Blereau - Wholefood Baking: Wholesome ingredients for delicious results

Contents

Introduction

I was lucky enough to grow up with a lot of delicious baking, mostly by my mum. Taste and place memories fly immediately to the cinnamon teacake for a weekend afternoon tea; Canadian apple roly poly with all its sticky syrup from the CWA Cookbook for dessert, apple pie (Mas Apple Pie found in a magazine) and pumpkin pie. But they also include the dried apricot pie that was often in my best friend Nenes lunchbox I would trade anything I possibly could for that, but being the wonderful friend she still is today, she would share it with me. These are all fragrant and delicious memories that I am sure have inspired my love for baking.

I believe weve become far too critical and shallow in how we view baked sweet goods with regards to our concept of healthy eating and sweetness in general, and I regularly see this when I consult or speak. Many are shocked when I suggest that there is a valid role for sweetness in a wholesome diet and many live with a fair amount of denial around sweetness.

This denial commonly manifests in an eating pattern that, while it may be considered healthy in the current fractionalised and narrow view of healthy eating, it is, I believe, imbalanced and without a shred of common sense. This is a topic well covered in my previous books. In such an eating pattern it is typical to see people binge on chocolate and especially yoghurt denial is always an unbalanced act. I believe that to be a human is far more than to require the physical fuel and nutrients to run our body, far more than just to achieve and do. To be human is also to feel love, to be a part of family or community, to be joyful and to experience and create beauty. Food is a deeply joyful and delicious part of life, especially sweetness. I believe that we are body and soul and that we are hardwired for sweetness in all of its many forms the sweetness of love, the smile and smell of my baby girl (now all grown up), the sweetness of my mum cooking that deliciousness for me, the sweetness of that beautiful man looking at me in the way that he does life is sweet, and there is so much to be grateful for. I know this is why I love baking so very much its beautiful and it gives so much joy. And dont tell me that cake or pudding cannot heal Ive seen it. Maybe sometimes we need comforting before we can actually get on with the process of healing.

I truly believe that there is a very valid place for cake, biscuits or pie in the balanced eating of a wholesome everyday life. But, I also think that we have lost sight of what a cake, biscuit or pie truly are. I was saddened to see one of my most favourite bakers consider that her priority as a baker was not health, but flavour in a very recent book. I simply do not see why we cannot have both, and just do not believe that highly refined ingredients actually offer any flavour whatsoever and have robbed traditional baking of much of its beauty. There is now a large and wonderful world of less refined, more whole ingredients available for baking, which result in delicious, but more wholesome results, nourishing to body and soul. Put your nose to many of these everything old is new again sweeteners and flours and you will notice many dimensions of flavour the coconut and deep caramel of palm sugars, the forest and perfumed fragrance of maple syrups and sugars, the deep and assertive aroma of buckwheat flour and the sweet earth and summer easterly winds that blow through my mind when I smell spelt flour. These, and many others, are the flours and sweeteners I use in my kitchen, and once you understand how to use them, I know you will come to love and use them also.

Basically, you can achieve a more wholesome result simply by using the less-refined versions of white wheat and spelt, and replacing refined sugar with the less- refined crystallised sugars that still retain some of their molasses, less-refined oils with unrefined, and the unstable unsaturated and polyunsaturated oils with the more stable oils such as olive, coconut, macadamia nut and the exceptionally stable butter. This is a relatively simple thing to do, and your results will be fine. But, as you go further and explore the wholemeal flours, the whole sweeteners such as rapadura sugar or maple syrups and such, things will change radically cakes will become browner, crumb will become denser, ingredients will misbehave. In all, it will become challenging, and this book is planned as a guide for that journey. On the way I want you to keep in mind that it may be challenging at times, but well worth it. An attempt that is less than wonderful, can be still be delicious it doesnt have to be perfect.

I would absolutely encourage you to read before you start with the recipes. Baking is a world of variables, which are only multiplied when you step away from the everyday refined ingredients. And, when your attempt is less than wonderful, go back to these pages and work out what happened recipes are a guideline and nowhere is this more true than in the world of baking with whole and semi-refined ingredients. For example, the flour Ive used here in Perth, Western Australia, will almost certainly be different from what you have access to should you live far from here. You read a little more and try it again this is what makes you a cook or a baker. Many of you who have read my previous books will notice some differences in flour weights and the descriptions of some ingredients. While these are always heavily researched, I had not fully realised until now just how much both these aspects vary from country to country. I have looked more closely at the ingredient, spent much more time coming to know it and am very happy to settle with what you will find in these pages.

This book is not about being a purist, but rather seeking to get the best result using the most wholesome ingredients and balancing that with deliciousness. Within these pages youll find a range of sweet goods using a wide variety of wholemeal (whole-grain) and semi-refined flours and whole and semi-refined sweeteners. Some will err towards nourishing the body, and some more towards nourishing the soul, but certainly both can be considered whole and real.