Calling Hans (norgeway): Adluh Flour

frigilux · Nov 26, 2016

I have company coming in two weeks who prefer biscuits to dinner rolls. They also like my blueberry cornbread. You've had great things to say about Adluh self-rising flour and after your endorsement of Happy Home flavorings (which I now use) I want to give it a try. Found the Adluh Flour Store online and have a couple of questions. (Aside: Interestingly, their flour comes in either 2-lb., 25-lb., or 50-lb. bags. No 5- or 10-lb. options, which is what we generally see up north.)

1. Do you use Adulh's plain flour for general baking (cakes, cookies, quick breads, etc.)? Somewhere online I found a tip that said to add 1 tablespoon of vital wheat gluten to each cup of Adluh flour when making yeast breads. Do you also use Adluh for sandwich loaves and dinner rolls?

2. Do you use Adluh yellow corn meal or their grits?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can provide.

drhardee · Nov 26, 2016

Curious... Allen Brothers Milling is 2 miles from my home in downtown Columbia, SC, but we have a difficult time finding it in our local stores.

Factoid: Adluh is "Hulda" spelled backward. Hulda was the miller's daughter for whom the place is named. It's good stuff, but not easy to find.

I really ought to go on a tour of that place someday soon!

rp2813 · Nov 26, 2016

An interesting old facility like that would have been (cough) toast around here a long time ago.

gyrafoam · Nov 26, 2016

IMO Adluh is very good flour. Makes great quick-breads such as pancakes and biscuits. Cakes and cookies are very good, as well.
White Corn Meal and Grits are excellent. If you enjoy baking you are going to love this flour.

norgeway · Nov 26, 2016

I buy it

In 5 pound bags, but that is in stores...I use it both self rising and plain, but I NEVER use yellow corn meal, only white, If I make yeast breads I use Pillsbury or Gold Medal, Yankee flours are better for yeast breads in my opinion, but my Grandmother used Red Band for everything and made wonderful rolls and bread,I just bought some as we are in Columbia visiting some friends.You have to remember Southern Flours are made from soft winter wheat, totally different from Northern all purpose flours,Make biscuits with Gold Medal and then with Adluh or Virginias Best and see the difference, You can work the hell out of the dough when using a Southern flour and your biscuits will be light and tender...not so with high gluten flours,you will have rocks!

frigilux · Nov 26, 2016

Thanks for the recommendations, guys. I'm going to order two small bags each of Adluh's self-rising and plain flours.

gyrafoam · Nov 26, 2016

The worst part of purchasing flour online is the cost of shipping! Damned gravity.

jamiel · Nov 26, 2016

You're on the right track adding gluten to a southern flour...I believe there was a feature on Cooks Illustrated several years ago contrasting southern all-purpose (Martha White/Red Band/White Lily), northern all-purpose (Pillsbury/Gold Medal), and Canadian all-purpose (Robin Hood) and each had more gluten than the previous by a couple percent each (Southern-8%/Northern 10%/Canadian 12% seems to come to mind).

gyrafoam · Nov 27, 2016

It's true the Northern flours have a higher gluten. However, nobody told all those millions of old southern cooks who used whatever they had and turned-out excellent bread time after time. Doesn't seem to matter whether I use White Lily or King Arthur, my dinner rolls and challah come out perfectly every time. Since Hudson Cream is the plentiful brand around where I live I have gotten used to it and it does just fine. I used it to make the loaves of challah I brought to this past summer's wash-in. The Hudson Cream Bleached White makes a very good layer cake with a fine crumb.

jamiel · Nov 27, 2016

Not to be blunt, but the South is hardly known for yeast breads...either at the home or commercial. Is there any sandwich in the South which is served on anything but white cotton-bread? Dinner rolls, challah, brioche and the like are all delicate, rich, quickly baked yeast breads.

norgeway · Nov 27, 2016

Hmmm

That's funny, My Grandmother made homemade yeast bread every week for years,And the rolls served in school lunchrooms were the very best yeast rolls I ever tasted...The South is WELL known for breads of all types, yeast and quick.

gyrafoam · Nov 27, 2016

The old Highland Bakery ( not to be confused with the chain of modern-day stores) in Atlanta used to deliver all kinds of breads to us. Salt-Rising, Rye, Pumpernickel, Raisin. They did great business back in the day, when Atlanta was not cosmopolitan. Southerners were used to all kinds of breads.

michaelman2 · Nov 27, 2016

Yep, Mary Mac's and The Collonade might beg to differ with regard to the yeast breads/rolls. (the aforementioned are two Atlanta institutions that have been around since the 1920s).

gyrafoam · Nov 28, 2016

Mike is right.

I've ruined many an appetite by consuming too many of Colonnades rolls before the food arrived!
Leb's served a mixed basket of warm rolls including pumpernickel with onions. So did the dining room at the Cherokee Club and Progressive.
The dining rooms at both Davison's and Rich's served great breads. So did the Ambassador.

Considering how insular Atlanta was back in the day I'd say breads of all varieties were very popular.

michaelman2 · Nov 28, 2016

Absolutely correct Gyro. I can so relate to your loss of stomach capicity after the bread baskets were passed at the several Atlanta favorites you mentioned. I am still a White Lilly baker when I do biscuits. Had made a note to try the Adulh when I find it. You are right , the shipping of something so dense is expensive. Hell, I need to bite the bullet and order some. The website is so nice and warm.

mikael3 · Nov 28, 2016

I love yeast rolls made with soft-wheat flour, but it is inherently different from hard-wheat flour, no doubt. For one thing, it has very little body, which is exactly why those rolls at the Colonnade are so light. For another, soft-wheat bread goes stale while you look at it, which is why those same little rolls are so strange when you try to eat the leftovers the next day.

As for Southerners making a lot of yeast bread, I would have to question that. People definitely make rolls and that sort of thing, but I really don’t know of anyone who has ever routinely made loaves of bread, even decades ago.

If you’re having one of your ‘moments’ on this topic, check out Elizabeth David’s book, English Bread and Yeast Cookery. It’s an absolute page-turner (rivaled only by Zohary & Hopf’s Domestication of Plants in the Old World and Ken Albala’s Eating Right in the Renaissance). Ms. David goes into great detail about types of flour and their affect on yeast and baking.

luxflairguy · Nov 28, 2016

I was in WallyWorld this morning getting Persil and I perused the baking isle. They had Martha White flour and mixes from Memphis, TN on the shelves. What's it like to y'all?

gyrafoam · Nov 29, 2016

They are owned by the same company that owns White Lily.
I have used Martha White many times and have no problem with it.

Their White Corn Meal Mix is considered a staple in the deep-south and it is VERY good.

frigilux · Nov 29, 2016

OK, I have one more question. Please remember that I've never lived south of Minnesota.

Why the preference for white corn meal over yellow, Southerners? Yellow corn meal is pretty much all I see in small-town grocery stores up here.

Thanks again to all of you for your suggestions and input! As several have pointed out, I want to make educated decisions on what to order before pressing the ca-ching button on the high shipping prices for flour, corn meal and grits.

norgeway · Nov 29, 2016

Re White corn meal..

It makes a much lighter bread, and tastes different too
1 cup self rising white corn meal
1 cup self rising flour
1egg
2 tbsp. oil
buttermilk to make a batter about like pancake batter
Pour in a well greased iron skillet, 425 until light brown on top.
NO SUGAR!!!!! In Southern corn bread.

supersuds · Nov 29, 2016

My father always said yellow corn was for Yankees and pigs, but I don't know the source of that particular bias. Probably just tradition.

Definitely no sugar!

luxflairguy · Nov 29, 2016

Oh! My YANKEE ears!

gyrafoam · Nov 30, 2016

John, I don't recall a reference to "Yankees" although it doesn't surprise me a bit. Such was the passion in the 1950's left-over from the Civil "wo-wah" you'd have thought it just ended the day "be-fo-ah"!

Around Atlanta it was generaly thought that White Meal, Grits,Flour were for gentrified folks. Only field hands, farm animals, and "colored" folks ate yellow grain.

I use white by habit. Have eaten cornbread made with yellow meal out West and it was delicious.

Most of our family were "Yankees" and I never knew any of them who actually liked cornbread anyway, so they didn't care one way or another. They weren't 'eatin it.

mikael3 · Nov 30, 2016

Even in Mexico, white masa is much preferred over yellow masa, so the bias is obviously widespread. I use white corn meal, but I prefer yellow corn grits. Honestly, there’s not too much difference between white and yellow, but there is a slight difference.

Even more significant in cooking quality and taste is the difference between Southern and Yankee corn: Southern corn is soft dent corn, but Yankee corn is hard flint corn. Dent corn is troublesome to grow and keep, and but it is easy to mill. Flint corn ripens quickly and stores well (for centuries, probably!!), but it requires a strong, modern mill to produce meal in bulk.

To be culinarily correct, Southern hoe cakes should be made with dent, and New England Johnny Cake should be made with flint. Rhode Islanders in particular are proud of their long heritage of producing flint meal. But in the South, flint corn has also been very common for a long time, and I sometimes wonder what is really inside commercially-produced bags. Luckily for those of us who live in the South, it’s easy to find stone-milled dent.

Anson Mills has a nice description of the two:

http://ansonmills.com/grain_notes/13

“Though you’d never know it today, corn has many classes of plant shape, ear shape, and, most significantly, kernel shape and hardness. There is flint corn whose kernel tops are round like kernels of popcorn (a variety of flint) and dent corn whose kernels, with a dent in the top of each, resemble candy corn. There are also lesser known mixed-class corns like flint-dent, dent-flint, etc.

“Anson Mills focuses on hard heirloom flint corns and soft heirloom dent corns of the pre-industrial era, and explores how they are transformed into heritage foods with notable flavor, texture, and aroma. By ‘hard flint’, we mean that the starch within the kernel is hard. Hard flints are tough to mill, but are also superior keepers for long-term storage. Many flint corns also ripen earlier than dents—especially those with small kernels. The enduring popularity of Jonnycake Meal, a white cornmeal made from Narragansett White Flint, speaks to a preference for flint corn in a part of the country where early maturing crops suit the region’s relatively short growing season.

“Dent corn, by contrast, has a soft starch endosperm and opaque kernels. Dents mill easily. Traditional Southern culture, with its emphasis on daily foods and handwork, chose soft dents for grits and cornmeal. Not only did the climate accommodate these late-maturing, long-season dents, but Southerners preferred the flavor of their Antebellum dents compared to the flint corn varieties that grew in their region. As a result, a certain tension has existed historically in the South between its pronounced predilection for dent corn and the undeniably appealing characteristics of early-to-ripen and easy-to-store flints. The tension increases when we begin to look closely at the connection between culture, geography, and economics of our revolutionary and Antebellum eras. From this research we have learned that most general conclusions regarding Southern heirloom corn farming and heritage foods have significant exceptions. At Anson Mills, we celebrate these exceptions and strive mightily to make them easily understood and relevant and, most important, we find amazing ‘new’ flavors and textures for all of us to enjoy.”

mikael3 · Nov 30, 2016

I also found this interesting insight into Southern cooking 100 years ago. It’s from a bulletin put out by the Department of Agriculture, published in 1915.<!-- [if gte mso 9]><xml>
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https://books.google.com/books?id=F...e&q=johnny cakes hoe cakes flint dent&f=false

The whole article is interesting, but here’s the bit about cooking.



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“The consumption of corn meal is greatest in the Southern States of the Union, where in certain sections meal and grits are the principal cereal foods. Hon. E.J. Watson, commissioner of agriculture, commerce, and industries of the State of South Carolina, who has been particularly active in repressing the sale of spoiled meal in his State, is responsible for the statement that in South Carolina corn meal is not only the principal cereal product, but the most important of all articles of diet. The same statement applies to many other regions in the South, particularly the rural districts, where wheat flour is of secondary importance and in some cases even a rarity. In many southern families, even in the cities, corn meal in some form or other is eaten three times a day, and in most families at least once a day.

“Among the common corn-meal dishes eaten in the South are hoecake, a mixture of corn meal and water with or without salt, cooked in a frying pan or griddle; corn bread or pone, made with the addition of baking powder or its equivalent and baked in the oven; griddle cakes, prepared from a thin batter with the addition of a leavening agent; egg or spoon bread, differing from ordinary corn bread in that eggs are used; and corn dumplings, usually cooked with either meat or vegetables. Corn meal is used in puddings, waffles, poultry dressing, meat and fish dishes. There is also a large consumption of mush made from hominy or grits and of lye hominy prepared from the whole grain after removal of the hull with caustic soda.

“The corn and grits used in the South are prepared almost exclusively from white dent corn in both northern and southern mills. In the North, where corn products are consumed to a less degree, the preference is usually given to meal made from yellow corn, although the so-called hominy (grits) made from white corn is a common breakfast cereal. Hasty pudding (corn mush) and Johnny cake (corresponding to the hoecake of the South) have been made in New England households since colonial days. Indian pudding, a popular dessert prepared from com meal, milk, and eggs, has long been regarded as one of the necessary adjuncts to the New England Thanksgiving dinner.

“The dent varieties, both white and yellow, are generally used in the manufacture of meal and grits. A white variety known as ‘hominy corn’, extensively grown in eastern Illinois and western Indiana, is preferred by many millers. In Rhode Island white flint corn has been milled for generations to produce a kind of meal much esteemed by the residents of that State, and in some other regions flint corn is milled to a limited extent.”

mikael3 · Nov 30, 2016

Okay, I veered way off topic with those two posts. I hope that’s okay. I had forgotten this started as a post on flour, not cornmeal.

Calling Hans (norgeway): Adluh Flour

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