Adventures in Whole Grains

A few years ago, we hopped on the whole grains bandwagon.  We had been eating whole wheat bread for years but slowly we have been growing our whole grain repertoire. 

Yummy!

The shift was precipitated by my first pregnancy and the need to keep my blood sugar more stable throughout the process.   I started buying whole grain pasta.  You have to cook the hell out of it, but for the most part (some off-brands withstanding), it tastes good and I don’t miss the refined noodles.  I started checking the labels on cereal, English muffins, bagels, etc.  These were all easy switches.   These were things we were buying anyway and manufactures were making it easy by offering more whole grain alternatives.  You can even buy whole grain Goldfish!  If it is whole grain it must be healthy right?

More recently, we started making brown rice at home.  If you thought you had to cook whole grain pasta forever, brown rice is an eternity.  You really have to plan ahead because it takes nearly an hour, making it tough on a week night.  Also, it seems every time is like a science experiment,;too much water and you get a risottoesque mush, too little and you get wood chips.  We have made both. For breakfast, Kevin started eating something he affectionately calls ‘horse feed’.  It is something he picked up at Trader Joes, a combination of whole grains.  He swears by it now, but the first couple of weeks were an adjustment period.

My most recent experiment was baking with whole wheat flour.  If you have ever touched whole wheat flour it feels a little bit like really fine ground sand, not the silky texture of all-purpose white flour.  That should tell you something about how it is going to taste, but I foraged on anyway.  I was making banana bread last night.   I figured it was a heartier bread and could handle the whole grains.  It survived the baking, taking the same amount of time, rising properly, etc.  But….it certainly tasted different.  It was as if I had added corn meal or something to the dough.  It wasn’t bad exactly, just texturally very different.  Straight out of the oven it was disappointing because I was expecting something warm and soft and what I got was something dense and chewy. The next day I toasted a slice for breakfast and it was definitely better than the night before.  Even so, I may need to draw the line at brown rice and call that good enough. 

My next experiment will probably be pizza dough.  I have five pounds of the stuff, we’ll see if I find a reason to keep buying it.  If anyone has any good whole wheat recipes I would love to try them.