Keep Those Bugs Out of Your Baking!
April 10, 2011 No Comments
As a child I occasionally visited relatives in rural Mississippi. They bought 50 lb bags of flour and sugar which might last 6 months to a year. The bags were coarsely woven cotton. The humidity was high so lumps were common. It also was very common to find mealy bugs in the flour. Less common were little pieces of trash or incompletely ground grains (you may find these in stone ground flour). Even in today’s kitchen we have found mealy bugs in brand new 2 lb paper bags of flour (purchased from a convenience store during a major holiday) so sifting isn’t a bad idea.
A sifter is used with dry powdered or granular ingredients such as flour, sugar, cornmeal, starch, etc. There are several reasons to use a sifter. Some people prefer to use a wire whisk rather than a sifter, but a whisk cannot meet the final requirement.
- Break up lumps
- Mix dry ingredients
- Remove bugs, trash, husks, incompletely ground grains
When you use a sifter to mix ingredients you will find that it makes a difference whether you use kosher salt or granulated salt. It has recently become very popular to specify kosher salt in cooking shows however kosher salt is too coarse to go through the sifter without being broken up. Don’t make the mistake of using it when it isn’t appropriate – baking isn’t a good place for kosher salt (except when used as a topping while baking bagels).
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