Thursday, February 19, 2009

Arrowhead Mills Pastry Flour

Love this stuff. If you are looking for a way to incorporate some organic whole grains into your family's diet, here you go. I first was introduced to this flour on my friend Jaime's blog Sophistimom.

The beauty of the flour is that you can can substitute it evenly for your recipes that call for white flour, without adjusting the liquid in the recipe. It works really well in quick breads like banana or zucchini bread. Jaime has a great recipe for Banana Bread where you can evenly substitute this flour for the all-purpose flour.

It works pretty well for cookies. This Valentine's Day I made sugar cookies with 1/2 white flour, 1/2 of this. It didn't turn out quite as perfect as the quick breads do, but everyone was still happy. My kids did not complain or even offer a comment about the fact that the cookies were darker than usual.

Just realize, that this flour is made from a soft grain wheat which is low in gluten (pastry flour in general is a low-gluten flour) and gluten is what makes your yeast breads nice and chewy. So, I would not recommend it for a yeast bread recipe, pizza crust, or cinnamon rolls. But, I would absolutely recommend it for anything you would like to turn out flaky or crumbly, i.e cakes, quick breads, muffins, and pie crust.

I haven't noticed these in the stores yet, but when I was on the Arrowhead Mills website I came across this new product line of organic cupcake, cookie and cake mixes. These look yummy and quick.

1 comment:

Holly said...

Oh my gosh- did those sugar cookies your girls brought us have this flour in them? I never would have guessed and they were delicious- Jack and I were "fighting" over the last one :)