The Essential Home-Ground Flour Book: Learn Complete Milling and Baking Techniques, Includes 100 Delicious Recipes

This book is a solid 4.5 stars. Being a vegan family, I've found the recipes easy to adapt and so far we've had great success with everything we've tried. The basic yeast bread has become a staple in our house (my son says it tastes like darker bread you get in the basket at the Cheesecake Factory and he's 100% correct). I have the same issue many others have. The book tells you how to substitute home ground flours for all purpose flour, for instance, and says that if you're using a recipe with weights, you just use the same weight of grain. It's a super handy tip and makes me wish with all of my heart that bakers in the US used weights more. It's so much easier to get a consistently good product. So where are the weights in these recipes? We're left to guess how much grain to grind and I'm still getting it wrong. I've thrown flour away because you're not supposed to store it, but then you don't really get any help with knowing how much whole grain to throw in your grinder to hit the flour amount required for each recipe. I've started freezing my extra flour, a tip I picked up from a YouTuber, and I'll use it as my dusting flour when I'm making future recipes. But still... I feel like the recipes are seriously missing the mark by not including weights. I get that there still may be a range needed for the recipe, so let the range be "100g-120g hard red wheat milled into fine flour, about this many cups" so that you have a starting point. I assume this knowledge comes with experience and may not be an issue in the future. But like I said, the recipes are amazing so far and I've enjoyed working with the home milled flour. The first section of the book (123 pages out of about 267 of actual content) is invaluable for anyone (like me) who never really worked with home ground flour before. It's a textbook on the subject and very well thoroughly done. Even the recipe section is full of more tips and tricks for almost every recipe: substitutions, storage advice, different grains to use, etc. You really do get the impression that you're reading something written by a master with decades of experience in her craft, probably because that is exactly what this book is. Really, I'm only docking .5 stars for the lack of weights in the recipes, but it's such a small complaint in the overall awesomeness of the book that I can't physically dock a star in the review. You may like to spring for the spiral bound version as this book doesn't lay flat at all. Most books don't lay flat, but this one seems to think it is its destiny to close while you're making a recipe, no matter what methods you use to keep it open. My hope is for future printings to have a spiral bound version contained within a hard cover. I can't imagine how expensive that would be to produce, but I'd seriously shell out an extra $20 for this imaginary version of the book. I'm not just saying that, either.

I have learned SO much about grains, ingredients, & equipment. This book is packed with information on all the grains, their benefits, how to mill them, what recipes to use them in. Plus, it has 100 recipes using fresh ground grains/beans. I haven't tried them, but they are similar to my favorite recipes, only with healthier ingredients!! I have used her suggestions to purchase a flour mill, a bread machine & 2 types of wheat berries. I've heard of the healing benefits of using fresh ground flour & am excited to start baking/eating healthier.

Excellent! Excellent! Excellent! Get the spiral version! This book is chock full of details and info; I can’t believe I hesitated to order it. Extremely well written, well formatted too for ease in reading. If you’re new to grain milling like I am, this is exactly what you need. Great basic recipes and so far I’ve tried 4 recipes and they are all excellent. The Fruit and Nut loaf which resembles a fruitcake is amazing—even my 18 yr old son who is super picky thought it was delicious. My other son really loved the Date and Orange coffee cake and keeps asking me ‘when am I gonna make the coffee cake again??’ I wasn’t sure if I wanted to splurge for the spiral version but I have to say it was totally worth the extra money—the book lays flat and it is a huge plus to have that. Even though this book is older, I noticed all the nutritional references and comments as far as oils to use, are completely accurate for today. Sue Becker was way ahead of her time and she apparently continues to be the leading voice on home grain milling. I am very glad I purchased this book and would only wish Sue would release a sequel baking book! That would be amazing 🤩

I just started milling my own flour and this book has been a God send in understanding the different grains. It even gives a plethora of recipes that use all the different grains including the ones considered less common such as buckwheat and sorghum. Very valuable resource to have and reference.

Best bread book I own! covers the science and art of bread making from each ingredient and various types of grains. Full of recipes.

This book dives into the history of grains, how it ties into your health and some key points to consider when milling your flour fresh for baking. I have only just begun the learning curve for making bread in general, and before buying this book I was hearing that there is another learning curve when switching to fresh milled flour. The reason I purchased this book was to help me with that, and while the background info on grains is amazing and awesome, I feel like there wasn't as much focus on using the flour as I thought there might be. You do get a lot of recipes with this book, which is also wonderful. The flip side of that coin, though, is it would be nice if the recipes were written for weight rather than volume. Reason being is the volume of flour you get from milling grains is larger than the volume of grain you started with. The author does include notations for this so you can sort of figure out how much grain to mill for a recipe. But wouldn't it just be easier to say you need 400 grams rather than 4 cups? That way you don't have to guess at how much grain to mill and subsequently avoid too much leftover flour. If you mill 400 grams of grain you will get almost all of that in flour. When I used my mill the first time, I weighed the grain before I put it in the hopper and then weighed the resulting flour. I only lost 5 grams. I just don't want to end up with a bunch of leftover flour in my freezer every time I make a recipe.

The book is excellent for the beginner and the seasoned baker and the one who mills their own flour. It is a referenced book that will never be outdated. The wealth of knowledge is invaluable.

I have learned so much from this book. I like that it is more than just recipes. Sue Becker explains many aspects of fresh milled grains, the different kinds and their characteristics, etc. etc. A great resource!

Just received the book and I am so excited to read it and learn more from it! Sue Becker is a great speaker and teacher, I follow her on YouTube!

Packed with information. A good reference book.

Excellent book filled with lots of information

this book is actually what it says. i was trying to buy a book on home ground flour and none of them that i bought so far were as comprehensive as this one. most of them are just a bunch of recipes. this book has so much more information about milling, types of mills, types of mixers, types of grains etc etc. which is exactly what i wanted. thanks for a great book.

Gutes Buch, sehr zu empfehlen