Home › The Principles of Cookery › Flour, Browned
Flour, Browned
This flour will be found an excellent substitute for roux, which the French employ in the composition of their dishes. The flour is simply browned by placing it on a baking-tin in the oven or before the fire, and turning it frequently to prevent its being burnt. Blended with butter, it colours and thickens soup. If kept in an ordinary dredging-box it will be found convenient for gravies or any made dishes.
Browned flour is a store-cupboard staple that has largely fallen out of use, though it is worth reviving for gravies and brown sauces. The original assumes a coal range and gives no temperature or time, so the numbers below fill the gap.
- Oven settingA moderate oven, around 350F, on a shallow baking tray in a thin layer gives reasonable control; timing varies widely with the depth of the layer and the oven, so judge by colour rather than by the clock. A skillet on the hob over medium heat is faster but demands constant attention. The original specifies neither temperature nor time, only 'in the oven or before the fire'.
- "Turning it frequently" is the hingeFlour scorches at the edges of the tin long before the centre colours. Stir and redistribute every five minutes, and pull the tray the moment the colour is right — carryover heat keeps it darkening in the hot metal.
- Judge by colour and smellAim for the shade of dry sand for a light gravy, or milk chocolate for a deep brown sauce. It should smell toasted and nutty; any acrid or bitter note means it is burnt and the whole batch will taint a sauce.
- Thickening power dropsToasting reduces the flour's thickening power; browned flour is commonly reckoned to thicken only about half to two-thirds as much as raw flour, so expect to use somewhere between half as much again and twice as much, or accept a thinner sauce.
- "Blended with butter"One way to read this is as a beurre manie rather than a true roux: work the cold browned flour into softened butter in roughly equal weights, then whisk knobs of it into simmering liquid. Because the flour has already been toasted, raw-flour taste is less of an issue than with plain flour. The recipe itself gives no proportions or method for the blending.
- The dredging-boxA dredger is a lidded shaker with a perforated top — a modern flour shaker, a large spice shaker, or simply a jar does the same job. Cool the flour completely before it goes in, or condensation will cake it.
- Quantity and keepingA batch of browned flour will keep for months in a jar in a cool, dark cupboard, though the toasted aroma fades with time. Brown a small quantity at a time if you use it only occasionally.
Browning flour dry, without fat, was the English housekeeper's answer to the French roux brun, which required standing over a pan of butter and flour without letting it catch. Cassell's calls browned flour a substitute for the French roux, and it had the advantage of being ready in a dredger on the shelf. The same economy of effort appears in Victorian recipes for "browning" and caramel colouring sold in bottles, serving what seems to have been a widespread preference for a gravy or made dish that was dark. The technique never disappeared: dry-toasted flour survives in Cajun and Creole kitchens as a fat-free roux, and it remains the quickest way to get depth of colour into a gravy that has none of its own.