The very best source I have found for fresh, flavorful, extra-fine chestnut flour without any smoky flavor. They also make a coarser stone-ground chestnut flour. The recipes in this book use extra-fine flour.
Rustic aromatic buckwheat flour.
Organic white and brown rice flours. Regular grind rather than superfine. These flours may give less light and delicate results than superfine flours in some recipes, but they are completely acceptable unless otherwise indicated in the recipe.
A great source for superfine flours: white and brown rice, white corn, sorghum, and more.
Bob’s Red Mill makes every kind of flour imaginable, including corn flour, oat flour, white and brown rice flour, coconut flour, sorghum flour, teff flour, buckwheat flour, and xanthan gum. Their rice, sorghum, and corn flours are regular grind and may therefore give less light and delicate results than superfine flours in some recipes; however, they are completely acceptable unless otherwise indicated in the recipe.
Great collection of specialty sugars—including raw, coarse crystal, and colored decorating sugars—as well as herbs, spices, and seasonings.
Cake and tart pans, kitchen utensils, scales, digital scales, parchment paper sheets, flours, xanthan gum, specialty sugars, and more.
A favorite purveyor of specialty foods and ingredients, with retail stores in Oakland and Berkeley, California. Market Hall has a subspecialty in baking ingredients, including chocolates and cocoa, honeys, nuts, pastes, specialty sugars, premium candied fruit and citrus peels, preserves, a variety of chestnut products, and much more.
225 West 146th Street
Gardena, CA 90248
800-736-8443
Equipment for the baker, including my favorite Magic Line cake pans, which are available in myriad sizes, three depths, with and without removable bottoms. You can shop at the Parrish store in Gardena, but there is no dedicated website. Call for a catalogue and order by phone. Wasserstrom (www.wasserstrom.com) also carries some Parrish cake pans.
This impeccable spice source sells every kind of herb, spice, and seasoning imaginable. The catalogue alone is an education in flavor ingredients and their uses.
Purveyor of all kinds of baking supplies and utensils, including digital scales, Magic Line pans, and fluted tart pans with removable bottoms, as well as scales.
Brown and ivory teff grains and flour, plus recipes, history, and information about teff.
Pure organic, sustainable vanilla extract and vanilla beans. The Vanilla Company promotes pure vanilla and those who grow it worldwide.
Your favorite health food and natural food stores and high-end grocery stores will carry special flours, nuts, and seeds in packages or in bulk. Big-box stores are also good sources of fresh and well-priced nuts.
Asian grocery stores carry the finest grind and most economical white rice flour and sweet rice flour (also known as glutinous rice flour) from Thailand. If you do not live near an Asian grocery, you can find Thai flour online at Amazon.com, efooddepot.com, or asianfoodssuperstore.com. Look for the Erawan brand (marketed by Erawan Marketing in Bangkok) that was used in testing for this book or for the Flying Horse brand. Note that Thai rice flour bags are color-coded: red printing on the label for regular white rice flour; green printing for sweet rice flour.
Restaurant supply stores are treasure troves for reasonably priced sturdy pans and utensils.
My colleague Maya and I both measured by weight in our separate kitchens so that we always knew that we were measuring the same ingredient in the same way. To translate our weights into cups and spoons, we agreed on one method for using measuring cups (click here) and then weighed multiple cups of each flour to establish an average per-cup weight for each kind of flour from which to derive volume measurements.
We weighed several cups of each flour straight from new bags and from open bags or canisters that had been sitting for a while. We did not reweigh previously measured flour or put it back into the bag or canister before we had finished the whole weighing experiment. Why? Because flour gets looser and fluffier every time you handle it: one level cup of flour dumped out and remeasured will weigh less than before, because it won’t all fit back in the cup! In fact, after measuring and weighing all of the flour from the bag it came in, cup by cup, it wouldn’t fit back in the bag unless we shook and rapped the bag against the counter to settle and compact it.
Our average actual weights for some of the flours were consistent with the information on the back of the flour bag: that is, if the serving size on the nutritional panel was ¼ cup (30 grams), our cup of that flour actually weighed 120 grams. But our weights for other flours were considerably different from the information on the bag. After much consideration, we decided to go with our own actual weights.
It has to be said that our translation from weights to cups and tablespoons is quirky at times because we chose not to round up to the nearest ¼ or ⅓ cup if rounding up made too much difference to the true weight. We used the following weights per cup of flour to determine the volume measures for our recipes. But when all is said and done, your results will be most similar to those we got in our own kitchens if you measure all of your flours with a scale. Once you start, I guarantee you’ll never go back.
The following weights reflect average weights of purchased flours or meals. The volume measurements in the recipes in this book are based on these weights. Homemade flours can be considerably different in weight per cup, depending on how you make them (click here for methods and discussion): measure homemade flour by weight rather than volume to compensate for differences.
Homemade nut flour is not only fresher, it is more flavorful and often (but not always) less expensive than purchased flour. Nut flours can be made with a food processor, a blender, a hand-crank nut grinder, or even a coffee grinder. The texture—how coarse or fine your flour will be—depends on the equipment you use. With some equipment, you can even make the exact amount of flour you need when you need it with no guessing or waste: just weigh out the nuts, then make them into flour. Homemade nut flour varies more widely in texture and weight per cup than purchased nut flours, so if you make flour to keep on hand, measure it by weight rather than volume when following a recipe.
Nut flour should be dry rather than oily or pasty to the touch. Food processors, blenders, and coffee grinders—all of which keep the nuts in continuous contact with a blade—require vigilance to avoid an oily meal or an outright nut butter. With a little care, hard nuts like almonds and hazelnuts can be made successfully in this type of equipment (especially in the coffee grinder or blender rather than a food processor). Soft, oily nuts like walnuts and pecans are harder to control; they become oily in the blink of an eye—a little bit of flour or sugar from the recipe added to the processor can help slightly, but you must still take care.
The best equipment for pulverizing any nuts, but especially for soft nuts, involves a shredding or grating disk or drum instead of a blade—a small hand-cranked, table-mounted nut grinder with barrel shaped grater is excellent, as is the fine grating disk of a food processor—the nuts pass through just once and the resulting flour is always fine, dry, and fluffy.
Before you start, nuts should be at room temperature rather than hot from the oven, and dry (not moist from defrosting). Equipment should also be dry and at room temperature rather than warm or hot from the dishwasher.
Here are the some equipment choices with notes on which nuts work best with what.
Makes a relatively coarse flour in comparison with purchased flour. Okay for almonds and hazelnuts if you have nothing else, or want or don’t mind a coarse texture. Soft nuts get oily.
Fill the bowl only ¼ to ⅓ full. Stop and scrape around the corners of the bowl from time to time, until the nuts are relatively evenly pulverized but not oily.
Makes fine, fluffy flour with hard or soft nuts, but a high percentage of large pieces bypass the disk and must be strained and reserved for another use or else reprocessed. It’s impossible to process the exact amount needed.
Attach the fine shredder blade to the processor. Use the feed tube. Turn the processor on before adding nuts. Continue adding nuts to the tube, letting them pass through the shredder without pushing. Shake the flour through a coarse sieve to remove the larger pieces. Reserve the pieces for another use or reprocess them with the steel blade and stir the resulting meal into the nut flour.
Makes excellent medium-fine almond or hazelnut flour (better than with a food processor with steel blade). Soft nuts get oily: be content with coarser flour.
Pulse about 1 cup of nuts at time, scraping the bowl from time to time.
Makes excellent fine almond or hazelnut flour. Soft nuts are hard to control and get oily fast.
Fill the grinder only about half full. Pulse until fine but not oily.
Makes superb flour that is finer and fluffier than any purchased flour. It’s easy to make the exact amount of flour (by weight) needed for a recipe. If you make extra flour to have on hand, always measure it by weight rather than volume for recipes.
I thank Maya Klein for her inspired work and dedication to our first “official” book together—after years of collaboration and help behind the scenes. Thanks to our editor, Judy Pray, at Artisan, for seeing the big picture and encouraging us to organize the book by flour rather than type of recipe. Thanks to the late, great Peter Workman, Ann Bramson, and the rest of the Artisan team: Sibylle Kazeroid, Bridget Heiking, Allison McGeehon, Michelle Ishay-Cohen, Lia Ronnen, and Nancy Murray, as well as Sarah Weaver and Laura Klynstra.
Our families tasted endless samples and gave brave feedback: thanks to Maya’s husband, Steve Klein, and her sons, Nate and Wade; my daughter, Lucy Medrich; my brother and sister-in-law, Albert and Tami Abrams; and my mother, Bea Abrams.
Leigh Beisch’s photos are gorgeous; Sandra Cook’s styling divine. Thanks to Penny Flood for her calm reign over the studio kitchen and that exquisitely styled fudge cake! Stylist and creative director Sara Slavin was also captain of our studio team for two intensely productive weeks. I salute her yet again. Thanks always to my agent, Jane Dystel, for her support and encouragement.
Here are rounded-off equivalents between the metric system and the traditional systems that are used in the United States to measure weight and volume.
|
Fractions |
Decimals |
|
⅛ |
.125 |
|
¼ |
.25 |
|
⅓ |
.33 |
|
⅜ |
.375 |
|
½ |
.5 |
|
⅝ |
.625 |
|
⅔ |
.67 |
|
¾ |
.75 |
|
⅞ |
.875 |
|
Weights |
|
|
US/UK |
Metric |
|
¼ oz |
7 g |
|
½ oz |
15 g |
|
1 oz |
30 g |
|
2 oz |
55 g |
|
3 oz |
85 g |
|
4 oz |
110 g |
|
5 oz |
140 g |
|
6 oz |
170 g |
|
7 oz |
200 g |
|
8 oz (½ lb) |
225 g |
|
9 oz |
250 g |
|
10 oz |
280 g |
|
11 oz |
310 g |
|
12 oz |
340 g |
|
13 oz |
370 g |
|
14 oz |
400 g |
|
15 oz |
425 g |
|
16 oz (1 lb) |
455 g |
|
Volume |
||
|
American |
Imperial |
Metric |
|
¼ tsp |
1.25 ml |
|
|
½ tsp |
2.5 ml |
|
|
1 tsp |
5 ml |
|
|
½ Tbsp (1½ tsp) |
7.5 ml |
|
|
1 Tbsp (3 tsp) |
15 ml |
|
|
¼ cup (4 Tbsp) |
2 fl oz |
60 ml |
|
L cup (5 Tbsp) |
2½ fl oz |
75 ml |
|
½ cup (8 Tbsp) |
4 fl oz |
125 ml |
|
M cup (10 Tbsp) |
5 fl oz |
150 ml |
|
O cup (12 Tbsp) |
6 fl oz |
175 ml |
|
1 cup (16 Tbsp) |
8 fl oz |
250 ml |
|
1¼ cups |
10 fl oz |
300 ml |
|
1½ cups |
12 fl oz |
350 ml |
|
2 cups (1 pint) |
16 fl oz |
500 ml |
|
2½ cups |
20 fl oz (1 pint) |
625 ml |
|
5 cups |
40 fl oz (1 qt) |
1.25 l |
|
Oven Temperatures |
|||
|
°F |
°C |
Gas Mark |
|
|
very cool |
250–275 |
130–140 |
½–1 |
|
cool |
300 |
148 |
2 |
|
warm |
325 |
163 |
3 |
|
moderate |
350 |
177 |
4 |
|
moderately hot |
375–400 |
190–204 |
5–6 |
|
hot |
425 |
218 |
7 |
|
very hot |
450–475 |
232–245 |
8–9 |