A Word About Flour

 

With the current economic climate everyone seems to be tightening their financial belts, ourselves included. Feeding a family of nine is no small business so I've been paying more attention to prices looking for ways to trim the food budget, trying to be a better steward of our family's resources. With food costs skyrocketing along with everything else, we had this conversation in our home some time ago:

me: Do you think we should try using store brand flour? It's cheaper.

him: Why would you do that? Don't you always get King Arthur flour? How much different can the price be - just get the good stuff.

me: Well, the store brand is $1.66 for five pounds and the King Arthur is $3.99.

him: Oh! Why don't you try the store brand?!

And so I did. I ran out of sacks of King Arthur and replaced them with the store brand of both unbleached white and whole wheat. At less than half the price it seemed like a reasonable switch. The whole wheat was very different, and I noticed I needed to add more liquid to most of my recipes to make up for the different consistency. (Note: All of my recipes here on my blog calling for whole wheat are based on 'King Arthur white whole wheat' and you may need more liquid if using another brand, particularly for yeasted breads.) I resisted (mostly) the temptation to call the new flour sawdust, despite its coarse, flaky appearance and tendency to slurp up so much liquid. I also determined that I would not complain about the new, um, heftiness of our daily bread but instead just think of it as hearty whole wheat. I chose to avoid mentioning all those adjectives that came to mind such as chewy, toothsome, heavy, dense, bitter... We were saving lots of money and that's what mattered.

And then I found it.

Hidden away in the back of a pantry shelf was a long lost and forgotten sack of my favorite King Arthur white whole wheat. As soon as the sawdust store brand wheat was gone I opened the beloved sack and made some scones. One bite of that delicious sweet and mellow flavor, the look of that beautiful golden goodness and I knew I could never turn back. Everything tasted brighter and lighter, my yeast bread was the right size again, my scones were back to the right consistency, our cookies no longer resembled hockey pucks...

We've since made other cuts in our grocery bill - we've switched to store brand orange juice and stopped buying yogurt in little cups and things like that. We figure we already save so much money by making all our bread, cookies, muffins and all that we can splurge on the good stuff to bake with as it tastes soooo much better. We're happily back to King Arthur in the flour jar and in my kitchen, the King is here to stay.

Comments

[Louise]

I am 100% with you, especially about the white whole wheat flour! I used to grind my own flour from Montana wheat grains, but since I can't find the Montana wheat locally anymore, and shipping cost are prohibitive, King Arthur flour has been the next best thing! I also like the unbleached flour. The only time I use store brand flour is when I make playdough. ;o)

[Laura]

Thanks for this information. You know I've made some of your recipes but I can't get this flour locally. In fact, when I asked about it at the grocery store, they assured me that it doesn't exist. Hmph! Baking isn't very big down here, I guess. We have holiday dinners at our church and the only things people bring are store-bought desserts. Yuck! I usually bake pies or cheesecake but they always want me to bring homemade bread. I'll be making bread for fifty people on Thanksgiving... without the lovely flour you have! *Sigh*

[Michele Q.]

Ah this is good to know. Thanks for the tip!

[Christine Pillado]

To Laura,
You can find the flour on Amazon.com. You have buy A LOT but it could be worth it! :)

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gf?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=King+Arthur+flour&x=0&y=0

Christie

[Brenda]

We've been pretty happy with our store-brand (Stop & Shop) whole wheat flour which I mix with white flour. I only buy 1-2/time at the most because I put it in the freezer as soon as I get home from shopping. Whole wheat flour has a much shorter shelflife than white flour and will become rancid. I have never noticed the rancidity in the flour itself, but the baked goods will not last very long and they develop a distinctive bad taste.