Customer Reviews

Recipes from the Old Mill: Baking with Whole Grains

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have prepared several of the recipes in this fine book and they were wonderful. The recipes not only sound good, but are clearly written and easy to follow. It is important to me that a recipe book take the time to standardize the recipies so that the recipe comes out the same each time it is baked. That has clearly been done here. And even more important, the recipes are delicious. I highly recommend this book to both new and experiences bakers.

From the subtitle, and the review, I expected whole grain recipes. Many of the recipes are labelled "whole wheat...", however almost all of the recipes call for white flour.

This is the first time I have ever considered a book worthy of my time in writing a review.

In response to the reviewer that complained of the use of white flour in many of the recipes in this book, she is right...many of them do call for white flour. However, I have never used processed white flour in any of the recipes, substituting instead fresh ground soft white wheat or simply using an equal measure of the whole grain already called for in the recipe, and have never been disatisfied with the result. Our family is quite accustomed to the "heavy" taste of whole grains now and appreciates the full rich flavor and texture, so I get no complaints! I won't testify that it will work in all cases, as we have not tried "all" the recipes, but it has worked so far. Honestly, this book is our favorite along with the Breadbeckers recipe book, and we use one or both almost daily. Mostly we prepare quick breads, freshly ground grain prepared and baked at the moment we are ready to eat it! We have yet to prepare a recipe from this book that failed to live up to our expectations. It is chock full of very "doable", down-home recipes...unlike many books I have tried that list ingredients I don't usually have on hand. In fact, if you want to "sabotage" your plan to begin using fresh ground whole grains in your family's diet, just start with a book that makes your goal miserably unattainable...difficult recipes, "exotic" flavors...there are a few of those gathering dust on my bookshelf. On the other hand, if you are serious about adding whole grains to your family's diet WITHOUT spending all day in the gourmet supermarket and THEN all the next day in the kitchen working on ONE MEAL (that neither your husband nor your children will eat), then choose this book that balances healthy nutrition with daily common sense in a way that IS attainable. It is brimming with delicious recipes that your family WILL eat, along with information on the whole grains and advice on all the techniques of baking with them. Another very nice feature are the "quips" of encouragement and nostalgia that are posted throughout...between homeschooling and "homekeeping", some days my soul needs THAT food more than my body needs the grain...

In closing, I will tell you what my three young children have to say about this book. One morning while enjoying some of the delicious muffins we had made, my oldest son asked me who wrote the recipe book. After I told him, he said, "Mama, if Mrs. Myers and Mrs. Lind are in Heaven, we need to ask Jesus to thank them for this book!" Well, assuming that Mrs. Myers and Mrs. Lind are still with us (and I believe that they are), then it is to them I say, "For all the wonderful times I have shared baking with my children, and for all the yummy recipes that put smiles on their young faces...thank you."

I've owned this book for many years. I have had wonderful reviews from my family on almost every item I've baked from it. I've tried several of the bread/roll recipes and they are well done. Our family's current favorite is the recipe for butterhorns - I made a batch of 24 yesterday and all but 2 are gone now! My only complaint is that a couple of the recipes I've tried have been a little on the dry side when finished. Other than that everything has been excellent that we have tested. My copy of the book is also nicely laid out - easy to read, and plenty of room to make my personal notes.

Before I had this cookbook, I tried to add whole grain to my recipes and often ended up with very dense foods. With this cookbook, my pancakes and muffin are fluffy and delicious, but much healthier than regular recipes.

If you want your bread to taste like cardboard, don't buy this book. If, though, you want palatable and practical recipes, then you have come to the right place.

My mother in law purchased Recipes from the Old Mill for me at the Tamarack tourist shop in West Virginia - at full price, no less! She could just tell it was going to be great and she was right. I've tried about a half dozen recipes now and they have been so delicious that I purchased another copy through Amazon to keep at our mountain home. I have even gotten rid of a couple other cookbooks. The banana cinnamon buns alone are worth the price of this book. I really like the tips on freezing them for later. (Contrary to the instructions, I have put frozen banana buns in the oven at bed time with the oven set to come on and bake them before we get up. They don't rise fully that way but they are still wonderful to wake up to...)

If you read the back cover, you will see that the recipes are adapted from ones handed down from a family of millers over the past couple generations, so it is only reasonable to expect to use grains actually milled there, and yes, that means wheat, buckwheat, oats, corn, barley, rye. Buckwheat is every bit as different from cereals as quinoa or amaranth, just not as exotic or in vogue right now.

So, unless you really, really, really can't abide wheat, then there is no reason not to enjoy this terrific book.

I make a lot of bread and I have recently decided to concentrate on whole grain artisan loaves. I found this title on a shelf and decided to give it a chance.

The subtitle of this book is "Baking with Whole Grains". Based on this, one would be led to believe that a typical recipe from this book would be very much based on whole grains, be it wheat flour, rye, or cornmeal. Unfortunately, a good percentage of the recipes in the book come off as normal recipes based on highly refined flours, with a little whole grain goodness added in just to meet the criteria of the subtitle. Perhaps this meets the requirements to the letter, but it seems that it violates the spirit of the idea of whole-grain baking.

For "real" whole-grain baked goods, there are better choices in cookbooks.

So, in spite of this issue, the recipes within are actually quite good! I have made several of these and my family has been very pleased. Perhaps the most interesting surprise from this book has been "Skillet Custard Cornbread", a cornbread with a soft custard layer on top, baked in a cast-iron skillet. The breakfast breads (pancakes, waffles, etc) are also exceptional and are among the more requested things I make for my family now.

While this book is not the whole-grain baking book I had hoped for, it is still full of good recipes and I will use it regularly. I cannot give it 5 stars because of the deceptive title; if you can find a copy on a shelf somewhere, take a look at it before you decide to buy. If its shortcoming is something you can overlook, it is still a very good bread/baking book in its own right.

`Recipes from the Old Mill' by sisters, Sarah E. Myers and Mary Beth Lind sits on the boundary between a document of ethnic recipes and manual of baking with whole-wheat flour and allied grain flours.

The first clue to the volume's inclination is the fact that it is published by Good Books, a publisher of a wide variety of Pennsylvania German (Dutch) cookbooks. The dissonance arises when we discover that the sisters grew up on the site of an old water powered flourmill in the mountains of West Virginia. The authors themselves say they feel a bit split between the `Dutch' and Appalachian Mountain influences. A look at the recipes reinforces this dual heritage, as there are many traditional Pennsylvania German recipes such as apple dumplings, molasses cake, scrapple (corn meal is a major scrapple ingredient) and chicken pot pie along with many more Southern dishes such as hush puppies, (unsweetened) corn bread (many varieties), and buttermilk biscuits. The ties to being a manual of whole wheat baking is found in the fact that there are so many recipes from many different parts of the world using whole wheat flour which are not commonly made with this ingredient. Some obvious examples are scones, hot cross buns, and brioche. One is tempted to include Irish soda bread, but as I recently discovered, the most traditional Irish soda bread is in fact made with whole-wheat flour.

The authors are true to their word in one very important respect. Virtually every recipe which includes flour also includes whole wheat flour as an ingredient. And, the authors open with a brief discussion of flour types with a bit of a sneer at `All Purpose Flour', and a total absence from specifying `all purpose flour' in any of their recipes, although it is clear that this product will work in virtually every recipe which calls for `flour'. This is one symptom that the authors, who are `food professionals', but unlike our best baking specialists such as Peter Reinhart, Rose Levy Beranbaum, and Nancy Silverton, they are not professional bakers (Sarah is an occupational therapist and Mary Beth is a consulting dietitian). This does not mean their recipes are poor, it just means that there is enough vagueness here and there that an experienced baker will do better with many of these recipes than will a total amateur.

One symptom of the authors' vagueness is the fact that they specify `dry yeast' in all their yeast recipes. I'm certain they mean `Active Dry' yeast (Fleishman's brand name), but there are at least three different types of readily available yeast in the local supermarket, it is easy for a newbie to pick cake yeast which is sort of dry or `Rapid Rise' yeast which behaves a bit differently from `Active Dry'. Other vague references are to ingredients such as `1 egg' (what size?) and `oil' (what kind, or what kind should we avoid?) Oddly, sometimes the egg size is specified and sometimes it is not. Another little vagueness is in the apple dumpling recipe where the procedure writeup seems to specify folding a single square of dough around the apple, while the diagram makes it look like the dumpling is formed by sandwiching the apple between tow squares of dough. Having done a fair bit of apple dumpling folding in my time, I thought the diagrammed approach was very good, but the text simply didn't follow through. I also sort of miss the glaze or butter sauce typically used to top the baked goodies, but the authors are trying to be just a bit healthy here.

There are two standard ingredients in a large number of these recipes that really date the recipes. Even though the book was first published in 1995, the heavy use of margarine and instant non-fat fry milk makes so many of the recipes read and feel like they come from the 1950's. Another ingredient that tends to date the recipes is carob, a chocolate substitute. Once upon a time, I know carob was considered a healthy, low fat alternative to chocolate, but all that changed when chocolate got a good health makeover, revealing that it is on the healthy eating hit parade.

While these observations make the book just a bit challenging for the baking newbie, the book remains a major source and find for lots of important recipes, especially if you don't have an extensive library on baking and do not live near a well-stocked Public Library. I was most impressed by the fact that there were recipes for brioche, hot cross buns, English muffins, yeast pancakes, chapatis (East Indian flatbread) and `Native American Fry Bread'. This last item made a major guest appearance on Alton Brown's recent `Feasting on Asphalt' special where AB made one, making it look very much like the technique for making pizza dough, even though it is really a lot simpler. We even have recipes for pizza, tortillas, and bagels. A bread for every ethnicity! I was just a bit disappointed with the doughnut recipes, as some of what the authors called doughnuts may have been better labeled as Beignets. On the other hand, I was especially happy to see cardamon among the ingredients for the hot cross buns, plus the warning that hot cross buns have a tendency to be very heavy.

The recipe chapters are:

Corn
Wheat
Rye
Buckwheat
Multigrain
Spreads (what, no recipe for marmelade!)
Breakfast and Holiday Breads (especially good chapter)
Cultural Foods
Main Dishes (including homemade noodles)
Desserts (mostly cookies, crumbles, and crisps)

If you are fond of country style cooking and baking (and have some experience with baking), this book is a real find. And, please recognize that virtually every whole wheat recipe in almost every book will include all purpose flour to add required gluten.

I am pleased with the book, but dissatisfied with the service.
It should not have taken a month for me to receive this book.!
The standard practice of charging $3.99 for a 6 oz book is outrageous. Media Mail would deliver it any where in the country for $2.38. You need to get up to speed.!!

A friend found this cookbook when we were in college, and we both quickly fell in love with the unique recipes inside. From graham crackers to granola bars, we worked our way through many of the recipes, with great results every time. I will admit that the recipe that sold me on buying the book myself was the granola bar recipe... when I moved out of state, I couldn't bear not having my own copy. :) I love the fact that you can mix grains, adding as much whole grains as you or your family can handle. I highly recommend this book to those seeking to add whole grains to your life.