{"id":2787,"date":"2014-11-13T17:50:48","date_gmt":"2014-11-13T22:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/?p=2787"},"modified":"2014-11-13T17:50:48","modified_gmt":"2014-11-13T22:50:48","slug":"healthier-tweak-to-some-old-favorites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/13\/healthier-tweak-to-some-old-favorites\/","title":{"rendered":"Healthier tweak to some old favorites"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So a blogger I follow,\u00a0Marisa McClellan over at <a title=\"Food In Jars (small batch canning)\" href=\"http:\/\/foodinjars.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">foodinjars<\/a>, recently published a cookbook, <em>Preserving by the Pint: Quick Seasonal Canning for Small Spaces from the author of Food in Jars<\/em>. And in that cookbook was a recipe for biscuits made entirely with Whole Wheat Pastry Flour. I was skeptical. I&#8217;ve worked with whole wheat flour with real mixed results. So I filed this tidbit away for Future Investigation and ended up buying some Whole Wheat Pastry Flour by Hodgson Mill a few grocery trips later. And you know what &#8212; no longer a skeptic!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Experiment #1<\/strong>: My old nemesis, <a title=\"Conquering the Crust\" href=\"http:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/05\/conquering-the-crust\/\" target=\"_blank\">pie crust<\/a>. I decided to go with all-butter (no lard) and sub out half of the all-purpose flour with this whole wheat pastry flour. The dough was a little persnickety upon rollout, perhaps a touch more fragile, but really not so different than the all A\/P version. I made a ham-and-cheese quiche with one half, and honestly, the slight grit and nuttiness of the crust was an improvement over the all A\/P version! Lots of light flaky layers, too. I froze the other half for later use. I would discourage that &#8212; the dough was VERY fragile and tore often upon roll-out. I did a lot of patching but managed to eke out a decent enough crust for an apple pie. Some flakiness lost, but all in all, a decent pie.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Experiment #2<\/strong>: Classic Toll-House Chocolate Chip Cookies. I went with my <a title=\"Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut!\" href=\"http:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/08\/sometimes-you-feel-like-a-nut\/\" target=\"_blank\">melted butter technique<\/a> but otherwise used the basic recipe, subbing out half of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat pastry flour. I have a stand mixer, so no issues with mixing. My personal taste test of raw dough revealed the merest grit and nuttiness, but an innocent bystander probably wouldn&#8217;t have noticed the difference. They baked off consistent with the full A\/P version. Final product was given a thumbs-up all around. The slightest change in texture &#8212; but everyone said they wouldn&#8217;t have noticed if I hadn&#8217;t said something.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Experiment #3<\/strong>: Biscuits. Given the success of the previous two forays into WWPF, I decided to brave a half-batch of biscuits using ONLY the whole wheat pastry flour. I used the proportions and general techniques found at <a title=\"Buttermilk Biscuits\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mommyskitchen.net\/2009\/05\/homemade-buttermilk-biscuits-thank-you.html\" target=\"_blank\">Mommy&#8217;s Kitchen<\/a>, which is based on a Southern Living recipe. I of course doctored it up &#8212; this time with some shredded sharp cheddar. I found I had to up the quantity of buttermilk a little &#8212; the WWPF really sucked up the liquid. I also did NOT have the usual gloopy dough that I have to turn out on a well-floured board for booking (laminating?), so I formed eight small biscuits by hand, handling the dough as little as possible. Baked them off, keeping an eye on the time, and ended up with crusty-outside-fluffy-inside cheesy biscuits. Awesome alongside a basic fish chowder.<\/p>\n<p>Why choose WWPF over A\/P flour? Fiber, baby. One-quarter cup unbleached, all-purpose flour has about 1 gram of fiber. One-quarter cup of whole wheat pastry flour has 4 grams of fiber. For someone who&#8217;s trying to be smarter about their carb intake, fiber matters.<\/p>\n<p>So, will I sneak WWPF into every baked good from now on? Probably not. But if I&#8217;m making a quiche, I might prefer the half WWPF version. And if I&#8217;m making savory biscuits on a weeknight, I might go the WWPF version since it&#8217;s less messy and slightly more healthful.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/2014-11-06-09.16.59.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-2791\" alt=\"SAMSUNG\" src=\"http:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/2014-11-06-09.16.59-150x150.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Standard caveat<\/strong>: This is a personal recommendation. I have been provided neither product nor compensation for this endorsement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So a blogger I follow,\u00a0Marisa McClellan over at foodinjars, recently published a cookbook, Preserving by the Pint: Quick Seasonal Canning for Small Spaces from the author of Food in Jars. And in that cookbook was a recipe for biscuits made entirely with Whole Wheat Pastry Flour. I was skeptical. I&#8217;ve worked with whole wheat flour [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-product-recommendation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/2014-11-06-09.17.09.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ImYM-IX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2787"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2800,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2787\/revisions\/2800"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}