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Browned Flour
Every kitchen should have browned flour on hand, as it saves a great deal of trouble, besides being quite as necessary at times as many other kitchen items. It is easily prepared.
Put into a dry baking tin a layer of flour, half an inch deep; set it in the oven a few minutes until it browns; ; set it in the oven a few minutes until it browns; should it brown unevenly stir it round with a spoon. Keep in glass jars.
A pantry staple from the era of long-simmered gravies. The method is sound, but the timing in the original is optimistic and the consequence for sauces is worth knowing before you use it.
- The hinge: it thickens far lessToasting breaks down starch, so browned flour has roughly half the thickening power of raw flour. Substituting it one-for-one in a gravy gives a thin sauce; use about twice as much, or brown only part of the flour and keep some raw for body.
- Oven temperatureThe book assumes an oven you judge by hand. Use 350F for even, controllable colour, or 400F if you want it faster and are willing to stand over it. Much above that and it colours unevenly, with the flour nearest the pan darkening well ahead of the rest.
- "A few minutes" is wrongAt 350F a half-inch layer takes 20 to 40 minutes to reach a proper nut brown, stirred every five to ten minutes. Pale blond flour tastes raw; very dark flour turns bitter. Aim for the colour of light brown sugar and stop there.
- The panA heavy rimmed sheet pan or a cast-iron skillet beats a thin tin, which develops hot spots and scorches the flour sitting over them. Spread the layer no deeper than half an inch so the heat reaches through.
- Cool it before it goes into the jarWarm flour throws condensation inside a sealed jar and the whole batch cakes. Spread it out to cool completely, then store airtight away from light. It keeps six months or more, though the toasted aroma fades.
- Sift before useToasting sets small lumps that will not disperse in liquid. Push the cooled flour through a sieve, or whisk it into cold stock or water to a smooth slurry before it meets anything hot.
- What it is forBrown gravies, pot roast and stew liquors, brown sauce, and mock turtle soup, where the point is colour and a roasted flavour without standing over a roux. Since it keeps, it is worth browning a batch rather than a spoonful.
Browning flour was the nineteenth-century kitchen's shortcut to a dark roux. A cook making brown sauce or a gravy for roast meat otherwise had to stir fat and flour over the fire for what could be the better part of an hour without letting it catch, and doing that work in advance, in bulk, in the residual heat of a range already lit for baking, was simply efficient. Books of this period generally assumed a coal or wood range that was likely to be hot for much of the day, so oven space was effectively free and jars of prepared staples lined the pantry shelf. The technique survives in Creole and Cajun cooking as dry-roasted or oven roux, and in the flour browned for gumbo by cooks who want the colour without the fat.