Flour Lab: An At-Home Guide to Baking with Freshly Milled Grains Hardcover – September 10, 2019

Don’t be frightened away by the reviews that mention compact yeast being an issue. Compact yeast is not available in my area, but a quick Internet search provided the conversion information needed to substitute instant yeast. Mr. Leonti’s “Yeasted Loaf” was the first thing I made with freshly milled flour. It was so simple and well worth waiting a couple days for the bread to ferment. The result was amazing! Wow! What flavor! And how satisfying to mill the flour and then watch the bread evolve!For point of reference, I am fairly new to bread-baking, and completely new to flour-milling.I bought several books on using fresh flour in bread making, and this one is the one I ultimately chose with which to begin. The instructions are comprehensive and clear, and the pictures showing details of each step are fabulous. This is the book I had been searching for!This book is a great resource if you are new to flour milling, as I am. The detailed explanations of various grains and reference information are well worth the time spent reading. I particularly like the specificity regarding the amount of bran to leave in/out when recipes call for sifted grain. There is nothing to guess at or surmise. Each section of the book begins with specifics about milling and sifting the flours used in that section.I could not be happier with the success of my first try and can hardly wait to try other recipes in this book!I plan to use nothing but freshly milled flour from here on out, and this book will be my go-to!

This is a great book for home bakers. So much valuable information. I've been baking sourdough bread for a few years. Thought I knew a lot. But this book has helped me both in theory and practice. Highly recommended.

The deepest professional baking book I know is "Advanced Bread and Pastry" by Michel Suas. Studying it makes it clear that a professionally trained French chef has a similar depth of knowledge to a medical doctor.Suas is the only author I know to address the issues with "green" flour: "Flour baking performance improves as flour ages. The natural oxidation of the proteins in flour during resting time creates better gluten strutures and better fermentation tolerance during the baking process. In general, 2 weeks of maturation are recommended in summer, whereas 3 weeks are required in winter due to the slower chemical reactions in lower temperatures." (p144)Suas addresses these issues on pages 130, 144, 146, 153. One can instead use dough conditioners; for my tricky sourdough from freshly ground red winter wheat, I use 40 parts per million ascorbic acid. One can search the web for accounts, some written by me, on how to accomplish this.What can go wrong, otherwise? The classic symptom is a boule that collapses like a Colorado cow patty. One gets better loft, addressing the problem of green flour.Many people accidentally work around this. Bread is already tricky; one learns what works and sticks to it. I've seen farmers market bread with decent loft from freshly ground flour, made by bakers ignorant of this question (and not particularly open to the intrusion of science into their hippie world). Still, if one can resolve this problem it buys a degree of freedom for working out the rest of one's recipe.I'm a bit astonished that the "Flour Lab" authors appear to be completely ignorant of this issue, given the authoritative tone that they adopt. This is otherwise a wonderful book.

I love this book because I have a grown mill and the recipes give me great results. I my have me a better understanding on grain, fermentation and shaping/baking. I the sourdough recipe all the time as it yields amazing results. Some of they recipes are a little out there for me but that’s just personal taste. The rye brownie recipe was completely hedonistic. It was the most decadent brownie I had ever had. Strong work here.

I have a home flour mill and have been adapting recipes for years to use all whole grains. This is especially complex with bread recipes and I have bought many cookbooks to try to find ways to improve my homemade sourdough breads. Typically, I am disappointed to see that the advice is to mix in white all purpose or sifted flours. Flour Lab is filled with all whole grain recipes, and lots of education for those of us who like to use a variety of local, stone milled flours. Some of the recipes call for fresh yeast/cake yeast--which I won't be using-given the short shelf life of it, but otherwise this book is just what I was looking for!

This cookbook is amazing! I love educational/informative approach to cookbooks, and this one did not disappoint! I have recently immersed myself in freshly milled grains, so there is a lot of wonderful information on cooking/baking. That is another wonderful aspect of this cookbook! You might think that it may revolve baking only, but there is a wonderful selection of pasta recipes. Highly recommend this book for those interested in freshly milled grains! Thank you so much for the free book @clarksonpotter!

This beautiful book manages to artfully combine modern tools and techniques with ancient knowledge about grains, milling technique, levain and working with wheat in general. For the amount of detail the book provides about the hundreds of years of evolution in milling, farming, baking and cooking technique, it's remarkably approachable and the recipes are easy to replicate. There really isn't a book like this on the market; it's a must have for anyone interested in the freshly milled grain dialogue, not to mention anyone interested in the tremendous flavor and nutrition benefits that come from using freshly milled wheat.

This book is fascinating and has some good recipes, but it didn’t teach me a lot about using my new flour mill.On the other hand, it does offer the kind of information that encourages one’s own experiments.

Well written, very informative, interesting book. Excellent recipes, background information, and instructions. Written with a deep love for the art and craftsmanship of breadmaking. Bravo!!

There is comparatively little about flour and grains, and what there is focuses entirely on the United States. The section on grain milling machines is just a couple of pages. The recipes frequently require mixed grains that are simply not available outside of the US. Do not buy if you live in the UK or Europe.