Good Baking depends on!!

[kenkart]

Good ingredients, the best most carefully followed recipe in the world wont work with poor flour! I have found, since White Lilly has changed, and Red Band is no longer made, these are the best, Mark Harman told me about these, and I have been more than satisfied. Made by Big Spring Mill, Elliston Va, which is near Roanoke, Donald went a couple of weeks ago and picked these up for me.

 

[kenkart]

These are made..

With Red Winter Wheat, the softest finest flour imaginable.

 

[kenkart]

All purpose..

Is really about as fine as cake flour, you know if we would drive 2 hours just for flour, it must be good.

 

[kenkart]

Best of ALL!

They have a website, bsmill.com This is a small, old fashioned family owned mill, try some of there products, i promise you will be well satisfied.

 

[dysonman1]

Hans

You were the first person who told me about Virginia's Best flour, and taught me your secret recipe for buttermilk biscuits. I get the flour on-line, or when I see my friend Logan (from Virginia). I won't use any other kind of flour. YOU WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG. And you're a Great Cook to boot as well as a Great Friend. Keep sharing your delicious recipes.

 

[chan55]

Flour

Love the beautiful Sunbeam model 12 in the background. I have one too. Gotta love it.
Chan

 

[kenkart]

I have them..

In every color..LOL!! I have about any kind of mixer you could imagine, and I use an old Sunbeam more than any, that and a 56 Sears Kenmore, the Kitchen Aids are normally used for cookie dough or something like that, or attachments., often I will buy big roasts on sale and grind them into hamburger to freeze, the KA is far better for heavy duty stuff like this.

 

[danemodsandy]

White Lily:

What was done to White Lily flour was a sin and a crime. The mill where it was made was closed, and production sent to another mill that did not have the same historic milling equipment as the original. My understanding is that the wheat may also have been changed.

White Lily fans spotted the difference immediately; the company started putting out the word, "There is no difference."

That's when The New York Times got into the act, baking up some biscuits and other goodies with both the old and new White Lily flours (some of the old was still in stores at this point).

Tasters could detect the new pretty much every time, in blind tastings where they had no information on which was which. Recipes made with the new were consistently judged heavier and less tender, the quality for which White Lily had been famous for so many years.

White Lily used to be the "gold standard" for generations of Southern cooks. Now, it's just another flour.

 

[kenkart]

Sandy!

You got that right!! I will have to say, this virginias best, while not exactly like WL, Is the best thing I have used since,They turned WL into a Yankee flour, which is fine for yeast breads, but it dont cut it for biscuits etc!Southern Biscuit used to be good, but it seems different and of course, my Grandmothers favorite Red Band is gone too!

 

[kenkart]

Re White Lilly

I heard the old plant in Knoxville Tenn was closed and its now being made in Ohio!!

 

[caligula]

Hi Kenkart.

Whenever I bake I insist on several national brands. It's Gold Medal flour, Domino sugar, be that granular , confectioners, or light/dark brown. Hershey's cocoa, and Land-O-Lakes (unsalted) butter. Another standard is Philadelphia cream cheese. Certain recipes like cookies call for things like chocolate chips, (Nestlé) and M&Ms, and raisins (Sun Maid). As for pineapple and so on, it must be Dole.

 

[kenkart]

Gold Medal..

Is great for yeast breads, but I cant make biscuits with it.

 

[caligula]

Hi Kenkart.

I haven't done much baking since I moved in with my housemate back in 2011. Fact is, his mom, Janet,  is a great cook, and lives right down the road. Her baking is awesome, so as I see it, doing my own, would be upstaging her. However, at Christmas, bake a lot of cookies to hang on the tree, and follow my grandmothers recipe for certain things that I send my mom in Indiana. One of these recipes calls for 3 cups of flour, and 1 cup of rice flour.


 


If I make my own drop biscuits, then I bring out the Bisquick. I usually cheat when I make my applesauce raisin cake, using a mix, (Duncan Hines) and Betty Crocker cream cheese frosting.

 

[gottahaveahoove]

I just made 25 dozen cookies this past week!

I decided to 'celebrate" Valentine's Da. Some ofmy ESL students had never had homemade cookies before. So, I surprised them. I made Toll House, Italian pepper cookies, and sugar cookies (cookie cutters) It is true: you really need good quality ingredients.
Next will be Irish sodabread.

 

[kirbysthebest]

Good flour is indeed the start of good baked goods.

I prefer Hudson Cream, a local brand with wheat grown here in Kansas and processed i Stafford county.