Making the Most of Grains

LIKE MANY of us who live in the Valley, I’ve driven down Mill Avenue and seen the Hayden Flour Mills sign hundreds of times but never really gave it much thought. It was a building. It was there on the corner and that was it. The mill’s history is quite interesting, but what Emma Zimmerman and her father, Jeff Zimmerman, have done to revive milling in Arizona under the rejuvenated Hayden Flour Mills moniker is fascinating.

Truly a labor of love, the present Hayden Flour Mills offers locally grown and cultivated heritage grains that have been out of commercial cultivation in the valley for a long time. Emma has wanted to write a cookbook featuring these grains for six years and has finally fulfilled her wish with the soon-to-be-released The Miller’s Daughter (Hardie Grant Books, 2022).

“This book is for all the people who think what we are doing at Hayden Flour Mills is really cool but ask, ‘What do I make with these heritage and ancient grains?’”

It’s not just a cookbook, though. “I really wanted to tell the story of my dad and me starting Hayden Flour Mills in my own words. And not just the abbreviated social media version of the story,” Emma says. “There is so much story jam-packed into this cookbook.”

The beginning chapters—titled Sow, Grow, Harvest, Mill— read like a novel. They describe how Emma Zimmerman and her father worked through so many obstacles to be able to cultivate and mill locally grown grains for us.

What Emma wants is for everyone who reads her cookbook to start using these heritage—and, in some cases, long forgotten—grains. She even provides a detailed list of suppliers at the end of the book so readers can patronize their local millers as well as order online from Hayden Flour Mills.

The Miller’s Daughter is a back-to-the-future kind of cookbook. The recipes are enticingly modern but highlight heritage grains so they are both ancient and modern at the same time.

Each chapter in the recipe section is divided by grain rather than by types of dishes so there’s a section on farro and a chapter devoted to chickpeas and one to einkorn, etc. In each section, you’ll find recipes for both savory and sweet dishes. What struck me first about these recipes was that most are for familiar dishes like Creamy Buttermilk Salad and Chickpea Pound Cake and Aunt Sadie’s Tabbouleh, but Emma has updated each to use a grain or flour not typically used in the recipe. The salad is made with Sonora wheat berries and the tabbouleh is made with einkorn berries and the pound cake with chickpea flour. A recipe that really intrigues me is the one for Any Grain Pasta Dough. Zimmerman gives a “formula” so you can substitute any flour you want. That’s for sure the one I’ll be trying soon.

Emma suggests that “people start with my Chocolate Flecked Farro Banana Bread. It’s a gateway recipe. A familiar classic made with an ancient grain is a great way to convince people that these flours are so delicious and not at all hard to work with.”

We’ve all had pound cake. But have you had it made with chickpea flour and glazed it with tahini? Our publisher baked the recipe from the book for me to taste. The aroma was divine from the addition of baharat seasoning, which is an Emma creative addition. I added the tahini glaze from the recipe and the combination of the glaze and the seasoning made it a spicy, not-too-sweet satisfying bite.

If you’ve made a resolution to cook more in the new year, then The Miller’s Daughter is the book for you. If you’ve decided to eat more protein and fiber, then The Miller’s Daughter is the book for you. If you just like to read cookbooks as though they were novels and thumb through beautiful photos of food, then this book is for you. If you’re interested in reading about entrepreneurs who worked hard not just to restart an old business but to improve it ten-fold because they truly believed in what they were doing, then this book is for you.