27 Aug 2011, Posted by admin in EAT + DRINK, 0 Comments

The General Store Stand In For Almond Flour Today? Your Farmers Market, If You’re Lucky

Almond flour: Grind almonds, and you have almond flour. Easy enough. But then there’s that homemade jam predicament.

In measured doses, making homemade jam (and nut flour) is a quick margin doddle, a fun dinner work-hour diversion. Or at least if you ditch the canning part (full disclosure: I love making jams, but hate canning them, so I simply stash them in the fridge for a month). But “easy and quick” doesn’t mean that strawberry-rhubarb number actually happens. Which gets us back to almond flour.

Sure, there are commercially ground almond flours available for our last minute sablé and frangipane urges. But as with that freshly cooked blueberry jam (a fancy name for a rather tightly wound fruit sauce, if you think about it, but that’s another topic) versus the more shelf-stable commercial version, the flavor disparities between homemade and commercial are immediately palpable. A farmers market solution is a lovely compromise.

Farmers market almond flours also have that burlap sack, bulk spice-bin bonus: There is a hard-working satisfaction here, even if we aren’t the ones who did the grinding work. Reminders of a time when people didn’t worry about sanitizing wipes to sterilize their grocery cart handles (before hitting the baking aisle to find a vac u-sealed version). They simply scooped up the amount of freshly ground flour they wanted from the wood barrel in their neighborhood store. And they paid for it, fair and square — without coupons, discounts or recipe cards as a required return on their ground nut investment.

At my farmers market, it’s Fat Uncle Farms almond flour. Two small containers for $4, with a side of their almond-chocolate butter highly recommended. Or stick to the almond flour. It’s your historic reenactment.