The Essential Home-Ground Flour Book: Learn Complete Milling and Baking Techniques, Includes 100 Delicious Recipes Paperback – Illustrated, May 10, 2016

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’ve been making breads with home-ground flour for years. I’ve tried to substitute my flour in many recipes with less success than I want to admit. Well, this book has been a game changer for sure. The English muffins with kamut is delicious. The banana bread is top notch and worthy of company.The basic yeast bread makes a great roll that was devoured by a 12- year old. The heart multi grain blueberry muffins are better than any fresh bakery muffins I’ve ever tried.I have marked about a dozen more to try and I expect them all to be as outstanding as these first two.It is great to finally have a book with a variety of basic bread recipes to choose from and some extra special ones to use my home milled flour. It also uses a variety of grains that have their own special health benefits. This book will be used often.It is a must have book if you mill your own flour and want to enjoy fresh baked goods.

If you are new to baking your own bread and milling your own flour, you need this book. Information and instructions are clear and easy to understand. Sue Becker goes through everything from ingredients and techniques to equipment and types of flour mills. And as a bonus there are many wonderful recipes. I can't wait to get started.

Excellent reference book for milling flour. Lot's of great baking and storage tips.All the recipes I have made from this book have been enjoyed by my family.I would highly recommend and splurge for the spiral bound.

I love everything about home milling my own wheat. I have been milling for over 12 years. I would make items here and there, but in the past few months I decided to cut all white flour from our lives. This book gave me the background and so many great looking recipes to boot. I personally purchased for the expertise Sue Becker provides at the beginning of the book. I have listened to her podcast, watched many YouTube videos and purchased her red little book of recipes. While they are all great resources, I enjoy doing research, and Sue gives a ton of information to help the reader feel comfortable and enthused with home milling full time, instead of eating processed white all purpose flour.Now, I am taking one star away, because the recipes are given in mL and no one measures baking in mL measurements. Grams, yes, but milliliters no. The good part is the recipes are also given in standard American measurements (cups, teaspoons, ...) Once you start baking by using gram measurements, you become a bit spoiled by the consistent results, so that is a bit disappointing. However, this is such a great resource that I am more than pleased to have this book added to my Fresh milled flour resources.This would make a fantastic gift to anyone who is new to home milling their flour or even a seasoned fresh milled flour baker.Thanks Sue Becker for a wonderful book.

This book is LOADED with recipes, I mean, more than half of it's volume is recipes. This is GREAT news if you're looking to get started in fresh milled grains. The first half is all education and teaching you about grains, anatomy of grain, the who, what, why of grains. Even the science of grains and the nutritional benefits provided to you by milling your own. Reading this will help you understand why storebought breads and flours are so bad for you. It will also explain some of the digestive issues you may currently have or why people think "gluten is the enemy." Find out here why gluten is NOT the problem. It's the additives and processing chemicals that give you that familiar white powder probably sitting in your cabinet. (Probably been there a while and yet...it's not spoiled...concerning isn't it?) Get this book and learn why, then learn how to grind and change your look on baked goods forever. Bet you never thought you could eat bread and get healthier?