10 October 2012

GUEST BLOG: Flour power

By guest blogger HELEN ROADHOUSE

Sometimes I need to remind myself just how privileged we are at Cracking Good Food to have such fantastic cooks and such a vast amount of experience to draw upon to share with other cooks in our sessions so they too can pass on this wealth of information back into the communities. This is what we were doing at the beginners bread-making course we ran on Monday 8 October at Trinity Methodist Church in Miles Platting.

Cracking Cook Rob started by explaining the differences between yeasts and how they work, and how as yeast is a live organism which means the results can be unpredictable.


Rob always suggests using half wholemeal and half white flour as wholemeal does not contain as much gluten. We also found out the reason for using strong flour to make bread rather than ordinary as these wheats are grown especially to produce more gluten, which is necessary for good textured bread. One really interesting nugget of info about flour I learnt is that if you cannot get organic wholemeal flour, it may be more healthy to use white flour. Apparently, all the pesticides used in producing non-organic wheat gets stored in the wheatgerm so it could mean that non-organic wholewheat flour contains more harmful chemicals than non-organic white flour as this has has all the wheat erm processed out! I have worked on a few bread-making sessions with Rob and every time I learn something new from his wealth of experience.


Everyone participating was drawn in by Rob's passion and enthusiasm for making bread and freezing batches rather than buying unhealthy branded breads. I also think participants find the process easier (and more fun) than they expect, and there were lots of positive comments regarding actually trying the recipes at home and at their own community cooking sessions.

There really is nothing better than the smell of fresh bread from the ovens and seeing the beaming smiles of the participants taking their baked prizes home afterwards... another great session!

There are more photos from this session on the Cracking Good Food Facebook page. Click here to be redirected. You can sign up for bread-making classes on 19 February (beginners) and 23 February (next level) at Chorlton High School on our website.

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