Whole Wheat Drop Biscuits

Made with local wheat, these are quick and flavorful and not too heavy. One of my go-to recipes to serve with soup or stew.

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour, white whole wheat flour, or combination
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp powdered buttermilk (optional but nice)
2-3 Tbsp salted butter
1 scant cup milk

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and buttermilk (if using) in a medium bowl. Add the butter in small chunks and cut it in finely using a pastry cutter or two knives (or pulse briefly in a food processor). Add the milk and stir until combined. The dough will be sticky.

Drop spoonfuls of dough onto a baking sheet (I like to use a baking stone, but a regular baking sheet is fine). Bake for 10-13 minutes, until biscuits begin to brown. Serve warm.

Makes 12 medium sized biscuits.

No-Knead Bread II

This is my favorite adapted version of the famous no-knead bread recipe developed by Jim Lahey and popularized some years ago by Mark Bittmann. Back in 2009 I posted a version that's a bit closer to the original, but I've been playing with it since then and I like the version below better - plus this one is made entirely with whole grain flour, so more nutritious, too.

I get local wheat from  Upinngil Farm or Four Star Farms and grind it at home, though pre-ground flour is available from both farms and Four Star Farms grain and flour is available at Green Fields Market.

That's my flour mill

To bake this bread, you will need a good sized covered casserole pot, preferably ceramic or cast iron (I use a cast iron dutch oven). Glass is okay but not as good. Be sure the pot and lid are oven proof at high temperatures.

Overnight version
1 cup oat flour (whiz some rolled oats in a food processor if you don't have the flour on hand)
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (I use a hard red wheat)
2 cups white whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp yeast
2-3 tsp salt
2 1/4 cups lukewarm water
Cornmeal

Combine all ingredients except cornmeal in a large bowl. The dough will be very wet. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 15-18 hours (this is flexible: can be less, especially if the room is warm, or can be as much as 24 hours if you forget about it accidentally).

Liberally flour a work surface. Scrape the dough out of the bowl. Using well-floured hands and maybe a dough scraper, form the dough into a ball. You will need to keep sprinkling it with flour as you do this, until it is not sticky to the touch.

Sprinkle cornmeal onto a dish towel (not a fuzzy one!). Place the dough on the cornmeal and sprinkle more cornmeal over it. Cover with another towel and let rise for 30-60 minutes.

When ready to bake, put your pot and lid in the oven and preheat to 450 degrees. When the oven and pot are both nice and hot, take the pot out of the oven and put the dough into it. Give the pot a little shake to even out the dough if needed. Bake covered for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and bake for another 15 minutes. Cool on rack.

Quicker version
This is not quite as good as the overnight version, but it's close. What I like about the overnight version is that it develops a faint sourdough flavor from sitting out so long rising.

Use 1 Tbsp yeast instead of 1/4 tsp. After combining all ingredients in the bowl, cover and let rise for about 4 hours. Follow the same procedure as above with the flour and cornmeal for the second rising. Follow procedure above for preheating and baking.

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Quick Bread

After some experimentation, this is adapted from a few different recipes I found online.  It's nothing but whole grains, and unlike many quick breads it is made in a free-form loaf rather than a loaf pan.  The texture is satisfyingly hearty and toothsome but not too heavy.  It's best eaten fresh, but not at all bad the next day.  I find it just a little addictive.

I buy soft wheat from Upinngil Farm or Four Star Farms (available at Green Fields Market) and grind it into whole wheat pastry flour.  This yields a wonderful flavor but a somewhat fluffier and coarser flour than what you get if you just buy whole wheat pastry flour at the store.

1 cup coarsely ground oat flour or instant oats (not old fashioned rolled)
1 1/2 - 2 cups freshly ground whole wheat pastry flour (store bought may need less)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1-2 Tbsp honey (use less or more depending on sweetness desired)
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
3/4 - 1 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Combine oatmeal, whole wheat pastry flour (start with 1 - 1 1/2 cups), baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.

Combine honey, oil, and milk (start with 3/4 cup) in a small bowl and mix well (honey will tend to stiffen with cold milk, so stir well).  Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients.  Add additional flour or milk if needed to form a soft but not too sticky dough.  It will not have the consistency of a yeasted bread dough, but you want to be able to handle it.  Form it into a roll about 2-3 inches across and 6 inches long.  Place on a baking stone or lightly oiled baking sheet.  Bake for 20 minutes, or until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.

Makes 1 loaf.  Serves 4-6 as an accompaniment to soup, etc.

Whole Wheat Waffles with Local Fruit

Use whole wheat pastry flour - available from Upinngil Farm and Four Star Farms - for whole grain waffles that are light, crisp, and flavorful. Local berries and stone fruits are a year-round luxury if you buy them in bulk in August and freeze them. If you like, substitute buttermilk for some or all of the milk.

2 cups frozen blueberries
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups milk
2 Tbsp melted butter, cooled
1 tsp vanilla extract
Maple syrup for serving

Place the blueberries in a medium saucepan over low heat. Warm, stirring occasionally, until they are warm through and juicy. It's fine if they continue to simmer while you cook the waffles.

Brush your waffle iron lightly with oil and preheat while you put the waffle batter together.

Combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a medium bowl. In a smaller bowl, combine the beaten eggs, milk, melted butter, and vanilla extract. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir to combine thoroughly.

Ladle batter into the center of the waffle iron. Close and cook until the indicator light show that it is done; if you like your waffles crispier, leave it another 30-60 seconds.

Keep waffles warm on a covered plate or in a low oven until ready to serve. Top with blueberries (and juice) and maple syrup at the table.

Serves about 4.

Variation: top with Blueberry-Strawberry Sauce, applesauce, or (in summer) fresh slice fruit.

Whole Grain Buttermilk Pancakes

It was a happy recent discovery to find that Mapleline Farm offers buttermilk in pint containers. Too many times in the past I found myself buying a quart to make some particular recipe, only to watch the rest of it go bad in the fridge. This time, my husband bought a pint in order to use 1/2 cup in a cake; the remaining 1 1/2 cups was just right for a batch of pancakes.

Use any type of frozen or fresh fruit you like in these, depending on the season and what you have on hand. Frozen or fresh blueberries are classic, and with good reason, but other options would be good, too. You can also substitute cornmeal or another type of flour (regular whole wheat, oat flour, buckwheat...) for up to half of the whole wheat pastry flour.

Local whole wheat pastry flour is available from Four Star Farms (sold at Green Fields Market) and Upinngil Farm (sold at the farm store, open year round).

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp sugar (or honey or brown sugar)
1 egg
1 1/2-2 cups buttermilk
1-2 cups frozen blueberries (or other fruit of your choice)
Butter or oil for cooking
Maple syrup for topping
Applesauce for topping (optional)

Preheat your frying pan(s) by placing them on the stove and turning the burner on low while you put the batter together.

Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and sugar in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, beat the egg, then stir in the buttermilk. Stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients, then fold in the blueberries or other fruit.

Turn the heat under your frying pan(s) up to medium. Melt a little butter or heat a little oil, then ladle out the pancake batter. Cook for roughly 3-4 minutes per side, until golden brown and cooked through.

Serve topped with maple syrup and/or applesauce at the table.

Serves about 4.

Whole Wheat Cream Biscuits

This recipe is adapted slightly from one in The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. Even with half whole wheat flour, these biscuits are as tender and flaky as you could hope for - absolutely divine with roast chicken and gravy. (I also use the roast chicken recipe from this same cookbook; it is the easiest, simplest, and most reliable I have found.)

Whole wheat pastry flour is available from local farms including Uppingil Farm and Four Star Farms and can be ground from soft white wheat from the same sources. Look for it Saturday at Winter Fare or find it at Green Fields Market. I always use cream from Mapleline Farm in Hadley, available at Green Fields Market.

3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sugar
6 Tbsp butter
3/4 cup heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Combine the whole wheat pastry flour, the all purpose flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar in a bowl. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter or two knives (or make quick work of it with a few pulses in a food processor). Add the cream and stir it in with a fork until just combined. Knead the dough a couple times in the bowl, then turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Pat or roll the dough out to about 1/2-inch thick, then cut into biscuits (any shape you like).

Place the biscuits on a baking sheet (I use a baking stone) and bake for 17 minutes, until golden brown. Serve warm.

Makes 8-12 biscuits.

Maple Cinnamon Rice Muffins

Rice is never going to be local in Western Massachusetts, but it's one of those items I'm not ready to give up (and probably won't ever be). But most of the other ingredients in these muffins can be local - from the whole wheat pastry flour to the milk, eggs, and maple syrup. This is a nice way to use up leftover rice, and these muffins work well both in the morning and with lunch or dinner--serve them in the same types of contexts in which you would serve cornbread.

1 cup cold cooked rice (white or brown)
1 cup milk
2 large eggs, beaten
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional but nice)
1/4 cup maple syrup (preferably grade B)
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and grease tins for 18 medium or 12 large muffins.

Combine the rice and milk in a medium bowl and let sit for 5 minutes. Add the eggs, oil, vanilla extract, and maple syrup and mix well.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.

Spoon the batter into muffin tins. Bake for 20-22 minutes, until the muffins are golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Makes 12 large or 18 medium muffins.

Pear Ginger Muffins

You can use either fresh or dried pears here (or frozen, I suppose, if you have some - though I haven't tried that). They are lovely with ginger, and the whole wheat keeps these in the realm of muffins rather than cake. Soft white winter wheat, which makes whole wheat pastry flour, is available from Four Star Farms - I bought some at Winter Fare, but Green Fields Market also carries it in the bulk section. Upinngil Farm also sells both hard and soft wheat. You can use regular whole wheat flour here, too, but I prefer the texture of the whole wheat pastry flour.

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp allspice
1 tsp ground ginger
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
1 1/2 cups milk
1 medium pear, peeled, cored, and chopped (or 1/2 cup chopped dried pear)
1/4 cup minced crystallized ginger (optional)

Preheat the over to 400˚. Grease muffin tins to make 12 large muffins or 18 medium-sized ones.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, allspice, and ginger.

In a large bowl, combine the egg, vanilla, brown sugar, oil, and milk, and stir until the brown sugar is largely dissolved.

Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, stirring just enough to combine and get rid of most of the lumps. Fold in the pear pieces. If desired, fold in the crystallized ginger with the pear, or save it to sprinkle on top after filling the muffin cups.

Spoon the batter into the muffin tins.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle of a muffin comes out clean.

Makes 12 large or 18 medium-sized muffins.

Whole Wheat Popovers

With whole wheat pastry flour available from Upinngil Farm, these can be made almost entirely from local ingredients (no Pioneer Valley salt to be found, as far as I know). They go well with soups and stews, and are also nice with butter and jam.

4 large eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 375. Grease 18 smallish or 12 largish muffin tins (or popover tins if you happen to have them).

Combine the eggs and milk in a medium bowl. Stir in the flour and salt. It's okay if a few lumps remain. Ladle the batter into the muffin cups, filling them half to two-thirds of the way full.

Bake for 30 minutes, until the popovers are puffed up and golden and a little crispy on the outside.

As soon as you remove them from the oven, pierce each popover with a sharp knife in one or two places to let the steam escape. They will inevitably collapse at least somewhat, but will hold their shape better if you do this.

Serve warm.

Local Wheat and Other Grains

With cooler weather, the baking season is upon us. I expect to find myself making bread a lot more often, not to mention muffins and so on. We are lucky in this area that there are some sources of local wheat.

Upinngil Farm in Gill has been growing wheat for years. At their farm stand, you can get whole wheat berries, whole wheat pastry flour, and whole wheat bread flour, as well as wheat bran.

Crabapple Farm in Chesterfield, which also sells at the Greenfield Farmers Market, has also been experimenting with grains including wheat. To my knowledge, Crabapple only sells whole wheat berries.

According to CISA, Four Star Farms in Northfield also sells wheat, barley, and buckwheat, which can be milled on site for an additional charge. I don't personally have experience with Four Star - if anyone does, please feel free to leave a comment sharing what you know!

No-Knead Bread

This recipe is adapted from Jim Lahey via Mark Bittman at the New York Times, with a few minor changes of my own. Some folks may have seen it floating around the Internet already. With some local wheat on hand to go into it, I thought I'd share. I make this pretty regularly through the winter, when I can't get bread from El Jardin bakery at the farmers market. If you're looking for something to put your caramelized onions and goat cheese on, this is great. You can play with the ratio of flours--the amounts listed below are what I like, but it's pretty flexible.

The wheat I bought from Crabapple Farm was not ground, but I have a flour mill. I have found that freshly ground grains add wonderful flavor to breads and other baked goods.

To bake this bread, you will need a good sized covered casserole pot, preferably ceramic or cast iron (I use a cast iron dutch oven). Glass is okay but not as good. Be sure the pot and lid are oven proof at high temperatures.

Overnight version
3 cups all-purpose flour or bread flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour OR 1 cup whole wheat flour + 1/2 cup millet flour (my favorite)
1/4 tsp yeast
2-3 tsp salt
2 1/4 cups lukewarm water

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. The dough will be very wet. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 15-18 hours (this is flexible: can be less, especially if the room is warm, or can be as much as 24 hours if you forget about it accidentally).

Liberally flour a work surface. Scrape the dough out of the bowl. Using well-floured hands and maybe a dough scraper, form the dough into a ball. You will need to keep sprinkling it with flour as you do this, until it is not sticky to the touch.

Sprinkle cornmeal onto a dish towel (not a fuzzy one!). Place the dough on the cornmeal and sprinkle more cornmeal over it. Cover with another towel and let rise for 2 hours.

After 1 1/2 hours or so, put your pot and lid in the oven and preheat to 450 degrees. When the oven is hot and the bread is done rising, take the pot out of the oven and put the dough into it. Bake covered for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and bake for another 15-20 minutes. Cook on rack.

Quicker version
This is not quite as good as the overnight version, but it's close. What I like about the overnight version is that it develops a faint sourdough flavor from sitting out so long rising.

Use 1 Tbsp yeast intead of 1/4 tsp. After combining all ingredients in the bowl, cover and let rise for about 4 hours. Follow the same procedure as above with the flour and cornmeal for the second rising, but rise only one more hour. Follow procedure above for preheating and baking.

Whole Wheat Apple Spice Muffins

Crabapple Farm is experimenting with growing wheat and a few other grains (oats and barley, I think). We bought some of their wheat berries at the farmers market a couple weeks back. This weekend I ground some into flour (okay, I'm a food nerd and have a flour mill) and made these muffins with apples from Clarkdale, milk from Mapleline, and Diemand Farm eggs. Despite using all whole wheat flour, these muffins are not at all heavy. With the freshly milled flour, they had a pleasantly crumbly texture.

2 cups whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp allspice
½ tsp ground ginger
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
¼ cup brown sugar
½ cup canola oil
1 ½ cups milk
1 medium apple, peeled, cored, and chopped

Preheat the over to 400˚. Grease muffin tins to make 12 large muffins or 18 medium-sized ones.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and ginger.

In a large bowl, combine the egg, vanilla, brown sugar, oil, and milk, and stir until the brown sugar is largely dissolved.

Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, stirring just enough to combine and get rid of most of the lumps. Fold in the apple pieces.

Spoon the batter into the muffin tins.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle of a muffin comes out clean.

Makes 12 large or 18 medium-sized muffins.