Book Recommendation: King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking

Henry is eating more and more solid food everyday, and I am finding myself very picky about what I will feed him. An entire shelf in my freezer is filled with little cubes of frozen purees I made from fresh, organic fruits and veggies. I recently compared the basic Gerber rice cereal with the Earth's Best. Whole grain, organic, and without added soy oil (!) for only 15 cents more made Earth's Best the clear winner.

I realized that I am significantly more concerned with Henry's food than I am my own. As Oprah would say, I had an ah ha moment. Why am I willing to put crap in my body that I wouldn't let Henry eat? I'm talking to you, scrumptious frozen Red Baron French bread pepperoni pizza... I just need a moment to remember the taste in my mouth. Mmm. Although I do not buy them anymore I still walk by and visit them in the freezer case every week at the store. Such crunchy, greasy deliciousness... Okay, I'm back. It makes especially little sense when you consider that my food has been Henry's food for the past 15 months.

Anyway, this realization has inspired me to expand my healthy cooking repertoire. A couple of weeks ago I ordered a book called Whole Grain Baking that is produced by the King Arthur Flour company. I was not aware, but apparently they have published numerous well-regarded baking cookbooks. Since it had good reviews and I read cookbooks like novels at bedtime, I decided to splurge.

I was really impressed when the book arrived. It is huge! Like as big as the dictionary I used in high school back in the dark ages when high school students used actual dictionaries to write English papers. There are 10 chapters of recipes for everything you could possibly imagine making with whole grain flour, as well as an introduction, glossary, and other appendices to help the uninitiated reader jump into whole grain baking.

So far I have tried two recipes. Last week I made the sour cream muffins, which is their basic moist, tender muffin recipe. They recommended adding blueberries or diced stone fruit so I used some nectarines and they were really yummy. Husband doesn't like fruit mixed with other things (I know, I know) but he liked the muffin and suggested I make them again without any fruit. You could definitely tell by looking that they were made with whole wheat flour, but the taste and texture was as good as a regular muffin. Definitely a keeper.

The other night we had breakfast for dinner, which is my favorite thing in the world. I made some spelt pancakes from the cookbook, which were surprisingly good. A little dense, but the flavor was really nice. Husband liked them enough to clean his plate, although I think he sees them as pancake heresy. I will have to call them something different like yummy happy cakes so Husband will not be comparing them to the Aunt Jemima pancake mix he grew up on. I always hear gluten intolerant people talk about spelt and I assumed that it was something horrible you would only eat if you couldn't eat real bread. I learned in my cookbook that it is just a traditional form of wheat. Oh, I can feel my horizons broadening.

So far, the cookbook is two for two. Next I plan to conquer homemade pizza crust (there's one you can make the night before) or chocolate chip cookies (the Holy Grail of baking, in my opinion). I will be mucho impressed if either of those turns out well. I have high hopes because the recipes seem very thoughtfully created. I have read elsewhere that you can make any recipe more nutritious by just substituting whole wheat flour for all or half of the regular flour. I have tried and this is so not true. This book has different ratios of white and whole wheat flour in every recipe so you can tell they tested until they found out how much whole grain you could get away with before the flavor was compromised. They also have specific techniques, like letting the muffin batter rest an hour before baking, that help with some of the texture concerns.

Overall I am very pleased with this cookbook and would recommend it highly. I have so many pretty cookbooks that sit on the shelf, but I can tell this is one that will actually be used regularly.