March 30, 2015
A Traditional Farm Life
By Shasta Hamilton
Greetings from Enterprise, dear friends! Lovely green carpets are appearing
everywhere. The bleak world winter left
behind is turning into the promise of life and new growth once more. We just love when the wheat fields green up
and begin growing again in spring.
Coming from a long line of wheat farmers, the promise that
green carpet brings—while invigorating—is tinged with a touch of apprehension,
as harvest is still several months away.
In this wonderful land of Kansas, many things can happen before the
golden grains of summer are brought in.
Speaking of those golden grains, I was privileged to try a
“new” variety of Kansas milled flour this week.
Farmer Direct Food’s flour is milled in New Cambria. A customer tipped me off to the mill in New
Cambria and a phone call there delivered a friendly voice and the promise of
some flour samples. The “samples” turned
out to be two 50-pound bags, one each of their Handcrafters Flour (an enriched
white flour made from hard white wheat) and one of Genuine Stoneground Whole
White Wheat Flour.
Farmer Direct Foods, Inc. is a company aptly named. One of their trademarks is “Identity
Assured®,” meaning they can track each bag back to the field where the wheat
was grown and the details of its care by the farmer.
The President and the Marketing Director dropped the flour
off personally on their way back from business headquarters in Atchison to the
mill in New Cambria. This past Tuesday I
was able to put their flour to the test—a Sunflower State Showdown of
sorts. Could my beloved Hudson Cream
flour from Stafford County stand up to this upstart newcomer?
Our two white varieties—English Muffin and Black Pepper
Onion Bread were up first. They turned
out pillow soft with good oven spring.
In short—beautiful, picture-perfect loaves.
With high hopes I turned to our two varieties with a high
percentage of whole grains—Sunflower State Multigrain and Caraway Rye.
How could it be? They
turned out to be whole grain bricks!
Both were complete failures. Each
recipe calls for bread flour specifically, and I had hoped that the slightly
higher than average gluten content of the Handcrafter’s flour would save me
from having to by a high gluten bread flour specifically for these
applications.
Unfortunately, I was wrong.
A further look at the literature regarding the Handcrafter’s flour
revealed my mistake. It is formulated
specifically for lean artisan style “crusty” hearth breads—not for the enriched
kind of sandwich loaf I was making. It
was as if I was using a plier to pound in a nail. Oops!
Thursday evening I mixed up another batch of Sunflower State
Multigrain, this time with Hudson Cream Bread Flour. It had great gluten development and was an
unqualified success. How wonderful it
was to see the bread rising nicely in the pans this time!
In short, there was no clear-cut winner. Of this I’m glad, because each Kansas flour
has it’s own special set of advantages.
Now I have multiple options for flour in my bread baking toolbox—I just
have to be smart enough to pick the right tool for the job. It’s a win-win situation for lovers of Kansas
milled flour.
Come in to The Buggy Stop this week and tell us what you
bake with Kansas flour. We’ll give you a
free cookie—made with Kansas flour, of course!
Not sure what to bake?
It seems only natural to pair Kansas flour with the memory of a Kansas
hero: The following recipe comes from
“Eisenhower Recipes,” a cookbook compiled by the Eisenhower Presidential
Library.
Mamie Eisenhower’s
Recipe
for Sugar Cookies
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon cream
1-1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking
powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Mix and sift flour, baking powder and salt. Cream butter, add sugar slowly and cream
until fluffy. Stir in well-beaten egg
yolks and vanilla extract. Add sifted
dry ingredients alternately with the cream.
Chill for one hour, roll and cut in any desired shape. Sprinkle with sugar before baking. Bake in a moderate oven 350° or 375° F. 10 to
12 minutes.
Shasta is a fifth generation rural Kansan now residing in
Enterprise, Kansas. She and her husband
own and operate The Buggy Stop Home-Style Kitchen with their six home-schooled
children. You can reach The Buggy Stop
by calling (785) 200-6385.
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