Flour Alternatives

[Weedygarden]

 

[Weedygarden]

This interested me because I see a lot of dock and you probably do too.

 

[Caribou]

I just picked up a bunch of barley flour. That should help with my diabetes. The farm I buy my barley from is putting together a cookbook. I'll pickup a copy when it is released. I ordered a 25# bag of barley brownie mix. Ooooh, that was a mistake. Yum!

 

[Amish Heart]

I've ground a lot of different stuff into flour. Can substitute some of it into traditional recipes instead of regular flour. Dehydrated veg do well, like zucchini. Dehydrated beans. White rice flour is fun to cook with, and is a neat consistency. Whole oats. I haven't used my Wonder Mill in a while. Time to take it out. I'm in the middle of packaging red wheat in my dining room, and I need to grind some of it.

 

[Weedygarden]

I've ground a lot of different stuff into flour. Can substitute some of it into traditional recipes instead of regular flour. Dehydrated veg do well, like zucchini. Dehydrated beans. White rice flour is fun to cook with, and is a neat consistency. Whole oats. I haven't used my Wonder Mill in a while. Time to take it out. I'm in the middle of packaging red wheat in my dining room, and I need to grind some of it.

Gluten free flours that you buy in stores are usually a combination of a few different things, one part being usually being rice flour. Xanthan gum is something that helps to bind gluten free flours together when using them. Mixing different types of flour is something to consider when trying to stretch out food that a person has in shorter supply. I have Xanthan gum. You can buy it in grocery stores and it is usually found with Bob's Red Mill products. You can also order it from Amazon.

Rice and bean flour are certainly flours that a typical prepper can make if they have a good grinder. For the people who are not about storing any wheat, they could store more rice and beans for this purpose.

Many years ago I worked with a woman who had gone to culinary school for baking. She would bring in different foods that were made with beans. One time she brought in a bean pie. Another time she brought in bean brownies. It was all good and it is good to know that there is more to baking than wheat flours.

From what I have picked up about the dock flour, it is best to use a mix of other things with it, and in the mix, only use about 1/4 dock flour. It will certainly take some experimenting to bake with it.

I have seen dock my whole life and have often wondered about it as a food source. I think of my mother and father and their lives as hungry children during the Great Depression. The dock seeds could have helped them stretch their wheat. I know they bought beans in bulk so they could have used bean flour, but they did grow wheat so I have no idea if they had a short supply of it. Drought and hail storms can cause crop failures.

This is a good time of year to see dock because it has the brown seeded stalks upright in fields and ditches. If I were to take the time, I know I could harvest at least of 5 gallon bucket of it from all the places I see it.

While this thread is about flours, if and when you locate dock, know that the plant is edible, but in limited amounts over time. I have wondered if it was one of the greens that my mother's family ate. Dock also has medicinal properties.

The leaves on dock are large, but contain something that should not be eaten in large amounts. "The main uses of the curly dock plant today would be for food since the leaves, stalk, and the seeds are all edible. The leaves can be used in salads, just a cooked vegetable, or put into soup, but wash the really young leaves because they contain a chemical which can numb your tongue."

Dock is related to buckwheat. Curly Dock: A Plant for Year-Round Sustenance — Four Season Foraging

 

[Weedygarden]

Recipe: Curly Dock Crackers​

From http://www.ediblewildfood.com/yellow-dock-crackers.aspx

These crackers have a wonderfully earthy flavor. I think they combine well with something tart, like pickles, rhubarb preserves, or chutney. Serves 4 to 6.

INGREDIENTS​

• 1 cup ground curly dock seed
• 1 cup flour of your choice (I use all-purpose wheat flour)
• 1 tsp. sea salt
• Water

INSTRUCTIONS​

1. In a bowl mix together the ground yellow dock seed, flour, and salt. Add in water very slowly until the dough is pliable (not sticky).
2. On a well-floured surface roll dough thinly. Cut into desired shapes. Then transfer them onto a well-greased baking sheet.
3. Bake 10 to 12 minutes at 375°F or until crisp.

 

[Weedygarden]

Curly Dock: A Plant for Year-Round Sustenance​

Prefer to listen to this article? No problem! Four Season Foraging now offers free audio versions of articles with the help of a text-to-speech website. Simply click the play button on the right!

Curly Dock: A Plant for Year-Round Sustenance
www.fromtexttospeech.com

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Curly dock plants displaying their voluminous seedheads.

Curly dock (Rumex crispus, also called yellow dock) is one of those plants that is easily overlooked. It doesn’t have a showy flower and the leaves can look kind of generic. Furthermore, it’s not typically as prolific of a weed as dandelion— at least not in urban areas. It’s unfortunate that people aren’t more familiar with it, as the leaves, stem, seed, and root are all edible or medicinal. And with its wide distribution, it’s easy to start eating!

Habitat and Distribution​

Curly dock isn’t too discerning about its habitat, growing in full sun and part shade, fields, roadsides, trailsides, and other open areas. Native to Europe, it has been introduced to all fifty states in the US and all Canadian provinces except Nunavut.

Identification​

Basal rosette of curly dock

The leaves of curly dock are hairless, long and narrow, and often have wavy or curly edges—which is where it gets its common name. The plant has both basal leaves and leaves on the stem, which are alternate. Basal leaves can be as long as 12 inches and around 2 ½ inches wide; the leaves become smaller as they ascend the stem. A thin whitish sheath grows around the node (where the petiole and stalk meet.) This sheath become brown and papery with time, and eventually disintegrates. The main stem is ribbed, stout, and mostly unbranched. The plant can reach heights of one to five feet at maturity.
Flowers grow in branching clusters at the top of the plant, in groups of 10 to 25. Despite this large quantity, they are rather inconspicuous because they are small and greenish (though they can also be yellowish or pinkish.) They appear in whorls, meaning that they grow all the way around a single point on the stem.
Seeds appear in late summer and fall. They are three-sided, oval to egg-shaped, with a sharp point on one end. The seeds are encased in a leaf-like capsule that turns brown and papery with age. These seeds are the best way to identify curly dock in winter, as they often remain on the dead stalk until spring. (See below for close-up pictures of the seeds.) If you are unfamiliar with curly dock, I don’t recommend immediately picking a dead winter stalk for the seeds. Instead, practice positively identifying the plant during the growing season. Then observe the plant as it ages through the fall and winter, and then start picking the dead winter stalks. I believe that this is best way to learn to identify plants in winter.

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[Weedygarden]

I have recipes that call for potato flour and I have been wondering and have even talked about using dehydrated potatoes for making it. I just searched and found this information. I think I need more instant potatoes!

"Is instant potatoes the same as potato flour?

Potato flour is made from dehydrated ground potatoes, as in instant potatoes. Potato flour holds water — which explains why it is included in many bread recipes: to keep items soft. It also suggests why an old baker's trick is to add instant dry mashed potatoes to the mixture when baking bread. Dec 8, 2015"

Edit: Potato starch, potato flour not the same

Q: Are potato starch and potato flour the same thing?

— C.G., Brown Township

A: Potato starch and potato flour aren’t the same and generally aren’t used interchangeably.

Potato starch is extracted from high-starch potatoes, then dried. When boiling a pot of russet potatoes, think of the starch that is released and coats the sides of the pot; that’s the substance that is dried for potato starch.

Potato starch is typically used like cornstarch as a thickener, particularly by those who must avoid wheat flour as a thickener. It is also used in gluten-free baking as a lightener to add structure and improve the texture of baked goods.