The Miller's Daughter | Emma Zimmerman
Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.
Emma Zimmerman: I'm Emma Zimmerman and my cookbook is called The Miller's Daughter.
Suzy Chase: You're at the forefront of America's heritage grain movement in a country overrun by corporate homogenized, grain farming, you and your father are champions of rare and near extinct varieties of ancient grains. This is the story of how you rescued obscure grains from the brink of extinction and what you ate along the way. Now, what exactly are heritage and ancient grains? Are they two different things? Are they the same thing? What's the story?
Emma Zimmerman: Right and that's kind of the fundamental question of the book. But, heritage grains are grains that we say kind of are pre 1950s pre industrialization of agriculture and wheat farming and ancient grains are even older. Things like the Romans and Egyptians would've been eating. So those are always very exciting. Einkorn, furrow, things like that.
Suzy Chase: So, I grew up in Kansas and when I cracked this cookbook open, I was surprised to read that there was an Arizona grain industry. And, then I went further down the rabbit hole and discovered that Italian pasta makers love Arizona bread, durum wheat. I can't imagine crops growing in the desert.
Emma Zimmerman: I know isn't that such a fun fact? That's our claim to fame is that we export a lot of durum wheat to Italy because it's such high quality. And, then it gets sent back as pasta. I love surprising people with that image of wheat growing in the desert. And, I think my cookbook photographer did such a good job of capturing this desert wheat field and the Southwest feel of our mill.
Suzy Chase: So, in the cookbook, you talk about how your dad saw the wheat on his family farm get shorter and shorter with the advent of get rich quick, modern seed varieties. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Emma Zimmerman: Yeah. So, my dad grew up in North Dakota on a poly farm. They also grew wheat and he has pictures of his grandparents farming, his dad farming, his cousins farming modern day, and just seeing the different wheat varieties over time and how they change. So, one trademark of heritage grains is that they're very tall and that trait was bred out of wheat over time to make it shorter and just easier to harvest. And, of course there's always consequences and trade offs. When we do that, for those that don't know my dad and I run this mill together, a father-daughter venture, which is really fun.
Emma Zimmerman: And, I tell a lot of stories in the cookbook about our miss adventures, but yeah, he got to kind of see that change in his lifetime. Yeah, the history of wheat is so interesting and going back to, what do we lose in those modern varieties? And, one thing we think is nutrient density and a lot of flavor.
Suzy Chase: So, when you first started the mill, one of your favorite statistics to quote was a snippet of information your dad found in a historical government document. It goes like this, "In 1874, there were 24,000 mills in the US. By 1982, there were fewer than 200 mills. And 80% of those mills were owned by just six larger companies." That is shocking.
Emma Zimmerman: Since even starting Hayden flour mills or restarting Hayden flour mills 10 years ago, there's so many more community mills. So, it's really exciting. It's really hopeful.
Suzy Chase: There are 80 recipes in this cookbook and it's an interesting mix of breads, naturally, and pastas and salads and soups. It's not just baked goods. Can you talk a little bit about gathering the recipes?
Emma Zimmerman: Yes. So, I was so determined not to make a bread book about grains first. There's already so many great bread sourdough books right now. So, I didn't really want to compete with those. I'm also not a bread baker, shockingly. I own a flour mill and I don't bake sourdough bread.
Suzy Chase: What?
Emma Zimmerman: So, yeah it's my secret confession. My dad is really into sourdough bread. I think there's just so much more that you can do with these grains. And, I really wanted them to show off. So, the book's actually organized into 10 different chapters, a grain each. So, oats and white Sonora and heritage bread flour. In each chapter, I really wanted to show off what could you do with oats? Not just oatmeal cookies, like oat risotto showing all the ways that you can transform a grain. You can cook the grain hole to make a salad. You can crack it, you can toast it. You can sprout it. You can always mill it into flour. So, really just letting each grain kind of shine in terms of what it can do.
Suzy Chase: So, in the recipes, the one thing that really fascinated me were the different flavor profiles of the grains. Can you talk a little bit about a few of them? White Sonora? What's the flavor profile of that?
Emma Zimmerman: Light and creamy with a sweet desert essence. And, White Sonora really has a history in the Southwest. It's been here for hundreds of years. It's one of the first wheats that came to north America. And, then let's see another one here, I feel the rye one is pretty fun too.
Suzy Chase: Yeah. I always think about rye with whiskey and bread. But, you use rye in so many other different things. What's the flavor profile and what are some ways you use rye?
Emma Zimmerman: Yeah. Rye is a very distinctly flavored grain. So, it was really fun to come up with recipes that bring out that flavor and highlight it. I say in the book, it reminds me of black coffee in its mood and layered flavors. Strange comparison, but it has the slightest taste of fresh hay and a heady Sage in floral aroma and freshly milled. What I do it in the book is have a sunken quince cake. So, it's a classic German sunken apple cake, but with rye and honey and quince in place of the apples. A rye shortbread, a Christmas cookie, I feel rye goes really well with warming spices and kind of the holidays.
Emma Zimmerman: A carrot cake, rye porridge. That's with the cracked rye. Chocolate rye bourbon cookie, like you said, the rye whiskey kind of connection there. And, then a saffron strawberry Gillette with a rye crust. You can also cook the rye berries whole for a salad. So, there's also a salad that has bacon and whiskey soaked raisins. So, everything in this chapter I feel is a little more heavy, those wintery recipes.
Suzy Chase: So, Einkorn is something I'd never heard of and apparently it's the world's most primitive wheat that's been around for more than 12,000 years and archeologists believe that the first loaves of bread were made with Einkorn. And, so okay, you call Einkorn high maintenance. How come?
Emma Zimmerman: Yes. So, Einkorn is really similar to... It almost looks a wild grass. It's so old. So, Einkorn is very petite and it has this extra layer around the seed that's really hard to get off. And, then once you do all that work, you're left with this tiny little seed, like a sunflower seed. That's why it gets this reputation of being high maintenance. And, then it's so expensive because the farmer had to do all this work and it didn't yield very much, but it is really delicious. It tastes historical. I don't know, it just has a lot of depth to it. And, one of my favorite recipes in the book is just this really simple Einkorn waffle. I could eat that every morning.
Suzy Chase: Okay, chickpeas. How did a bean get into this book?
Emma Zimmerman: So beans and wheat actually really pair well together, so in a farming sense. So, beans legumes fix nitrogen to the soil so they're a great rotational crop with wheat. And, chickpeas also grow really well on Arizona. They're a great arrid adapted crop, do well with little water input. And, then you have chickpea flour in Italian cooking, in Indian cooking. So, there's already this great, rich culture around chickpea flour.
Emma Zimmerman: There's a recipe in the book that I'm really excited about people trying. It's a chickpea flour pound cake that has Bharat spice and a tahini glaze. And, it's really good and different and surprising.
Suzy Chase: So, the first four sections of this cookbook are sow, grow, harvest, and mill. Can you briefly explain these processes? And, I've always felt sow and grow were the same thing.
Emma Zimmerman: Oh yeah. I'm so glad you bring that up. These essays were so fun to write. So, sow, grow, harvest, mill. It's the four steps from planting to flour. But, what I really wanted to do is kind of take those concepts and tell the nuts and bolts of how you make flour, but also the story of how our mill evolved over the past 10 years and how we grew. And, then also my personal story, how I grew as a person and how I was kind of milled and transformed in the last 10 years.
Emma Zimmerman: You asked about sow and grow. So, sow is more about the seed. So, just finding the seed to plant was a big part of our story because these heritage grains just didn't exist in any large quantity at the time that we started. So, just finding the seeds, growing them out was a big piece of the story. How about we do as a stone mill and a heritage flour maker? How is that so different from an industrial, commodity grocery store bag of flour? And, really kind of make that case for people giving these unique flours a try.
Suzy Chase: So, the grains you're growing require 65% less water, less fertilizer, and a lot less upkeep than the industrialized system requires. That's so interesting.
Emma Zimmerman: In Arizona, we want to be a lot more conscientious of our water usage. So, I love telling people that these grains do take less input. So, great for growing for a future with climate change. I feel there's a lot of arguments for eating more heritage grains in our diet and 90% of the time I want to convince people by just, "Just taste it. It's so good. It's so flavorful." But, then there's also all these other arguments. It uses less inputs. It's so great for the soil. We eat a lot of flour as a society and if we can just maybe add a few more of these heritage grains into our diet, but, when you make banana bread with farrow flour, it's just so satisfying. It has such a depth of flavor.
Suzy Chase: Now, to my segment called dream dinner party, where I ask you who you most want to invite to your dream dinner party and why? And, for this segment, it can only be one person.
Emma Zimmerman: I'm going to have to go with someone that I already know a friend, because I just get too nervous dining with someone new. So, I'm going to go with the old friend, someone I talk about in the book, Gary Nabhan, he's kind of the father of the local food movement here in Arizona. And, he is just so fun and has so much curiosity that every time you eat with him, it's just an adventure. So, I don't see him too often these days so I would love to have a dinner party with him.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Emma Zimmerman: So, our website is HaydenFlourMills.com and on Instagram, @HaydenFlourMills. And, we're also on Facebook.
Suzy Chase: To purchase The Miller's Daughter, head on over to cookerybythebook.com and thanks so much Emma for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.
Emma Zimmerman: Thank you, Suzy.
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