Basic List of Getting Started with Sue Becker of The Bread Beckers, Inc.

hello my name is sue becker and i'm an owner and founder of the bread beckers in woodstock georgia and we just want to welcome you today to our teaching on the basic ingredients that you will need to begin your journey of milling your own grain to make your own bread so we i just think it's always important to know the basic ingredients that you will need to make all of your own bread cakes cookies muffins pancakes whatever you want to make from freshly milled flour so we're going to go over the basic list of getting started items which is gone over in great detail in our little recipe collection that i put together many many years ago when i first started on this journey so you can find the basic list of these ingredients and an explanation what they do what type of wheat to use for what type of recipe but we just thought it's always helpful to go over that very first thing in our classes on getting started in milling and making your own bread so first of all in bread baking particularly wheat is the king of grains and there's basically two types of wheat there is hard wheat and there's soft wheat hard wheat is a high protein low moisture wheat that is necessary when making yeasted breads you must have that protein content to form the stretchy substance called gluten that is very unique to the wheat family it's important that you have this higher protein wheat that hard wheat gives you so that this as this gluten develops and the yeast feeds on the wheat it produces carbon dioxide gas and this this stretchy strands of protein capture this gas and allows the bread to rise and i just want to take a moment here to explain exactly what gluten is there's so much misinformation out there but wheat is very unique in the type of proteins that it contains and it's really the only grain that the wheat family that contains these specific proteins and when you mill wheat into flour and you hydrate this flower with water this stretchy substance calls called gluten forms and it's like i mentioned earlier it's very critical when making yeasted breads you need this ch stretchy substance called gluten to trap that gas and enable the bread to rise that's all it is it's not something evil that's been put in wheat it's the naturally occurring genetic sequence of proteins that is found in wheat so hard wheat again is this high protein low moisture type of wheat that is necessary when making yeasted breads soft wheat on the other hand is a high moisture low protein type of wheat that is excellent when making cakes cookies muffins anything that doesn't use yeast and we'll talk more about soft wheat later and how to incorporate it and substitute it in into any cake cookie muffin recipe that you may be wanting to change from white flour to freshly milled flour but hard wheat is your choice for yeast spreads now in the hard wheat type there are two varieties two basic varieties there's hard red and there's hard white hard red is going to be a little more fibrous it's an older older variety of wheat a little more fibrous a little more flavor i love the flavor of hard red wheat for most of my baking but then hard white is a much milder flavor wheat just a little little bland for some in my opinion but uh but there's places where i want bland there's places where i don't want the flavor of the bread to dominate where is that pizza dough i want to taste the toppings on the pizza not necessarily the bread garlic rolls uh breads that i might fill with uh we make a reuben bread and a sausage bread all in our recipe collection those types of breads i want the filling and the topping to be the dominant flavor so that's where i might use hard white for my day in and day out bread my preference is to use two parts red wheat one part white wheat or half and half the white wheat does tend to give a little more softness to the bread because it's a little less fibrous but the red wheat gives you that great great flavor don't be afraid of the flavor of red wheat a lot of people think oh my family's used to white bread so maybe i better go with the white wheat but a lot of families find they love the flavor of the red wheat and like i said it is a little more fibrous so a little more cleansing to the system but either one or some of both makes a great option for getting started i usually recommend to people if you can afford to get both i would always buy some container of red wheat and a container of white wheat to get started because then you can make anything you want the flavor that you want it so that's our wheat hard wheat soft wheat soft wheat for pastries hard wheat for your yeasted breads red wheat white wheat now here at bread bakers we sell our grains in three different type of packaging for those of you that are going to make this your lifestyle which we hope you will we sell all of our grain packaged in six gallon food grade buckets we package the grain with carbon dioxide put a lid on it and that way it is completely guaranteed to be bug-free the buckets keep out any pests that are the enemies of grain which the three enemies are rodents or things that eat grain moisture very prevalent here in the southeastern united states you may be in a drier climate but nonetheless you don't want moisture getting to your grain and then bugs the little grain moths and some of those other pests that really love grain that can be attracted to grain so that's why we package it in these buckets so that it is moisture proof a rodent could chew through this but they don't know what's in there they don't know what they're missing and then bugs as long as you keep a good lid on your grain then it is protected now we package our grain in these buckets we put carbon dioxide gas in there which leaves no residue but that's how we can guarantee that it is bug free and you won't get bugs in there if you keep the lid on now the lid that is packaged on this bucket is a pry we pound it on and you have to pry it off and it's pretty difficult to get on and off so early on years ago when i first started we discovered gamma lids and what we do is we'll take the lid that's packaged with the bucket because it's cheaper that way and we replace it with this gamma lid it's a two-part system so you just take the lid off press the rim onto the bucket press it down and then now you have a lid with threads that can easily screw on and off you can get in and out of this bucket and keep it closed nicely down kids can go in and out and close that lid tightly down once you put the gamma lid on the bucket it's pretty much there to stay but you don't have to keep buying gamma lids every time you buy a bucket just when you buy a new package of grain just pour it in your bucket that has the lid on it so for my use and just to help things especially with children that may be getting your grain or even just so i can just look at the lid i have a bucket of red wheat and a bucket of white wheat so i have a red lid on my red wheat and a white lid on my white wheat and so that makes makes it easy and we have other colors of gamma lids here too but this just makes it very very easy for getting in and out of that bucket but then ensuring that this lid can be tightly closed so no moisture bugs or rodents get in there so that's our six gallon buckets for those of you that may be a little overwhelmed and this six gallon bucket does hold 42 pounds of grain in uh wheat and uh that will make about 60 loaves of bread so you've got a a lot of bread making here but it stores forever remember that wheat as long as it's kept dry and bug proof rodent proof this grain is just as nutritious today as it will be next week next month next year 10 years from now 3000 years from now until you mill this grain into flour it is storable so that is the wonderful thing about grains it is the perfect storable food and grains and beans seeds are the most nutrient-dense food that god has given us so again makes a perfect storable food won't lose its nutritional value until you mill it into flour and then those nutrients begin to oxidize once the bread is baked nutritional loss is minimal so keep your grain whole and intact until you're ready to use it that's what we're all about here at bread becker's and that's kind of the whole premise of milling your own flour when you're ready to use it yes it tastes great yes you won't lose no you won't lose the fiber and some nutrients but it is completely storable left hole and intact now also we package grain down in two pound bags if you want just a small amount of a grain to try or if you just don't have a large family like i do then this may be the perfect size for you or we do have these wonderful one gallon pails and these hold about seven pounds of most of our grains and beans there's a few things like rolled oats that only can fit four pounds in here but it's about seven pounds of grain particularly wheat so this may be a great option for you these lids don't need any any extra other lid these come right on and off and they have a nice indention here so several pails can stack up nicely in the pail so six gallon bucket one gallon pail or a two bag just remember you do not want to put your two-pound bag just in your pantry like this on your shelf it will attract um pests and bugs and things that can get in there and uh just kind of ruin your grain so if you're going to buy the two pound bags maybe get a pail this will hold three of these two pound bags get a pail or some type of container to put it in or keep it in your refrigerator or freezer also since i mentioned that there's a lot out there people say oh you have to put your grain in the freezer or something to kill those bugs you don't from bread backers it's already been done that's what the carbon dioxide gas does for your grain so you don't need to put this grain in the freezer or anything like that or any whether you buy it in the pail or the two pound bag the only reason you would want to put this in the freezer is just don't put this baggie on your pantry unprotected so anyway that's why we recommend pails or buckets mostly and uh if you are going to buy a baggie then just put it in some type of container to protect it so that's our grain hard wheat for yeasted breads hard red is a little more flavorful hard white is a little more mild in flavor but both make great yeasted breads and hard wheat is what you need to make breads leavened with yeast speaking of yeast we sell a firma pan instant yeast and or insta firm instant yeast and uh this is good for any type of yeasted bread baking whether you're in a bread machine or a mixer or by hand your instant yeast is just so so easy to use this any instant yeast does not have to be soaked in water and softened prior to use it can actually just go in your dough with your flour i usually put about half of my all my wet ingredients half my flour then sprinkle in my yeast remember yeast likes warm and moist to grow so the warmer the climate the warmer the temperature in your home the faster the bread is going to rise the colder the climate the slower the bread's going to rise so those are things that you need to remember when making yeasted bread now our yeast is in a one pound package it is so reasonably priced and but once you uh unopened this is storable for about two years that's about the code date on here two years from packaging and but once it's opened it needs to go in the refrigerator or the freezer to store because once it's opened it's exposed to the moisture and the yeast just doesn't have as long a shelf life that way so once it's open store it in the refrigerator and the freezer between uses you don't have to bring it out and let it come to room temperature i i pour mine up into a one quart canning jar glass canning jar and i just keep it on the door of my freezer take it out put my whatever however much i need to in my bread dough stick the jar right back in my freezer so that's the way to store it you don't need uh quite as much instant yeast as you do of your normal like active dry yeast so if you have an older recipe that calls for active dry yeast you can use a little bit less of the of the instant yeast in a in those little small packages that you find in the store there's about two and a half teaspoons of yeast there to substitute for those package of yeast you only need about two teaspoons of the instant yeast bread machine yeast don't need it this this will work just fine you don't have to buy specialty yeast to use in your bread machine rapid rise yeast really is a little extra yeast in that package so if you need to rise something really quickly because you didn't start your bread dough into soon enough then just use a little extra yeast and that'll make that bread dough rise a little faster and put it in a warm place but we'll talk more about that in another segment so that's your yeast now in yeasted breads in our recipe collection and in my book the essential homeground flower book you're going to see optional ingredients lecithin and gluten now gluten i only put in there as an optional ingredient years ago when the wheat quality was just not very good there had been flooding that year and the moisture content was really high in the wheat so it was it just didn't have enough protein to give me that stretchy structure that i needed so i added a little bit of gluten there but today i just don't need to add the gluten so i don't mention it very regular you know very much and uh i don't use it personally i don't think i need it so um so but if you want to add a little extra gluten you certainly can but we don't recommend it because that upsets the the flour to fiber the gluten ratio so unless you're really got a poor quality wheat and then we have other tricks we'll teach you in another segment but anyway lecithin we love this is a sunflower seed lecithin lecithin is an emulsifier it's a nutrient that your body has to have it loves you get it in grains and beans any unrefined food without that hasn't any unrefined food with oil that hasn't had that those fats and oils processed out lecithin is a like i said as an emulsifier it helps you digest fat but we're not adding it to our bread for the nutritional benefits necessarily grains already have lots of lecithin but why we're adding it is like i said it's an emulsifier so it breaks down the fats and oils in the recipe in the dough helps them go into the dough a little easier and mix with that water a little easier and so it makes a much softer bread a smoother texture you know lecithin is used in the food industry which i'm not a big fan of foods that they use lecithin in but just to give you an idea it's used in margarine to make margarine more spreadable it's used in salad dressings to keep that oil and vinegar mixed it's used in reese's peanut butter cups but don't eat reese's peanut butter cups to get your lecithin eat your grains and beans to get your lecithin but that's why we put it in the bread dough you will really notice a difference in the smoothness and the texture of the bread and the fineness of the crumb of the bread we get lots of comments many questions of my family you know i can't make a sandwich with this bread it crumbles lecithin will help with that it really helps with the smoothness and the texture of the bread and i can notice a difference when i use it and when i don't use it i use about two tablespoons for our basic bread dough which is about four and a half cups of flour so that will give you some idea if you have a favorite bread recipe you you can use about that ratio two tablespoons to four to five cups of flour now lecithin much of the lecithin out there comes from soy which we don't advocate the use of soy too much and so we found uh this last year we found this sunflower seed lecithin and we're just very very very happy with it and we think you'll notice a difference when you add lecithin to your bread and then here at bread becker's and after many years of research i discovered that much like uh what's done to our grains by sifting the bran and germ out and stripping all the great nutrients away and leaving us with white flour and so much of the food processing industry that has just taken away everything that's good and tries to put some things chemical things back in to fortify but that you can never improve on god the same is true in the salt industry and i'm like why would they mess with salt if it's a preservative it doesn't spoil so what's going on refined salt like you find in the store has had the minerals stripped out of them to sell to other industries and then heat treated to very high temperatures 1200 degrees or more to make the salt crystals very hard so they do not readily absorb moisture when i was growing up there was a little salt company that had this slogan when it rains it pours and that's kind of the premise of why salt is heat treated like that so we found a company called redmond uh salt and their salt is called real salt it is only mined from the ground and you'll see uh it has speckles and it's a little pink and that's the the source of the salt gives it those that's the those colors and that's the trace minerals that are there and uh we just advocate only using unrefined salt because refined salt causes uh your body to need water to try to absorb that salt and so that's that's some of the um connection between salt and water retention so real salt and we use that in all of our recipes and we just replace it one for one for salt called for in a recipe so those are our basic dry ingredients that we need for bread making so now let's look at our sweeteners and our oil so for me i am always an advocate of honey i use honey where honey will work honey to me is the only truly unrefined all-natural no process necessary except that which is done by the bees so all to gather honey basically you just take it from the beehive so again though you want unpasteurized raw honey and the honey we get here at bread becker's is all unpasteurized so honey is my sweetener of choice and it's so easy to use particularly in yeasted breads most recipes for yeast bread that do call for some sweetener it's usually a much a very small amount compared to the flour in the recipe so for that reason i decided early on to just substitute honey one for one in my yeast bread so if it called for a quarter cup of sugar i would use a quarter cup of honey or like in my basic bread dough recipe it costs for a third a cup of honey the recipe that i kind of adapted was third a cup of sugar so i just use the same amount of honey because remember in yeasted breads can always adjust the flour but i found that with that small amount of sweetener in yeast bread recipes i needed that sweetness that same amount of sweetness and so yes it made a little more liquid there but i could compensate with using a little extra flour so that's honey now there's uh recommendations about not feeding honey to children under two and um that that's your decision as far as putting the honey like raw on bread or toast or whatever but i just want to point out that once the bread is baked that is no longer an issue so if you are baking bread and you're using honey don't be afraid at all to give it to your toddler that may be less than two to eat because once it's baked but then you need to make the decision of whether you want to put a little honey on their bread for them to enjoy but general rule of thumb with honey i i'm not sure if you can tell as much uh from uh on the video here on the film but the darker the honey the stronger the flavor the lighter the honey the milder the flavor so uh you know if that makes a difference in your bread making you may want to choose a milder honey in some things but uh actually i use our honey that we have called the bakery grade honey that's what i use in most all of my baking we are in a somewhat of a honey crisis in this country actually kind of worldwide and some years ago you probably noticed as well honey prices shot way up so here at bread becker's we reached out to our supplier that's from omega georgia and asked them if they could find us a less expensive honey that would be perfect for baking and they did and it's called the bakery bakery grade honey and it doesn't mean it's a lesser grade of honey there's not grades of honey like there are in meats and eggs or milk or whatever but um all it is is it's just uh honey from a type of flower that's not very well known and not very popular so it's not like a wildflower clover orange blossom those are what are termed table honeys because people ask for them by variety the bakery honey comes from the brazilian pepper plant and it's not from brazil it doesn't come from brazil but it's a flowering plant that grows kind of vero beach florida and south very prolific i don't know if you're from around georgia listening to this but it's like our kudzu that once you plant it it just takes off i actually had the pleasure of of seeing the brazilian pepper plant in bloom when i was visiting florida a few years ago and it's quite prolific has a very long blooming season which gives the bees a chance to gather the nectar and make the honey so it's it's more prolific honey they get a lot more volume from it so it's able to be a little less expensive so it is a little bit stronger than say a clover or an orange blossom or a sage or tupelo but it works very well in all of my baking and if you make as much bread as i do you need something a little more economical so that's honey we sell it by the gallon which i recommend if you're going to start baking all of your own bread from freshly milled flour and stop using white sugar and substitute honey in your breads go ahead and get you a gallon because you'll be shocked at how fast you go through it so that's our honey honey a lot of people ask sometimes some varieties of honey are more prone to crystallization and if that happens it doesn't hurt the quality of the honey you just do melt it down and on that note i want to point out that much of the commercial honey that you'll buy in the grocery store has been pasteurized and the pasteurization destroys enzymes just like it does in other foods and some of the the nutrients in the honey that are naturally occurring but the reason they do that is so it destroys the the potential of that crystallization so it doesn't readily crystallize as much but for our purposes we really want to go with unpasteurized honey and a lot of people say well i'm going to bake with it so what does it matter because of the pasteurization destroying some of the enzymes you're not baking your bread you're not getting up to pasteurization temperature in fact if you think about it logically you may be baking your bread at 350 400 even some sourdoughs at 500 degrees but your internal temperature of your bread when it's done is only 180 about 190 degrees so unpasteurized raw honey to get the full benefits of the nutrients and all the goodness that god created there um lots of nutrients in honey don't just let somebody tell you it's no different than sugar lots of minerals lots of enzymes even some amino acids lots of just goodness for you so that's honey so it's easy easy to substitute we'll talk more later when we talk about quick breads that typically use a lot more honey than flour and in those instances i'll just go ahead and mention typically the general rule of substitution from sugar to honey is cut the honey amount in half so if you have a recipe that say calls for two cups of sugar i would cut it down and substitute a cup of honey maybe even a little less some of my quick bread recipes i use less than less than half so that is honey and just my sweetener of choice i use it where it works and in yeast breads and even most of my quick breads it works very very well now for oil there's plenty of good oils out there but i have chosen and prefer to use extra virgin olive oil and uh if it works and if it's real olive oil it does not lend a bitter or [Music] overpowering flavor to your breads what do i mean by real olive oil unfortunately olive oil again is a an industry that lacks integrity like unfortunately most of our food industry so much of the olive oil even what's labeled extra virgin olive oil on your shelves in the grocery store have been mixed with other oils and that's it's been out in the news and you can read it and find it for yourselves it's the literature is out there that it's just not what you think it is in fact we had an olive oil tested that we were selling years ago an extra virgin olive oil was labeled extra virgin olive oil and it had less than one percent olive oil in it so we found a supplier that is greek and our olive oil comes from small farms in the isle of crete and comes directly packaged from greece and we know that this is truly extra virgin olive oil i substitute it one for one in my recipes any recipe that calls for oil i'm gonna use extra virgin olive oil i love the flavor and it's so good for you and uh the thing about olive oil and what how it is uh can be labeled extra virgin it's it's based on an acidity it has to be .8 percent or less and our olive oil we have several varieties in uh coming from different farms in greece and they are 0.5 or less which makes it an even better quality extra virgin olive oil we think you'll love our x our olive oils any of the ones that you can purchase so that is our basic list of getting started items for freshly milled flour baking with freshly milled flour for yeasted breads breads that use yeast and let me just put this little note in here a lot of interest this past year especially on sourdough bread so sour dough is still um a yeast leavened bread yes it's natural yeast and with lactobacillus bacteria mix that makes that bread rise but you still need that high protein that development of that stretchy substance called gluten to capture that carbon dioxide and enable the bread to rise so whether you're using commercial yeast or sourdough if you are using a leavening a natural leavening or yeasted leavening you still need your hard wheat varieties hard red hard white are my choices okay so in this segment we're going to discuss more your ingredients for quick breads cakes cookies muffins biscuits pancakes those type of breads so last segment we talked about yeasted breads hard wheat soft wheat in this segment we're going to be focusing mostly on soft wheat soft wheat again as a refresher is your high moisture lower protein grain because you don't really want that protein gluten development in your cakes cookies muffins pancakes those type of breads you don't want that stretch in that and you don't need it necessarily it's funny i always tell people if you think about it logically hard wheat is grown more in your colder drier climates bread basket states of america soft wheat is grown more in your wetter warmer climates and soft wheat is really the only type of wheat that can grow here in the southeastern united states i mean outside of rye and some other varieties of wheat but soft wheat is is what we get so if you think about it why are southern states and southern uh traditions more centered around biscuits cakes cookies i don't think there's a southern grandma out there that doesn't have a famous cake recipe under you know that she's known for so think about that logically soft wheat cakes cookies biscuits pie dough will work much better now i do have to say this for the first three years of my milling life i only had hard red wheat and i made everything that was made from flour because when we switched we switched completely so it will work but once i discovered soft wheat i noticed the texture of my cakes the texture of my cookies was more moist not as crumbly and not as dense so that's what soft wheat will do for your cakes cookies muffins pancakes pie dough biscuits so let's talk about soft wheat again we talked about the packaging the way we package grains here at bread becker so i'm not going to go over that again but if you know your family is going to make a lot of cakes biscuits cookies muffins brownies those types of things i would recommend getting a big bucket of soft wheat this is the cheapest and most economical way to buy the grains i love red lids on my red wheat white lids on my white wheat and i'm very patriotic so i put a blue gamma lid on my soft wheat so those that's just some ideas for you of purchasing soft wheat now again we have it in the two pound bags and we have it in the one gallon pail so whatever works for you financially economically just know though the cheapest most economical way is going to always to be to buy the the big six gallon bucket and no it is storable so anyway that's the best way to buy your soft wheat again do not put your baggies just in your pantry unprotected now just like with hard wheat there's two varieties red wheat and white wheat with soft wheat at bread bakers we do have two varieties of soft wheat we have soft white and we have soft red soft white is the predominant soft wheat that i use and just like in the hard red i mean in the hard wheat variety of red and white red is more flavorful white is more mild and bland so if you're making grandma's pound cake or a white cake or some type of cake or a cookie or a pie dough or biscuit that you don't want a lot of flavor then the soft white wheat is going to be your choice now here at bread becker's our soft red wheat is georgia grown we don't always have it on ham but most of we can get it uh most of the time so it is in stock most of the time but just know it is organic and it's georgia grown all of our soft wheat here at bread backers is organic so the red wheat here if i'm making an oatmeal cookie that i like that rich nutty flavor or a muffin or a pancake that i love that rich flavor of the red wheat soft wheat is gonna soft red wheat is gonna give me that soft soft texture fluffier texture and uh but give me that red wheat flavor that i love now if you make your pancakes or waffles out of soft white wheat your kids probably won't even know that it's not white flour so that's a great way to ease your family into the whole idea of freshly milled grains so that is soft wheat remember high moisture low protein for your non-yeasted breads so let's talk about sweeteners again here so for sweeteners for my muffins my coffee cake now i don't put sweetener in pancakes but if you do those types of quick breads not and a bread that doesn't use yeast is called quick bread maybe we should go over that first i kind of jumped to the sweeteners because they were right here beside me but let's go over what is our leavening in a quick bread unlike yeast yeasted breads that take time for that yeast to feed on the wheat and produce that carbon dioxide and that's what enables the bread to rise and that's why you have to let it sit for a while to rise quick breads are called just that because they use baking powder oftentimes they may add some baking soda as well but the baking powder is the predominant leavening in your quick breads and it's instant as soon as that uh baking powder is hits the uh is hits the liquid or the liquid hits the baking powder it is activated and and that that dough your batter or whatever will begin to rise immediately and then again in the oven it will rise even more so that's why it's called a quick bread so baking powder a non-aluminum baking powder is what you're going to use in your quick breads and like i said some recipes may call for some baking soda as well if you use baking soda you've got to have some type of acid honey is acid but typically in those recipes you'll have some buttermilk or yogurt or something like that but for just your basic um quick breads your baking powder is what's going to be the leavening again it produces carbon dioxide but it's but it's instant as soon as that that batter is wet the you need to uh when you're making quick bread you always want to mix your baking powder baking soda salt and any spices or whatever in with your flour get it good and mixed in because like i said as soon as that this baking powder gets wet it clumps up and it's activated so you don't want clump of baking powder or your leavening just hitting you know you want it distributed throughout that flour so you don't get that clump of baking powder but anyway so that's the leavening again i use real salt in all my recipes so that we do we're not going to go over that again but i substitute it one for one in any recipe that calls for salt so now let's talk about sweeteners so i will always use honey where honey will work muffins coffee cake those types of quick breads i use honey as my sweetener in quick breads you typically find that there's a lot more sugar in a conventional white flour white sugar recipe so for quick breads the substitution for honey is going to be cut that honey in half so like a banana bread traditional white flour white sugar banana red breast bread recipe it usually calls for two cups of sugar i bring that down to three quarters of a cup of honey you could do a cup if you wanted a little sweetener but i sweeter i find three quarters of cup works just fine so the general rule of thumb is to cut the honey in half when you're substituting again flavor we talked about that last time sometimes in my coffee cake or muffins if i'm using a soft white wheat that has doesn't have as much flavor as the red i may choose a milder honey than the bakery grade honey like like clove or something that's a little sweeter so i usually have some amount of of a milder flavored honey around if you don't want two jugs then i would go with the clover but the bakery is honey is so much more economical so that's my basic muffins coffee cake banana bread pumpkin bread those types of recipes now we move into cookies now for for cookies my sweetener of choice to be diverted a little bit or i had to get a little find a little uh another sweetener that would adapt a little better to my cookies and cakes and things like that so often times in cookies and cakes they may use more sugar than flour so these might be recipes that we we uh eat in moderation but honey just seemed to make a cookie dough sticky and wet and i had to add more flour and then it ended up being more cakey than a chewy crispy soft cookie so and the same with cake like my grandma's sour cream pound cake recipe calls for three cups of sugar putting three cups of honey in that or even reducing that to a cup and a half still gave me a very liquid batter so years ago i did find some evaporated cane juice sweeteners the darker sweetener is called sukanat and that is the juice of the sugar cane extracted all the molasses everything is still there it's boiled into a syrup and then only the moisture evaporated off so your sukanat is a wonderful brown sugar substitute it's got a nice rich flavor not nearly as sweet as as white sugar or even brown sugar but it just adds a nice rich flavor to your cookies and i think you'll find that you like your cookies better made with freshly ground flour and your sukanat as a sweetener if your recipe calls for brown sugar say a streusel topping on my coffee cake that was another thing we loved coffee cake for breakfast i couldn't make a streusel topping out of honey so i was very excited when i found this little more little less processed sweetener to make my streusel topping out of so great for substituting anywhere you would use brown sugar so for white sugar i discovered honey granules now in my red book the bread becker's recipe collection you might see this called sukanat with honey sukanat is a brand name of evaporated cane juice and it's uh it's by wholesome sweeteners and we used to carry sukanot with honey by wholesome sweeteners now we care we get it from a different supplier so we have to call it honey granules in my essential home ground flower book i call this dark evaporated cane juice is what we call sukanat light evaporated cane juice is what we call sukanot with honey or honey granules you may see it by those different names so dark evaporated cane juice light evaporated cane juice why is this light take the juice of the sugar cane boil it into a syrup remove the molasses add a mild honey to that syrup evaporate the moisture off so that's why it's called honey granules there is some honey in here a lot of people mistake it and think it's just evaporated honey it is not it is still an evaporated cane juice product but this is a less processed less refined sweetener than your white sugar but an excellent substitute for white sugar and the nice thing about these sweeteners you substitute them one for one and they really don't change the texture or the moisture in the recipe so especially if i'm trying a recipe for the first time just want to see what the texture is like or i've got company coming for dinner and i'm making a new cookie recipe i will go with these sweeteners over honey because i know i will get the same basic results and texture one for one honey granules is a great white sugar substitute i use it in my grandma's sour cream pound cake cheesecake any place that i would use white sugar you can use it in baking with your bread but again i always choose honey if honey will work because it truly is an unref completely unrefined sweetener so sukanat and honey granules suck not brown sugar honey granules white sugar substitutes one for one cakes cookies wherever you want to put them so that is my sweeteners of choice for my quick breads mostly my cakes and cookies my oil most times your quick breads will call for some type of oil of course biscuits and cookies and cakes are going to call for butter typically most most cakes some like carrot cake and spice cakes they may call for oil again if it calls for a liquid oil i will use olive oil and that will be my choice but then in a cake or a cookie that calls for butter i'm going to use real butter and i've chosen to use unsalted butter so that because the butter that's salted in the store is using refined salt so that then i can put in my real salt the other oil that i might use is coconut oil if your family needs to go dairy free or you just want to use coconut oil or you go to make cookies and you don't have butter you can always use coconut oil one for one and coconut oil the melting point is about 78 degrees so it can be a great liquid oil if you need a liquid substitute but it can be a solid oil for your butter and cookies and i and i use it one for one for recipes where i do substitute unsalted butter or coconut oil i do find that i typically have to increase the salt just slightly about half again as much as the recipe calls for so that is my oils my fats my sugars baking powder my sweeteners and then soft wheat for your cakes cookies biscuits pie dough muffins i think you'll enjoy it okay so one last thing before we move on from quick breads is especially cakes and cookies biscuits when you're substituting your freshly milled soft wheat flour for white flour in a recipe soft wheat flour is higher moisture lower protein than your commercial white flours so what i have discovered is you do need to increase uh the flour used in the recipe when you're going to substitute your freshly milled soft wheat flour for instance and it and here's the the ratio that i found that works pretty much all the time for every cup of white flour called for in a recipe you need to increase when you're using soft wheat flour by a quarter cup so if your recipe calls for a cup of white flour and you're going to use freshly milled soft wheat flour whether white or red you're going to do a cup and a quarter of freshly milled soft wheat flour does that and it's because of the moisture content there now if your recipe is by weight so it calls for so many grams or so many ounces of flour then just weigh your soft wheat flour the exact same amount of weight called for in the recipe and then mill it into flour and use all of that flour you don't need to increase the weight if you measured that out the reason you don't know how have to have to change it if your recipe is by weight is because the volume fixes itself so if you weighed the white flour and weighed the soft wheat flour you would find that the soft wheat flour has more flour for that same weight does that make sense so i hope that helps you will find every cookie recipe works beautifully increasing a quarter cup for every cup called for so let's say a cookie recipe usually calls for two cups of flour white flour so we're going to use two and a half cups of soft wheat flour freshly milled soft wheat flour and then for me it usually calls for a cup of brown sugar cup of white sugar i'll use a cup of sukanat and a cup of honey granules in an oatmeal cookie i might use all brown sugar whatever you normally do for your cookies that's your substitute increase the soft wheat by a quarter cup for every cup use equivalent equal amounts of honey granules or soukinot for your brown sugar and your white sugar and i think you'll like the cookies the cakes the cheesecake even better so enjoy your baking with freshly milled soft wheat flour okay in the previous segments we've covered hard weed and soft wheat and yeasted bread and quick breads but there are so many other great grains out there besides just wheat that you will enjoy learning to use in all your baking and two of my favorite grains are actually a type of wheat spelt and commute i don't deny that there are wheat sensitivities out there i don't think quite as prevalent as we're being told or is being promoted i think much of the problem is the commercially processed white flour and we've had so many testimonies people that think they need to go gluten-free or even need to go no wheat when they start using freshly milled flour they have no problems at all but those that may be a little sensitive or just want to use some other variety we love both spelt and kamut which are ancient varieties of wheat spelt i particularly love uh it has the nutty red flavor that you've already probably discovered that i really love but spelt is almost the best of both worlds it is high moisture like soft wheat so if you use it as a substitute in your cookies or muffins or anything like that then you typically have to increase the flour just like with soft wheat quarter cup for every cup of white flour called for so in a cookie recipe you would use a cup and a half of spelt flour for your cup of white flour but it has that rich nutty nutty flavor but spelt also makes great yeasted breads and like i said for people that may be a little more sensitive to the more modern wheats which there's nothing wrong with the modern wheats despite what you've read wheat is not genetically modified so wheat spelt is a more ancient grain and little different protein structure that may be more easy to digest one thing i also want to mention here so many people just think of milling grains into flour grains can be boiled whole and eaten just like you would eat rice or boiled whole and drained and make a vegetable salad with grains as your base chop up some great vegetables and toss a dressing over it very very delicious and on that note one of my favorite grains to eat whole and boiled or put in soups and stews instead of rice is kamut now kamut is the grandfather of durum wheat durum wheat is your pasta making wheat so so much of the commute now even grown in this country is actually sold to the pasta industry to make pasta but kamut is a delicious grain i love it to mill it into flour i usually i use it in my tortillas i use it in muffins typically i i mix it with some other wheat i love red white camut combination usually equal parts of each one to make my yeasted breads or it makes also great like french bread something that you don't need a big rise on but mostly what people love about kamut is making their pasta out of kamut again i love to boil it i put it in my chicken soup instead of pasta or rice the nice thing about kamut is it stays intact even if it's boiled a lot or left in that chicken soup a lot instead of like rice that gets kind of mushy so those are two grains you may want to experiment with and maybe just buy a two pound bag at first to start with instead of a big six gallon bucket but i think you'll enjoy experimenting with kamut and spelt like i said i love both my favorite combination right now is uh two parts red and one part kamut is what i use a lot to make my bread okay so another recipe that is in both my the red book here the bread becker's recipe collection and my book the essential home ground flour book is ezekiel bread very very popular there's many many many variations but years ago long before i even started milling my grain i read a book called god's recipe and in there she felt like god had given her the proportions of the ingredients listed in ezekiel chapter 4 verse 9. the proportions for wheat spelt barley millet lentils and beans those ingredients are listed in ezekiel 4 verse 9 where god tells ezekiel to take wheat spelt barley millet lentils and beans put them into one vessel and make a cake out of it now i i kind of interpret that one vessel is well this is our one vessel right now and uh that because each of those grains were used independently they made bread out of barley they made bread out of wheat they made bread out of spelt depending on the harvest season and and what was available they ate beans they ate lentils but god wanted them to mix them all together and make this cake now the thing that's so interesting about this combination of grains and beans that i adapted from that original recipe that i got read many years ago is a combination of grains and beans makes a complete protein what that means is the few amino acids that are missing in grains they are found in beans the few amino acids that are lower in your beans you can find them in your grains so when you put these grains and beans together this makes a complete protein so i love the ezekiel bread the ezekiel bread recipe found in either one of my books is a yeasted bread but it is a batter bread it is a sweet bread it's called a fasting bread mostly just because it appears that ezekiel fasted on this bread you do not have too fast to eat this bread in fact it is one of my favorite breads to have in the morning and most times just a nice slab of of ezekiel bread toasted with some butter is all i need sometimes i'll add a smoothie or something like that with it but it's a delicious very nourishing bread now it is not a sandwich bread texture and so for that reason my kids kind of were like yeah we like the ezekiel bread but you can't make a sandwich and it it does kind of crumble and fall apart after a day or two but i loved the combination of grains and beans there so i discovered taking this ezekiel mix mixing it up very very well so i had even distribution of all the grains and the beans and the millet and then i use this flour in my cookies in my muffins and one of my favorites is in my brownies so instead of using soft wheat or hard wheat or anything i use ezekiel mixture for that and then when my kids are eating something like that they're getting a complete protein i'll even use this flour this combination the ezekiel mix combination as the flour in my basic bread dough makes a little different texture bread uses a little more flour than just your hard red or hard white but it makes a delicious sandwich texture bread instead of just using it in the ezekiel bread recipe one thing i haven't gone over earlier that i just thought of i want to bring your attention for most grains this is um the proportions that you'll get for every cup of grain when you mill it into flour you're going to get about a cup and a half of flour for most of your grain soft wheat will be a little more spelt will be a little bit more because they're higher moisture but pretty much you can calculate it by that so for me i only mill the grain the amount of flour that i need for a recipe and i may have a little bit left over but that's okay so what i do with my ezekiel mix is and this is the reason i remembered to tell you about that so i'll stir it up really well so i get that good cross section and if i'm going to use this ezekiel flower say in my pancake recipe that calls for three cups of flour i'll mill two cups of ezekiel mixture and that will give me three cups of flour to substitute for the reg for the flour in my pancake recipe so i use ezekiel mix a lot and it's just a great great grain combination to have on hand in fact brad and i are kind of known places for our ezekiel mix pancakes back this sunday we're going to be making them for our church for breakfast so it's just a great grain to have on hand great storable food if you want to just buy the packages already mixed up we sell it like this this is one recipe in our cookbooks if you're going to make the ezekiel bread recipe just like it is in the cookbook you'll use all of the grain in this bag mill it into flour and you'll use all of the flour but if you want to use it and substitute it in other recipes just mix it up well use it mill however much you need for that recipe then if if i have a bag on hand and i've used part of it i'll make a little mark on here exiting it out so that i know that it's not a full recipe but here at bret becker's we sell it in the bags like this that is one recipe of the grains and beans listed just like it is in the cookbook but we also because i've been promoting it so much to use it in muffins pancakes cookies brownies in other places to get that wonderful combination of grains and beans we also sell it in the one gallon pail three recipes worth just all mixed up and dumped in there so if you know that you're going to use it more for cookies and pancakes and brownies then i would recommend buying a pail we do sell buckets that have 17 individual bags in it as well but it's i do want to mention again that it is the ezekiel mixture of grains and beans is a wonderful food storage preparedness mixture of grains and beans if you buy all the ingredients in say buckets then you've got a wonderful cross-section of grains and beans that you can use not just to mix up for ezekiel mix but you have beans that you can boil and eat you've got lentils that you can boil and eat and you've got millet that you can use in other things speaking of millet millet is another grain that i really discovered later on after i had started milling my grains millet in this country you can look at it and maybe uh recognize it as that little yellow seed that you find in your bird seed millet is a staple grain in asian countries india this is their breakfast cereal their breakfast porridge they boil it and eat it much like we would eat oatmeal millet is a very nutritious grain one that i enjoy incorporating it anywhere i can it's high in b vitamins it's easy to digest excellent baby food excellent say elderly food people that have digestive issues just so good you can boil it and eat it or the nice thing about millet is it's so small and easy to crunch you can throw it in whole in your bread dough in your muffins in your pancakes and your cookies even in granola and it'll add that little nice crunch but you can be getting this good wholesome millet into your diet so i my basic muffin recipe when i discovered millet i just started throwing a quarter cup of whole millet in my basic muffin recipe that i had been making for years so millet is a great grain that you might want to have a little bit on hand i can i boil it and eat it you can make it creamy with milk and water and add cinnamon and say eat it more like oatmeal or you can boil it just like you would rice it doesn't take as long to cook as your other whole grains it only takes about 20 or 30 minutes and substitute it like rice and there's just so many things that you can do with millet and i hope you'll enjoy it and incorporate it somewhere in your diet it's just a great great grain it is naturally gluten free so you won't make a yeasted bread out of millet because it does not have that protein structure that is specific to wheat family but it is great to have on hand to incorporate in your other baking recipes corn i'm a southerner we grew up on cornbread and biscuits not very much yeasted bread in fact my mother never made yeast of bread and she was a great cook and a great biscuit maker but corn is a great cornbread corn muffins and especially you southerners will love it when you first when you taste it freshly milled the commercial corn meal and corn flour in the store of course has had the bread and germ stripped out just like your commercial white flour so the flavor in freshly milk corn is absolutely delicious just like wheat there's varieties of corn there's white corn and yellow corn and guess what just like wheat there's it's a different flavor thing and i tell people think of red grapes and green grapes what's the difference different variety flavor green apples red apples what's the difference flavor so don't over complicate and get this all confused different varieties different flavors so white corn is going to be a little more bland your yellow corn is going to have a little more flavor and again just like with my wheat i'll use these where i want flavor if i'm doing a mexican cornbread that's going to have some hot pepper jack cheese and some chilies i'll probably use white corn because i want a more mellow flavor by making my southern mother's cornbread dressing or just a traditional cornbread i like the richer flavor of the yellow corn now let's just briefly talk about the two types of corn this one you can see i hope from from the camera you can tell this is a bigger kernel of corn it's got a little indention right there where the seed attaches to the cob this is known as field corn or dent corn ground in the commercial the electric mills that we have we recommend here at bret becker's you're going to get a nice fluffy flower out of the dent corn or field corn same basic flavor whether it's white or yellow as popcorn popcorn on the other hand it's a little it's a variety of corn that is very compact and so when you heat it that moisture in there makes it explode and that's why it's popcorn but you can use popcorn to mill into flour and make your cornbread or your corn muffins or whatever just like your dent corn or field corn so if you don't want two varieties of corn around then just buy popcorn again white corn white popcorn a little milder flavor yellow popcorn little a little more flavor but now here's the difference when you mill these into flour because early on our meals that we recommend mill the flour so fine and so soft your dent corn or your field corn is going to give you a very fluffy fine corn flour and people were like i want a little more texture i want something closer to cornmeal than you want popcorn if you mill it same settings in the electric wonder mill um you're gonna find you'll get a little coarser cornmeal if you mill popcorn so those are the different corns and i hope you'll try some freshly milled cornbread for grits i don't use a grain mill an electric flour mill to mill my grits i just use a blender grits are a little more coarse and i just use a blender for that and a big blender if you need to do a lot of grits but just a small little instant blender works very well if i'm just doing a small amount of grits corn is poor man's food it only takes about a cup of corn to mill into grits to me feed my whole family when my kids were all at home of nine and they got seconds of grits it wasn't just a little tiny helping so a little bit goes a long way when you're making grits but i hope you'll try it and those of you that think you don't like grits i do hope you'll try some freshly ground grits flavor is totally different than again the white grits that are in the store stripped of all the bran and germ and of course just leaving you the starchy part all right that takes us to one of the last grains i want to go over today as different grains that you may want to try even if you're just getting started oats are very very popular and the thing about oats is the fiber in oats are in every layer so that's why we do sell rolled oats it's the only processed grain that we sell here at bread becker's and this is what i mean by a rolled oat it is just an oat groat this is your oat groat that has been flattened oats are very soft grain you can actually pop them in your mouth chew them up very very easily unlike your weed and some of these other grains that are so hard and so when you run oats through a roller mill that will flatten them into rolled oats or what some people know as oatmeal so we do sell both here at bread becker's oat groats and rolled oats oat groats are what you want if you want to roll your own which we sell attachments that you can roll your own fresh as you're ready to use it or if you want to use oat flour it's a very high moisture oats are very sweet and uh just very nice grain and makes wonderful cakes and can substitute in cookies and things like that a little crumbly so you usually have to mix it with some wheat flour as well or some type of other flour but oats are just a great grain you can boil these oat groats and eat them whole takes about an hour to cook so you might can see why they started rolling them and making rolled oats that only take about 15 minutes to cook so that's our oats of course oats are great to use in granola rolled oats are great to use in granola cookies oatmeal cookies and oats are so high in fiber and so so good for you they're high in lecithin and they're high in a type of fiber called beta glucans which is which is very very slowly broken down in in your gut and that's why oats have such a reputation of stick to your ribs you eat a bowl of oatmeal you're not going to be hungry for a while so that's our oats one last thing before we close out this segment that i want to call your attention to you may notice that some of our grains have white labels and some have green labels the green labels is a designation for organic certified organic the white label is a designation for just a commercial grown grain not organic so that's our labeling system and yeah so that you can look for on our website or when you come in our store last but not least our two cookbooks the recipe collection is uh just what it's called early on in the way back in 1992 when we first started our business and brad and i my husband and i and our children our family would go and do conventions and homeschool shows or whatever we would cook and we would serve cookies and bread and cakes and coffee cake and all these things and everybody wanted the recipes so eventually my daughter ashley and i got together and we put together a collection of all of uh our some of our favorite favorite recipes there's more in here than just just baked goods there's some salads and and different things even a section a little section on dehydration because those were things that i loved in the early days and those were recipes that i was sharing as we went out and about and then in 2015 i was contacted by a publishing company and they wanted to do a book publish a book on home flower milling and i was asked to write that book so this is the essential home ground flower book very um excited about this book it was a real work of of pro a process of work but it has so much more information it does have some of the nutritional information that those have that have heard me speak and teach will know that i'm very passionate about has a whole section on different grains and beans and baking qualities of those explanation of the wheat goes through the baking ingredients just like we've talked about here today both books actually do that but this one in so much more detail and then over a hundred baking recipes all the baking recipes in this book are in here but there's more than baking in this collection so but many many more as well so we hope you've enjoyed our basic list of getting started items we hope that you are not overwhelmed but that this will help you in your journey to better understand what you need what types of grain work well for different recipes so thank you for joining us again i'm sue becker with the bread beckers and we're here to help you on this journey to good health and freshly milled flour

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Length: 74min 49sec (4489 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021