Erin Alderson: Homemade Flour Cookbook

Erin Alderson

The Homemade Flour Cookbook: The Home Cook’s Guide to Milling Nutritious Flours and Creating Delicious Recipes with Every Grain, Legume, Nut and Seed from A-Z (Fair Winds 2014) by photographer and author Erin Alderson tackles the basic ingredient of flour head on.

The Homemade Flour Cookbook by Erin AldersonNo doubt most readers will buy this book for the recipes that contain no gluten, but take a look at the first chapter that covers gluten grains like barley, rye, kamut, and emmer, Erin teaches you how to grind grain at home and what to do with it once you have flour. These are grains full of flavor that you can use in every meal. You’ll need to purchase of home milling machine, although you can also use a food processor or a coffee grinder. You’ll probably need to have on hand plenty of separate tubs to put your new flour in. Once you have barley flour, you can make Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 28) or Asparagus and Mozzarella Pizza with Barley Cracker Crust (p. 30). If you grind kamut then you can make Sweet Corn and Ricotta Ravioli with Butter Basil Sauce (p. 38).

If you are following a gluten-free diet, then the following chapters are for you. Erin starts with Teff, recommending a coffee grinder because the seeds are so small. She uses teff for Curried Sweet Potato and Teff Burgers (p. 79) with chickpeas and chopped pecans. She moves on to amaranth, quinoa, millet and others. Millet Waffles with Maple Strawberry Sauce (p. 97) uses millet in a recipe where gluten really isn’t important to getting a crisp, light texture. Berry Cobbler with Oat Dumplings (p. 106) is another recipe in which no one will miss gluten.

The Homemade Flour Cookbook is a good partner to start experimenting with different flours. There is no need to buy expensive flour mixtures when you can make your own.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *