Teleidoscope

Sun, Apr 18, 2010

Bisquick

Posted at 11:55 am MDT to Technology

It turns out that all readily available unbleached flour in this country had malt in it. And with the other things I'm allergic to mostly removed from my diet,I'm really noticing the effects of the malt.

I switched my my sourdough starter to pure wholewheat via aerial contamination: mixture of wholewheat flour and water in one open bowl, well fed starter in another open bowl, stir both vigorously and leave them in the enclosed space of my microwave for a couple of days. The new starter rises, but not strongly... I may look for a true wholewheat starter on-line and in the meantime I may add baker's yeast to my batches of bread to get a better rise than the sourdough can provide alone.

And for brunch today I'm going to make Bisquick waffles (just like Mom used to make). I was reading labels in Costco the other week and discovered that Bisquick, being all industrial, uses chemical vitamins for enrichment, not the more 'natural' barley malt. It does have some dextrose init, but I hope that will be chemically pure enough that I won;t react to it.

Maybe at some point I can figure out how to use the Bisquick in an actual cake and other baked goods that I don't want to use wholewheat flour in: it should be a reasonable approximation in any recipe that calls for chemical leaveners. According to wikipedia, "One cup of Bisquick can be substituted by a mix of the following ingredients: 1 c flour, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tbsp oil or melted butter." So I will need to adjust recipes accordingly.

My waffles may be like Mom's, but my syrup will be real. One advantage of shopping at Costco -- you can get industrial quatities of real maple syrup at reasonable prices. I also have a jar of Canadian maple syrup from our sales manager, who lives and works in Canada, and gave maple syrup as Christmas presents this year.

Mom never bought real maple syrup. She bought this maple flavoring stuff called Mapleine and mixed it into a sugar syrup. One of the first things I did when I got my own place and started cooking for myself was start buying real maple syrup.

I don't remember if Grampa used real syrup when he made pancakes for us. If so, that would be part of what made them so wonderful. I'm pretty sure he did not use Bisquick, though -- Grampa had worked as a cook in a lumber camp when he was a young man in Canada. That would be nearly a hundred years ago now. And Bisquick wasn't sold until the 30s, probably 10 to 20 years after he left the woods.

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