"David Wright" > wrote in message =
...

> A google search for "dry posole" will get you a few sources. Or, if
> you know someone in New Mexico, maybe that someone could=20
> send some to you.

Muy goodo!

Regards my last post, namely

for polenta, which is from coarse corn flour, I should have=20
said samp or corn groats, which come in white and yellow. =20
Portuguese people like it.

---
DickA

Go look at your local hispanic market, or maybe even that section of
your supermarket for an item called chico's. It's dried sweet corn, and
pretty inexpensive.
May break your grinder tho.... dried corn is hard as a rock. maybe
harder...

Dick Adams wrote:
>
> "matt s" > wrote in message ...
>
> > There are many forms of corn out there, anyone know which is best for
> > grinding to put in breads (quickbreads or otherwise)?
>
> Cheapest -- cracked corn for birds*.
>
> Easy to get -- popcorn, cracked corn for polenta.
>
> Corn may be a problem for some grinders.
>
> I am looking for a source of dried whole hominy (which is alkali processed
> corn). Or information on how to make my own from popcorn.
>
> ---
> DickA
>
> __________
> Bird corn possibly has a higher content of rat feces and insect body parts
> than other corn, but unless one is going to eat it raw, that should not make
> a difference. (Reading FDA specs for the food we eat can be quite a shock.)

--
================
Addy is anti-spam ...
Remove the 123 in my addy to rely.

Phil(NM)
================
"Character is doing the right thing when nobody is looking." JC Watts

"The Earth is 5.4 Billion years old. It is entirely sustainable without
interference by environmental organizations, laws or treaties."

Forgot.. aren't grits before they're cooked essentialy dried corn?

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 14:04:32 -0600, "Phil(NM)" >
wrote:

>Forgot.. aren't grits before they're cooked essentialy dried corn?

Grits are (is?) dried hominy, not plain dried corn.

David

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 14:03:35 -0600, "Phil(NM)" >
wrote:

>Go look at your local hispanic market, or maybe even that section of
>your supermarket for an item called chico's. It's dried sweet corn, and
>pretty inexpensive.
>May break your grinder tho.... dried corn is hard as a rock. maybe
>harder...

But, he was asking for dried hominy (=posole), not chicos. Also, in
all my travels and living in different states, I haven't ever seen
chicos anywhere other than New Mexico. (I'm sorry to say.)

David

>Dick Adams wrote:
>>

>> I am looking for a source of dried whole hominy (which is alkali processed
>> corn). Or information on how to make my own from popcorn.

"Phil(NM)" > wrote in message =
...

> Go look at your local hispanic market, or maybe even that section of
> your supermarket for an item called chico's. It's dried sweet corn, =
and
> pretty inexpensive. May break your grinder tho.... dried corn is hard =

> as a rock. maybe harder...

I am not sure where those are. Some supermarkets in this area have a
Portuguese flavor, and Goya foods are stocked by most. But I do not=20
think that Chico is know to them.

"Phil(NM)" > wrote in message =
...

> Forgot.. aren't grits before they're cooked essentially dried corn?

They should be. Grits should be hominy grits. Hominy is whole corn
kernels processed with alkali, which softens the hull, and degrades the
kernel content. Corn is deficient in a couple of essential amino acids,
notably tryptophan and lysine. The alkali processing levels the playing =

field by degrading some of the others. So many generations of native
Americans grew up without suffering nutritional deficiency on that=20
account.

There are two continents of America, so "native Americans" in the=20
sense that I have used it, refers to several ancient civilizations. =
(Decades=20
ago, there would be a considerable clamor when a politician referred to=20
the U.S. of A., as America.)

The alkali processing does also change the flavor of corn products, in
a way that some, including me, regard as desirable.

There is hardly a cheaper food than corn, and alkali abounds in our =
world.
One would expect that hominy and hominy grits would be cheap, in 25 and
50 pound bags. But the only grits I can find locally are by Quaker, and =
they
are priced as a specialty food, sold in little canisters of one pound, =
maybe
less. So far, it seems that the Internet does not offer much better.

In earlier times, one could buy canned (ready to eat) hominy, under the=20
Van Kamp's label. Fried with sausage and served with eggs, it made a=20
fine breakfast. I wonder if it still exists anywhere.

Jimmy Carter likes hominy grits, and he is a good person.

---
DickA

>
> And how, exactly, does this relate to sourdough?
>
> - Steve Brandt

Are you suggesting that all postings here directly address sourdough
and nothing but?

Despite what I would suggest is a lack of support for the existence of
such a norm (let alone some firm constraint), the relationship is as
follows:

As evidenced in a number of recent postings, many sourdough bread
bakers participating in this group grind their own grains, as do a
number of published writers on the subject. Some of these bakers that
grind their own grains for sourdough breads also grind grains for
their non-sourdough baking, including some that rave at length about
the wonders of freshly ground corn for making cornbread. This brief
set of links seems to make the question relevant to the knowledge
and/or interests of this community of users.

matt s wrote:
>
> >
> > And how, exactly, does this relate to sourdough?
> >
> > - Steve Brandt
>
> Are you suggesting that all postings here directly address sourdough
> and nothing but?
>
(and on it goes...)

I don't get your testiness - it was a plain question. Did the "exactly"
tick you off?

You answered it, thank you. I really did not need the payload.

Samartha

--
remove -nospam from my email address, if there is one

David Wright wrote:
> But, he was asking for dried hominy (=posole), not chicos. Also, in
> all my travels and living in different states, I haven't ever seen
> chicos anywhere other than New Mexico. (I'm sorry to say.)

Original post was asking for sources of dried corn, I believe....

>In article >, matt s wrote:
>> Greetings,
>>
>> There are many, many rave reviews of the superior results from using
>> freshly ground corn in baking. However, none of the ones I have read
>> say anything about what kind of corn to use (and the best sources).
>> There are many forms of corn out there, anyone know which is best for
>> grinding to put in breads (quickbreads or otherwise)? Thanks...Matt

On 29 Sep 2003 14:55:55 GMT, Ignoramus3739
> wrote:

>I would be very interested in the answer actually. I am thinking of
>adding a little bit of cornmeal to my SD bread, just as an experiment.
>My previous experiments with adding anything to the SD bread failed in
>the sense that bread made only with water, flour, and salt always
>tasted better than bread with additives.
>
>i

Yellow dent corn is what is overwhelmingly available on the market and
will suffice for most anything you want to do with cornmeal. If you
should happen to come across a source of flint corn it's worth
checking out for the difference in taste and texture. The same for
flour corns. Neither are easy to come by though unless you find a
local source or, perhaps, a mail order source. Dent corn works well.

Even here in the South finding whole corn is harder than finding just
about any other grain. I've bought popcorn by the fifty pound bag at
places like Sam's Club and it'll work OK for many things once it's
milled. For dent corn I go to my local alternative/health/whole foods
grocery store and have them order for me by the bag if they have it in
the bulk bins.

......Alan.


Post no bills

>
> I don't get your testiness - it was a plain question. Did the "exactly"
> tick you off?

Exactly...it struck me as a plainly testy question, in response to a
simple request for information sharing that struck me as wholly
appropriate.

I regret the proliferation of unnecessarily heated exchanges on such
minutia...but I am an imperfect human being...

"Dick Adams" > wrote in message >...
> "matt s" > wrote in message
> ...
>
> > There are many forms of corn out there, anyone know which is best for
> > grinding to put in breads (quickbreads or otherwise)?
>
> Cheapest -- cracked corn for birds*.

If you're going to use animal feed you may as well go ahead and get
whole corn at the feed store. Easier to clean, less likely to be
stale when you get it.

> Easy to get -- popcorn, cracked corn for polenta.
>
> Corn may be a problem for some grinders.

A Corona will handle it OK if you've got the arms to turn it. They're
easy to come by online.

> I am looking for a source of dried whole hominy (which is alkali
> processed corn).

Others have suggested posole' and it is a form of whole, hulled corn.
However, the form of alkali you use to hull the corn impacts the
flavor. If it's been hulled using some form of lime (slaked or
quicklime) its flavor is going to be different than that which was
hulled using lye (sodium hydroxide) or wood lye (potassium hydroxide).
The posole' that I'm familiar with was hulled using lime. May not
matter to you but I thought I'd give a heads up anyway.

> Or information on how to make my own from popcorn.

I did not make an exhaustive effort in trying to use popcorn to make
hominy or posole' but my experience in using the lime method with
popcorn was not good. The hull is so thick that it's difficult to get
it all off even with extended boiling. I'd really recommend using
dent corn which is available from any feed store or through natural
food dealers.

If you can lay your hands on a copy of the book "Putting Food By" it
has three methods for making hominy using lime, store bought lye, and
wood ashes. Many of the older editions of "The Joy of Cooking" have a
recipe for making hominy using baking soda. The non-reactive pot is
important.

......Alan.

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 20:24:40 GMT, David Wright
> wrote:

>On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 14:04:32 -0600, "Phil(NM)" >
>wrote:
>
>>Forgot.. aren't grits before they're cooked essentialy dried corn?
>
>Grits are (is?) dried hominy, not plain dried corn.
>
>David

There is a bit of historical controversy over exactly what constitutes
"hominy" so it is possible to be correct by calling coarsely ground
whole corn "hominy" as well as hulled corn. Whole corn that has been
hulled is generally called "whole hominy" or "big hominy". When it's
milled it's then called "grits."

Except in an industrial scale, as in I bought grits at the grocery, or
my limited experience at making it myself, I've never seen hulled corn
made or milled on the small scale. I've been to many a heritage fair,
'old timey days', 'pioneer days', 'frontier days', and grist mills
that sold grits but what they were doing was simply coarsely milling
whole corn. That too is proper, but it's not hulled corn grits.

It's my understanding that the modern industrial process now uses no
alkali treatment at all, but steam under pressure to peel the corn.
What this does nutritionally I cannot say.

Historically, when corn might constitute the vast majority of a
peasant's caloric intake, it was important to hull corn for
nutritional reasons. The niacin in unhulled corn is bound up in such
a way as to make it unavailable to us but if you hull the corn with
some form of alkali the bound niacin is freed for our use. Whether
they knew what was happening with it or not many native cultures here
in the New World treated their corn with some form of alkali. It also
improved the protein ratio of the grain, mostly by degrading those
amino acids in greater supply, but when corn nears the totality of
your diet it's enough to keep you from going into deficiency.

Nowadays, all of this hulling business has to do with personal taste
or ease of preparation since no one (in the U.S., anyway) is dependent
on corn for nearly all of their caloric intake. This wasn't always
the case though. In the 1920's thousands of poor share croppers
across the Southern U.S. developed the niacin deficiency disease known
as pellagra and many died of it. One of my grandmothers had pellagra,
as a matter of fact, because cornbread was very nearly all they ate.
The Great Depression blighted American agriculture long before it
struck the rest of the country. Pellagra is a serious problem in
certain other parts of the globe that have taken to raising corn as
their major grain crop without having adopted many of the traditional
corn preparation practices that originated here in the New World along
with it. If they were able to eat a wider variety of foods, or knew
how to alkali process the corn they're nearly solely dependant on the
pellagra would cease.

......Alan.


Post no bills

On 30 Sep 2003 06:04:23 -0700, (A.T. Hagan)
wrote:

>A Corona will handle it OK if you've got the arms to turn it. They're
>easy to come by online.

I could certainly use stronger arms... What's the link? <BG>

--
Kenneth

If you email... Please remove the "SPAMLESS."

"Steve B" > wrote in message =
news:QxXdb.631266$Ho3.121189@sccrnsc03...

> And how, exactly, does this relate to sourdough?

You should know this:

Everyone is everyone else's cousin, and everything relates to everything
else, at some level of separation.

Consider this:

Ground corn, duly soaked, is good, added to dough, to coarsen the
texture of the product bread, including sourdough bread. (But, on=20
account of the Pumpernickel Police, it would not be advisable to refer
to it as schrot.)

Also:

The graphic at http://samartha.net/SD/SourdoughDefinition.html#GC
roughly describes petroleum production as a time function. =20
Domestically, we are over the hump, but globally, we are probably
transitioning or flat, including Iraq. Actually, the stationary phase
for petroleum production would not be long, as population growth
and consumption impinge it quite sharply. Which is to say, when it's
over, it's pretty nearly over (peak in 2020 by conservative estimates).

Human population vs. time is also described by the general shape of=20
the curve. My guess is that the best hope for the human race is a long
stationary phase, which would mean that talk of economic growth, as
an objective, may be getting obsolete.

Of course, if we could inoculate some other fertile planet with =
ourselves,
then the whole process could start again, in lag phase if we wait much
longer (Eden revisited).

"ab" > wrote in message=20
...

> I think we all agree that you should indeed give up on the insults.

I feel there should be some negative encouragement for stupid posts.

> You also might remember that you are much "TOO" old, not much=20
> "to" old. "To" is a preposition designating a destination not an =
amount.

You are most astute! But did you notice the bad link I gave at
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3Dn9Cdb.156257$0v4.11696310@bgtnsc04=
-news.ops.worldnet.att.net
And much TOO long TOO.

: |

---
DickA

To follow up on my searching:

Bob's Red Mill sells what they call U.S. #1 Whole Yellow Corn for
grinding

Anson Mills sells milled "Certified Organic, Field Dried, 100% Viable
Seed Corns: (FVO) North Carolina Sweet Yellow and (OCIA) Kentucky
Mountain Sweet White Mill Corn.", (they also define grits and hominy
on their webpage http://www.ansonmills.com/

A number of other sites sell "whole kernal corn." As is often the case
though, there is no explanation of just what it is they are selling
and how it might different from other forms of dried corn (at least
Anson Mills says what they are giving you).

On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 09:58:26 -0400, Kenneth
> wrote:

>On 30 Sep 2003 06:04:23 -0700, (A.T. Hagan)
>wrote:
>
>>A Corona will handle it OK if you've got the arms to turn it. They're
>>easy to come by online.
>
>I could certainly use stronger arms... What's the link? <BG>

That would be the weakest link, wouldn't it? ;-)

......Alan.


Post no bills

I'm from Rutherford County of NC and we only use White open-pollinated
corn for grinding. Tennessee Red Cob (also known as Tennessee
pencil-cob is a favorite as is the old-timey Limber-Cob and the
Hickory King varieties. All these are very difficult to locate and
for that reason we have been growing our own for many years. Southern
Seed Exchange sells some white open-pollinated seed corn.

Incidentally, we grind our corn with an old grist mill and we sift it
to separate the meal from the bran and grits. We use the coarsely
ground remains of the sifting process for grits. For what it's worth.
sdh.

On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 08:52:22 -0400, Steve Hopper
> wrote:

>I'm from Rutherford County of NC and we only use White open-pollinated
>corn for grinding. Tennessee Red Cob (also known as Tennessee
>pencil-cob is a favorite as is the old-timey Limber-Cob and the
>Hickory King varieties. All these are very difficult to locate and
>for that reason we have been growing our own for many years. Southern
>Seed Exchange sells some white open-pollinated seed corn.

I'm in a weird space when it comes to corn. My grits had better be
white, but if I'm making corn bread the meal had better be yellow.

I've grown Truckers Favorite yellow and it did well for me. I've been
looking for a source of yellow Hickory King for a while now to give it
a try. It does exist, but it's been hard to come by. Unless you grow
it yourself or you buy it from a local farmer growing one of the
varieties the OP stuff is pretty well unavailable on the commercial
market. You'd have to be mighty discerning to tell a difference
between any of them and the regular hybrid yellow dent corn from the
feed store or natural food store once it's made into cornbread though.


>Incidentally, we grind our corn with an old grist mill and we sift it
>to separate the meal from the bran and grits. We use the coarsely
>ground remains of the sifting process for grits. For what it's worth.
>sdh.

Pretty much the norm outside of the big commercial producers as far as
I can tell. The grits take longer to cook but they're still mighty
good when they're ready!

......Alan.


Post no bills

good to know...so what is the process for preparing the corn you grow
and harvest yourself (that is, drying the stuff and removing it from
the cob)?

Are there varieties of corn commonly grown that aren't good for
grinding and baking with?

thanks again...Matt

It's a matter of taste I suppose. We usually use yellow corn for
animal feed but there are some who will only eat cornbread if it's
yellow. As far as grinding there isn't a lot of difference, we let
dry in the field, pull and shuck it by hand. We then feed it into
mechanical shellers to remove it from the cob. Some will argue a stone
wheel ran at a slow pace is the best and others swear by steel-mill's.
We use a stone-wheeled grist mill because it's what we have.

I have no knowledge of any corn unsuitable for grinding, but sweet
corn (I've heard - never tried) sometimes doesn't get hard enough
to grind. For cornbread, yellow field corn seems gummy so me.
But I was raised on white meal. The only time we ever grind yellow
for cornbread is when we run out of white. Again though, just
personal preference.

matt s wrote:
> good to know...so what is the process for preparing the corn you grow
> and harvest yourself (that is, drying the stuff and removing it from
> the cob)?
>
> Are there varieties of corn commonly grown that aren't good for
> grinding and baking with?
>
> thanks again...Matt