Читать книгу Wild Yeast - Mouni Abdelli - Страница 9

Making flour involves a lot of know-how, and you can't just make yourself into an instant miller. But many of us are interested in trying to make our own flour at home anyhow, something that many amateur bakers enjoy doing, especially in the United States.

It is indeed a real pleasure to work with fresh, “living” flour, and it provides many benefits, starting with nutrition, because you can grind your flour as you go along, thus retaining all of the potential of the grain. This procedure also provides an advantage in taste, because fresh flour is much more flavorful. And while freshly ground flour is more fragile, it also has the benefit of being produced only as needed, which eliminates the need for long-term storage.

People have tried a variety of ways to produce flour at home inexpensively, for instance by using a coffee grinder. The results are unreliable, however, and the machine has a tendency to break after a few uses. So if you really want to begin and invest yourself in this process, you will need to equip yourself with a grain mill that is worthy of the name!

Several different home models are available online, but the price is nevertheless still often prohibitive, in particular for occasional use, and most of the models are also quite bulky. In addition, if you want to use anything aside from whole-grain flour, you will have to buy specific sieves for each different kind of flour, allowing you to produce white, whole-grain, or “bise” (light whole-grain) flour. Certain brands, including the Moulins d'Alma, offer sets of three sieves in varying sizes, allowing you to produce these three different kinds of flour.

Some models can be attached to food processors (such a KitchenAid); the one I have chosen for myself is a Mockmill (see photo on page 26), which combines efficiency with a smaller size. In a small Parisian kitchen, that is a big advantage!

To make your homemade flour, you will, of course, also need some grain: wheat, rye, einkorn wheat, spelt, and the like. These are not always easy to find anywhere but in natural food stores. However, if you are able to buy them directly from a grain producer or a mill, you will start out with better information about the source, characteristics, and best use of the grains you plan to grind.