SC - Sugar is sweet and so are you...

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Jeanne Stapleton wrote:

> My housemate and I were discussing this sugar question the other day.
> She wondered whether beet sugar was period, and I had to confess I
> did not know.  Her question arose because she lived in several
> countries in the Middle East while married to her former husband, and
> sugar beets are a huge crop inTurkey.

Sugar beets are a huge crop over much of the world. Beet sugar, though,
is refined using a process invented in France in the eighteenth century,
if I remember correctly. 

> Also, we were talking about bleaching flour earlier.  My
> understanding is that much modern bleached flour comes about because
> of chemical bleaching, not storage methods.  I have also been going
> for the unbleached white flour, which is still fine and white, and
> using that in my SCA cooking attempts.  Any thoughts on this?

>From Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking", page 290:

'BLEACHING AND AGING

After the flour has been ground and blended to the desired mix of
particles, it is treated chemically to to accomplish in  a matter of
minutes what otherwise takes weeks. Bleaching removes the light yellow
color caused by xanthophylls, a variety of carotenoid pigment also found
in potatoes and onions. The color has no practical or nutritional
significance and is oxidized  simply to obtain a uniform whiteness.
Bleaching does, however,  destroy the small amounts of vitamin E in
flour, which probably accounts for its bad reputation in some circles.
For historical reasons, yellow coloration is valued in pasta, and so
semolina is never bleached.

Bleaching is often accomplished with the same gas, chlorine dioxide,
that is used to age, or "improve," the flour. But even unbleached flour
has been aged with potassium bromate or iodate. Aging has several
important practical results. It has long been known that flour allowed
to sit for one to two months  develops better baking qualities; hence
the practice of letting flour "age" before use (during this period, it
is also naturally bleached by oxygen in the air).'

It seems as if there's little practical difference between the bleached
and the unbleached flour as regards the introduction of foreign matter
to the flour, especially since the foreign matter doesn't remain in the
finished product. As regards the removal of the vitamin E from the
flour, this is pretty insignificant, since the majority of the vitamin E
is found in the germ, which isn't part of white flour anyway.

My suggestion to those who want to come as close as they can to period
flours is to use stone-ground whole wheat flour, which can be sieved to
remove some or most of the bran, depending on the fineness of the
bolting cloth. People living in cities with large Orthidox Jewish
communities might be able to get hold of some Passover flour, such as
non-industrial matzoh is made of. This is a fresh, unaged, unbleached,
sieved white flour. Hard to get hold of, but worth the effort for
experimentation.

Adamantius