Daisy Blog

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Small-Batch Flours from Local Grains

Flours Baker Sheet For home bakers used to the consistency of supermarket commodities, small-batch flours require some adjustment—just as grass fed beef requires different cooking techniques than its corn-fed counterpart. But the variations in local grains, once you’ve learned to work with them, are precisely what make them worth the trouble…

“It all comes down to grain,” says Chef Dan Barber (of Blue Hill Farm in New York State). “Yes, because it’s delicious—a whole world of flavor that’s been ignored for the past 50 years—but also because it is a critical missing link in any community’s ability to feed itself.”

“I think that’s one of the greatest things about the grains,” he says. “They change year to year…. It makes them that much more interesting. Each grain is a little bit different in itself.” …

Klaas Martens, who has been growing organic grains with his wife, Mary-Howell Martens, on their Finger Lakes farm for over a decade, echoes this sentiment. “I think we’ve bought into a false definition of quality with the industrial food system, and that quality is uniformity. With uniformity you bring up the worst, but you also eliminate excellence.”…

But when it comes to Northeast flour, the real miracle is loaves—that is, bread. Area farmers have had success growing soft wheat, the variety traditionally grown here, which is preferred for pastries, pancakes and cookies. In our climate it’s more difficult to grow so-called hard wheat, whose higher levels of gluten give yeasted bread its structure, producing the big air bubbles we’ve come to love in our loaves…

Daisy Blog

All-American Daisy Pizza Pie Blog

Pizza dough has been my passion now for the past six months. I read everything Italian. I’ve swapped flour with some of the best pizza chefs on the east coast. And I am finally beginning to understand what ”00 imported flour” really means to all those cooks and chefs who call us to see if we can replicate this wonderfully fine flour with an American grown and locally milled wheat.
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Flour 101

Hand Holding Wheat To be able to choose the best variety of flour for your needs, get to know the basics about the wheat from which flour is milled. Soft wheat thrives in temperate, moist climates (like our mid-Atlantic region), while hard wheat flourishes in the Midwest. Soft wheat is milled into pastry flour, while hard wheat becomes bread flour. All-purpose flour is a combination of the two. For years, we kept it out of the Daisy lineup out of principle. Dave Poorbaugh of Daisy Organics has Read More...

Pie : High on my mind

Rhubarb pie is my favorite, perhaps because it comes first among fruits that kick off pie season every summer. The boys tore into this one before I could get a full-pie photo. No matter; it was an experiment. I wanted to try Daisy Pastry Flour with a variety of different recipes for pie crust that I’ve been collecting all year long, just waiting for fresh fruit season. The crust for this rhubarb pie was made with all Read More...

Lavash

This middle-Eastern flatbread can be baked to be soft, like a tortilla, and used as a sandwich wrap. However, we like to bake it quickly ( 2 minutes) at high heat (500 degrees) using Daisy Spelt Flour
For this simple recipe our baker, Kirsten, made 30 round crisps after mixing 1 cup lukewarm water with 1/4 cup Whole Grain Spelt Daisy Flour and 1/4 cup (.25 oz) yeast. Add 1 and 1/2 teaspoon salt and 3 cups of Spelt Daisy Flour.

Lavish

Work this dough Read More...

Identity-Preserved Wheat for Daisy Bread Flour

Eating only "local" food isn't always practical and so, for many of us, the new distinction is "accountable". We know the farmer, the field and have some experience with the quality of the product over time. Because Daisy flours are 100% organic we maintain long and accountable relationships with the farmers that grow the grains we buy. We know the "identity" profiles of those farmers.

Now we - and several of our farmers - are learning more and Read More...