COOKING WITH FRESH FLOUR

HOW TO USE THESE RECIPES

The recipes in this book are divided into four chapters: bread, pasta, pizza, and pastry. Each chapter starts with an explanation of how to choose the right grain for a recipe, how to mill and sift flour, and other details that will help you use the recipes that follow and take away what you learn in order to embrace freshly milled flour as a regular part of your cooking. Many of the recipes provide tips for customizing, either with alternative flour choices or with additional ingredients for a different flavor. At the end of the pasta and pizza chapters, I include recipes for sauces and toppings, respectively. You’ll notice that some recipes are intentionally spread across multiple pages so that the steps appear adjacent to their matching photo to help you get the most out of this book.

COOKING TIPS

Always read the entire recipe before beginning to cook. Some recipes require time-sensitive prep work, which will be mentioned in the headnote. A number of recipes include levain (this page) or biga (this page), which must be prepared in advance; other recipes have long fermentation periods that you must take into account.

I have written the recipes with metric measurements for ingredients and US units for standard baking trays and dishes. I strongly urge you to use a digital metric scale in order to achieve the most successful results.

Most of the bread and pizza doughs should be mixed in a stand mixer, but shaping is done by hand. This puts you in direct contact with the dough and forges a bond between you and the final product. Handling the dough will also give you a greater understanding of how flour and water react, what happens to the dough as it ferments, how strong it is, and when it is perfectly risen. Learn the basic methods I recommend and feel free to make small changes in your cooking as necessary to accommodate any differences in the type of flour you are using.

In addition to these suggestions, I urge you to commit your most precious resource: time. Practice your craft. Your favorite bakers didn’t become who they are by chance; they focused on honing their skills and committed themselves to revisiting and improving recipes and techniques.

EQUIPMENT

If you bought this book, you are already on your way to making better bread, pasta, pizza, and pastry, but there are a few cooking implements that will be helpful as you get started. Odds are, you already have some of them in your kitchen. A handful of recipes call for special equipment—a banneton for proofing yeasted and sourdough loaves, for example—but most can be adapted to items you already have. When possible I have provided alternatives for special equipment.

DIGITAL SCALE

Before you even start thinking about milling at home, get the tool that will give you the most consistent results. If you are not willing to invest in this very affordable and essential item, this project isn’t going to work. A scale will give you a precision baseline to build on. Ideally, you want a scale that displays at least one digit to the right of the decimal point. If your grandma, like mine, never measured anything, remember that she had decades of experience. Using a scale will help you get there faster. Metric measurements are more precise, which is why you’ll notice that I haven’t included US measurements unless the quantity doesn’t need to be precise.

For making bread, pizza, and pastries, weighing ingredients is a crucial step to success. Baking, after all, is an exact science. Cup measures can vary significantly and different flours have slightly differing weights per cup, so using a digital scale is the only foolproof method for ensuring you’ll achieve the intended results. For pasta making, precise measurements are slightly less crucial.

BOWLS

You’ll need small, medium, and large bowls, preferably glass, stainless steel, or plastic, for mixing doughs, levain, and biga.

BAKING SHEETS

Baking sheets come in different sizes, the most versatile being a rimmed half-sheet (13 × 18 inches). These recipes were developed and tested with half-sheets, but in most cases, any size should work fine.

PARCHMENT PAPER

You’ll need parchment paper to line springform pans, roll out pie dough and butter blocks, line baking sheets, and transfer dough onto a preheated surface in the oven.

SIEVE

A mesh sieve is essential for sifting flour. I use a #70 mesh to extract my flour.

POTS AND PANS

The recipes in this book that call for specific baking vessels were tested using the following equipment:

BENCH SCRAPER

A bench scraper (also known as a dough scraper) is useful for handling and transferring dough. Think of it as a nonstick extension of your own hands. It also works wonders for cleaning your work surface, dividing dough into pieces, and cutting ingredients together, as in the case of Potato Gnocchi (this page). It’s also a handy tool for scraping up excess flour from the work surface, which I recommend you collect in a container to use as bench flour (see the tip on this page).

MIXERS

Most of the bread and pizza recipes require a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment, while many of the pastry recipes employ the paddle. A KitchenAid or similar mixer can be fitted with the Mockmill attachment (see this page) for milling fresh flour.

BAKING STONES, PEELS, AND RACKS

For evenly baked bread and pizza, use a baking stone. Inverted baking sheets or unglazed quarry tiles make good substitutes. In all cases, you’ll want to preheat the stone, baking sheet, or tiles in the oven at the recommended baking temperature for at least 45 minutes before you bake. Doing so ensures that you will transfer the dough to the ideal surface for even cooking.

A peel is used to smoothly transfer bread or pizza dough to and from the baking surface in the oven. You can improvise a peel with a flat, thin wooden board or a rimless baking sheet; even a piece of cardboard or plywood, or a basic metal sheet will do.

To ensure your final product doesn’t get damp and steamy after baking, set it aside on a cooling rack until cooled.

SHAPING LINEN AND PROOFING BASKETS

A couche is a stiff baking linen that is used to shape baguettes and other loaves during their final proofing phase. To prepare the couche, fold the linen lengthwise to form two valleys. Dust the valleys liberally with a rice flour mixture (see this page), bench flour (see the tip on this page), or bran, then fit the shaped dough into the valleys to proof. Baguettes (this page) go through their final proofing in an 18 × 24-inch couche.

Use a banneton, or proofing basket, to help loaves hold their shape as they ferment. The Yeasted Loaf (this page) is proofed in a 2-kilogram basket. The Sourdough Loaf (this page) and Sourdough Durum Loaf (this page) are proofed in two 1-kilogram bannetons.

A couche and bannetons are indispensable tools for the bread baker and are sold at specialty kitchen and baking stores or online.

BAKER’S LAME

A baker’s lame is a blade that is used to slice the surface of raw dough in order to control its expansion as it bakes. Use a baker’s lame or a serrated knife to slice the surface of the Yeasted Loaf (this page) and Baguettes (this page).

THERMOMETERS

A probe thermometer is essential for monitoring the temperature of the flour as it is milled. It is also handy for monitoring a dough’s temperature during the fermentation process to ensure it is within the suggested range. There are a number of recipes for which hitting a certain temperature range is essential, including the Sourdough Loaf, Sourdough Durum Loaf, Potato Rolls, and Whole Wheat Croissants. An oven thermometer is useful for calibrating home ovens (see this page).

PASTA-MAKING TOOLS

The basic utensils for the pasta recipes are a rolling pin and a work surface. None of these recipes require special equipment, although if you wish to speed up the kneading process, you can do so by passing the dough through a pasta machine.

If you don’t have a pasta wheel for cutting ravioli, use a cookie cutter or a sharp knife instead.

The doughs for Potato Gnocchi (this page) and Passatelli (this page) both call for a potato ricer.

A spray bottle or a brush is helpful for sealing ravioli and applying oil to some doughs.

AIRTIGHT CONTAINERS

Store wheat berries and milled flour in airtight containers to ensure maximum freshness.

INGREDIENTS

EGGS

Unless otherwise stated, my recipes call for large eggs. I recommend using farm-fresh organic eggs whenever possible. Some of the recipes list egg quantities in metric units. In cases where such precision isn’t essential, the recipe simply lists the number of eggs. A whole large egg weighs approximately 60 grams; the yolk weighs about 20 grams and the white around 40 grams.

FILTERED WATER

Tap water can contain chlorine and/or fluoride and varies in mineral content and temperature. For the most consistent results, I always use filtered water.

OIL

Unless otherwise noted, always use extra-virgin olive oil. For greasing bowls and baking sheets, use this or any other neutral oil like grapeseed, canola, peanut, soybean, or corn.

SALT

Salt, which enhances flavor while taming fermentation, is an essential ingredient in doughs. Always use sea salt unless otherwise noted.

YEAST

Yeast is a single-cell fungus that can be culled from nature to make levain (this page) or purchased in ready-to-use form. Fresh compact yeast and active dry yeast use the same fungus to ferment the dough. Fresh compact yeast, also known as cake yeast and fresh compressed yeast, has a small amount of water in it, so when you add it to the dough it blends easily. Active dry yeast, on the other hand, must be dissolved in water to be activated.

With all of this information, what you already have in your kitchen, and your curiosity and love for delicious food, you are ready to start your own Flour Lab!