Any advice for baking without white flour/white sugar? I bought whole wheat pastry flour and whole wheat bread flour and sucanat and am hoping for th

iuzzini
  • Posted by: iuzzini
  • February 17, 2011
  • 8464 views
  • 13 Comments

13 Comments

ATG117 May 20, 2012
101cookbooks.com is a great site that has many recipes that incorporate whole grains. I'd second Kim Boyce as many have here.
 
Stephanie G. May 19, 2012
I use WW flour in all my muffins and cookies, except sugar cookies. I prefer it. Kim Boyce's chocolate chip cookies from the Good to the Grain book are our favorites (even better than David Leite cookies) and they do use all WW flour. I also use Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book and Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads book. The Laurel's Kitchen book elevated my bread baking to amazing heights! The secret to high rising WW breads is actually thorough kneading, which I never did until I followed this book's instructions.

Some things, in my opinion, are just better with white flour. Such as pizza dough, cinnamon rolls, brioche. Haven't been able to incorporate WW flour in any of those!
 
petitbleu May 18, 2012
Yes, definitely check out Good To the Grain by Kim Boyce--it's really fantastic. The recipes work and are very tasty to boot. I would also approach your new white-flour-white-sugar-free efforts with excitement and ambition. I find baking with alternative flours to be rewarding, not difficult, and more delicious than with white flour. Some surprises to me: how much I enjoy teff flour, spelt, rye, and buckwheat. They just have the most wonderful, complex flavors. They behave a little differently in practice, but not very different. Just enough to keep you on your toes.
 
NoWhitesBaking May 18, 2012
I had this same issue. I couldn't find recipes that I liked that didn't have white flour or white sugar in them. As a result, I developed my own recipes, then decided to publish them. My book is called "No Whites Baking Book: How to Bake Without White Flour or White Sugar." You can buy it at this link, as well as on Amazon or BarnesandNoble.com
http://www.ebookstand.com/book_details/No_Whites_Baking_Book
 
iuzzini February 18, 2011
thank you for all the great suggestions! date puree sounds great! :) Dan made some delicious chocolate muffins using the sucanat and wholewheat pastry flour and grain sweetened chocolate chips and I was pretty satisfied with their bitter chocolatey malty taste.
 
mainecook61 February 18, 2011
Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain is very useful, although I find that not everything is to my taste, e.g. the date bread with teff flour. However, the oatmeal bread recipe is a very good one, as is the recipe for an interesting mixture of whole grain flours that can be used in different ways (she offers several possibilities). Once you mix that up, you can slip it into regular recipes, a half cup here and a half cup there.
 
testkitchenette February 18, 2011
For daily baking, I use whole wheat flour for bread and then white whole wheat flour for just about everything else. I experiment with recipes and decrease the sugar by 1/4 c at a time and then add in a date puree if I feel I need some extra sweetness (just cover a bowl of dates with hot water, let sit for a bit, and then puree/blend until smooth).
 
healthierkitchen February 18, 2011
I completely agree with cookinginvictoria. Kim Boyce has already experimented quite alot with various whole flours and her results are delicious
 
cookinginvictoria February 18, 2011
I love the Good to the Grain cookbook (the book which won the most recent Piglet contest on Food52). If you are looking to completely cut out white flour and white sugar from your baking, this may not be of interest to you since many of the recipes in Good to the Grain feature sugar and white flour used in combination with whole grain flours. But if you want to start experimenting with baking using whole grain flours, then I would heartily recommend this book. All of the recipes that I have tried have been delicious, and I have learned a lot about whole grain flours. I now have a pantry stocked with buckwheat, barley, spelt, rye and oat flours. It has been fun to experiment with them!
 
Sam1148 February 18, 2011
The last time my partner made a flour less chocolate cake. The kitchen looked like a CIA experiment involving Betty Crocker, LSD, and Gorillas.
 
pjstephen February 17, 2011
I've really come to like Bittman's no-knead treatment with whole-wheat, rye and corn meal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/dining/082mrex.html
 
susan G. February 17, 2011
A good place to start might be Eating Well Magazine, and their website. They have high standards for both healthy and tasty, and you'll find lots of inspiration.
Sucanat is still granulated cane sugar, with a bit of the taste of the molasses which has not been refined out, but I believe has the same chemistry as white sugar, if you want to use it in recipes you know and love. And in those recipes, you can start mixing the whole grain flours with refined flours so you don't move too far too fast, and you can save some of your favorites.
Muffins and quick breads are easy to find recipes for, or adapt your own. Yeast breads are flexable, but will have their own characteristics. If you have experience baking breads, jump in with some of the wonderful new whole grain baking books. Let the library and the internet (and food52) be your friend!
 
DanielB February 17, 2011
how about learning how to cook with those ingredients instead of without others?

what you're doing, it's like buying a stockpile of bullets when what you needed what baby bottles.
 
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