Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours

Baking with whole-grain flours used to be about making food that was good for you, not food that necessarily tasted good, too. But Kim Boyce truly has reinvented the wheel with this collection of 75 recipes that feature 12 different kinds of whole-grain flours, from amaranth to teff, proving that whole-grain baking is more about incredible flavors and textures than anything else.  

When Boyce, a former pastry chef at Spago and Campanile, left the kitchen to raise a family, she was determined to create delicious cakes, muffins, breads, tarts, and cookies that her kids (and everybody else) would love. She began experimenting with whole-grain flours, and Good to the Grain is the happy result. The cookbook proves that whole-grain baking can be easily done with a pastry chef’s flair. Plus, there’s a chapter on making jams, compotes, and fruit butters with seasonal fruits that help bring out the wonderfully complex flavors of whole-grain flours.

Praise for Good to the Grain:

“Boyce started playing with a variety of flours when she took a break from restaurant kitchens and wrote her first cookbook, Good to the Grain, a whole grains baking bible that won a coveted James Beard Foundation Award this year.”

—O Magazine

Baking with whole-grain flours used to be about making food that was good for you, not food that necessarily tasted good, too. But Kim Boyce truly has reinvented the wheel with this collection of 75 recipes that feature 12 different kinds of whole-grain flours, from amaranth to teff, proving that whole-grain baking is more about incredible flavors and textures than anything else.

When Boyce, a former pastry chef at Spago and Campanile, left the kitchen to raise a family, she was determined to create delicious cakes, muffins, breads, tarts, and cookies that her kids (and everybody else) would love. She began experimenting with whole-grain flours, and Good to the Grain is the happy result. The cookbook proves that whole-grain baking can be easily done with a pastry chef’s flair. Plus, there’s a chapter on making jams, compotes, and fruit butters with seasonal fruits that help bring out the wonderfully complex flavors of whole-grain flours.

The New York Times - Christine Muhlke

Some recipes can't avoid the health-food-store association, like quinoa porridge (get over it: it's delicious), but the whole feels modern and tasteful. Lovely and inventive, Boyce's book is more Martha than Moosewood.

Kim Boyce is a former pastry chef (at Spago and Campanile). She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, who is a chef at Spago, and two daughters. While at Campanile, she helped Nancy Silverton with her Sandwich Book (Knopf, 2002) and has cooked alongside chefs like Mario Batali, Claudia Fleming, Lidia Bastianich, Alice Waters, and Anthony Bourdain. She has contributed to Bon Appetit and has been featured in the Los Angeles Times on numerous occasions (both as subject and contributor).