Operating in Santa Cruz since 1993, the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana is a revolutionary medical cannabis collective that strives to fulfill the compassionate goals of California’s groundbreaking Proposition 215 voter initiative, which first legalized medical marijuana in the state in 1996. At WAMM, patients with terminal and chronic illnesses volunteer to help tend a large outdoor organic cannabis garden, which they harvest and process into their own medicine. In addition to buds for smoking, WAMM offers members capsules, tinctures, and salves, as well as a wide variety of edibles. Every part of the plant is used in some way, including the stems that go into tincture, the leaves ground into flour for baking, and even a few seeds for planting next year’s garden.
The unique thing about the WAMM baking program is that they do not advise straining the whole plant fiber away from the oil or butter. Instead, the marijuana leaves are pulverized so completely that the resulting product is a superfine sifted flour that dissolves right into butter and oil. Using the whole plant this way provides extra fiber and nutrients.
MAKES ABOUT 25 GRAMS
1 ounce leaf material (minimum)
Equipment: Latex gloves, 145 micron silk screen mounted on a wooden frame, piece of glass or mirror larger than silk screen
1. To grind your own marijuana flour, first harvest your plants, whether they are indoor or outdoor. Trim the leaves and dry them upside down or on a screen, in a warm, dry, dark place for a week or so, until they are completely dry.
2. Then, use a blender to grind the leaves into powder, carefully stirring with a metal butter knife kept well above the blender’s blades. A vortex will form in the middle of the blender, and you must carefully stir more marijuana from the sides of the blender into this vortex. It takes about 5 minutes to get the cannabis very finely ground. Turn off the blender every 1 or 2 minutes so it doesn’t overheat, and use the knife to stir up the blended, ground marijuana.
3. Next, pour this product over a fine silk screen stretched on a wooden frame. Below the screen, there should be a glass or mirror. Use your gloved hands or a plastic card to rub the ground leaf over the screen. Remove any stems immediately, as they can puncture the screen and make a hole. Continue rubbing the leaf over the screen until at least 50 percent of the leaf has passed through.
4. Now, collect all the leaf that still hasn’t been screened and put it back in the blender. Blend again for 5 minutes, until the leaf is ground more finely. Pour this twice-blended product over the screen again, and resume rubbing it through. Once you have about 30 percent of that batch remaining, collect it from the top of the screen and blend again. Once the leaf has been blended three times, it is as fine as can be. Rub it over the screen again, and any remaining pieces too large to fit through the screen should be removed and saved for making tinctures.
5. Use a card to scrape all the ground flour off the screen into a large plastic airtight container. Remove the screen and reveal the ultrafine textured marijuana flour below. Carefully scrape the flour off the glass with a card, and store in an airtight plastic or glass container.
Note: You can use this marijuana flour as a substitute for half the all-purpose flour called for in baking recipes. Simply melt butter in a pan and slowly add the flour until it is moist, then remove from heat and use as directed. You can use less butter in your desired recipe, since some butter has been already added to the marijuana flour.