet CandyCot.

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Clotilde over at Chocolate and Zucchini has conducted a most interesting experiment. She wanted to try baking with roasted flour - the nutty, toasty than bread crusts and roux so satisfying - but knew that roasting flour breaks down its gluten network and causes it to lose elasticity. So she employed the stuff in her mother's sablé recipe - sandy, crumbly sablés don't need strong gluten strands. But still, the cookies wouldn't stay together, so she simply squeezed them in her fists. The result, as you can see, bears the imprint of closed fingers, kind of like a plastic baby rattle. Or like a slug, as Clotilde points out. The cookies, flavored with nothing but butter and salt, are absolutely divine, she assures. Check out the recipe.

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How many times have you come across a certain ingredient in your pantry and wondered if was still safe to eat?