5 lbs Kernza Flour ($6/Lb)

Works Fine!!

I bought a bag of your perennial grain, having heard about it from a retired Methodist minister friend of mine who grew up in your area. Your website made the flour of Kernza sound very unusual and different, a flour that needed special handling and special recipes! As I have been baking since I was four, lo, these 60-some years, I decided to pick up the thrown gauntlet and try some of this mysterious grain. I do admit I'm cheating a tiny little bit-my B.S. is in Food Science. But as Bix Biderbeck, the late great coronet player said, when asked if he had taken music lessons, "Not enough to hurt my playing." I made fresh sourdough starter in anticipation of the arrival of the flour, and waited. The only bread recipes for Kernza seemed to be for sourdough, and I wanted my first experience to be successful, so sourdough it would be. I closely followed the instructions on the website for the sourdough loaf. The author made it sound as if the dough might explode if left out on the counter too long! One certainly wouldn't want that! I hastily put it into the refrigerator to avoid the fireworks. The following day, I was sorely disappointed to see my dough looking as though it hadn't raised a micrometer! The author must have been baking in summer, or in Arizona, or perhaps in his villa in the South of France! Alas, I am in deep winter in the Pacific Northwest, not known for it's sunny days this time of year. Into a warming oven the dough went instead, and soon we were on our way to a decent-sized loaf. I do confess I'd never baked bread at 500 degrees before, and so was a touch anxious about that, but actually the bread could have used a good ten extra minutes in the the oven. Notes to self for next time. But not to worry, it was delicious!! I took it to a Holiday party my neighbors were having and all pronounced it a very good sourdough bread. My favorite bread recipe, however, is Julia Child's French Bread- four ingredients: Flour, water, yeast, salt. Her recipe, the best I've ever found in all my years of baking, can be found on page 454 in "From Julia Child's Kitchen". I wondered: would this fancypants flour work as well in that simple recipe? Sure enough, it does, and it's just as delicious, but takes a quarter of the time of a sourdough bread. From which I conclude, dear Madams and Sirs, that Kernza is just an extraordinarily expensive wheat flour, and can be used in any recipe calling for such. No special recipes need be developed, no unusual techniques nor anything new. We who struggled through the stone-ground 1970's have already done that hard work for the rest of you! For anyone who has even the slightest experience using wheat flour, Kernza can be used exactly the same as any other wheat flour. Just...judiciously, given it's price tag at this time. One lives in hope that price will drop when more acerage is planted with it, and more consumers become aware of it. So, as our dear Julia would say, "Bon appetit!" Let the baking begin! Best wishes, Christina N Eugene, Oregon