The Joy of Baking is Back–Hallelujah!

Even the world’s best lawyer would have a hard time making a case for the nutritional value of a cookie. White flour, sugar and butter are hardly a cornucopia of health. I could argue the rationale for the butter, utilize one of the newfangled sweeteners for the sugar and substitute whole-wheat for the traditional all-purpose flour, but cookies made with whole-wheat flour sort of taste like, well, rocks.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a nutty-tasting, grainy slice of whole-wheat bread, but sometimes I just want a cookie to taste like they did back in the old days—before we knew that white flour had been processed to within an inch of its life and then doused with chlorine gas. Boy, if that didn’t take the “yum factor” down a few notches.
That was until my recent life-changing discovery of white whole-wheat flour. This white whole-wheat flour is not some crazy new invention; it is simply wheat flour milled from white wheat berries instead of the traditional red wheat berries. Got it? It’s made from the whole berry—the bran, the germ and the endosperm—so you get all the same health benefits. But, and here’s the kicker, the white grain has a lighter bran that produces a milder, sweeter, whitish colored flour with no heaviness.
No more hockey puck muffins and “quick, give me a gallon of water to wash this down” cookies. It may still be too heavy for your favorite layer cake and a little low on gluten to stand alone in those yeast breads, but for cookies, muffins and quick breads it is perfection in a 5-pound sack and infinitely better for you.
The evidence is irrefutable; bring on the natural fiber, protein, vitamins and minerals! Once again, a cold glass of milk and a couple of warm oatmeal raisin cookies can be considered a healthy snack—at least once in awhile. Case closed.
You be the judge. Try using white whole-wheat flour on your next baking adventure and let us know how your baked goods turned out! —Karen