Cookbook

Millets are a group of highly variable small-seeded grasses, widely grown around the
world as cereal crops or grains for human food and as fodder. There is evidence of the
cultivation of millet in the Korean Peninsula dating to the Middle Pottery Period (around
3,500–2,000BC). In India, millets have been mentioned in some of the oldest Yajurveda
texts, identifying foxtail millet (priyangava), Barnyard millet (aanava) and black finger
millet (shyaamaka), thus indicating that millet consumption was very common, pre-
dating to the Indian Bronze Age (4,500BC).Until 50 years ago millets were the major
grain grown in India. From a staple food and integral part of local food cultures, just like
many other things,  millets have come to be looked down upon by modern urban
consumers as “coarse grains” – something that our village ancestors may have lived on,
but that they had left behind and exchanged for a more “refined” diet.

Baking is both a science and an art. Baking enhances the flavor and aroma of the food. Baking can expand the possibilities of making food healthier. Baking is no longer just all-purpose flour, white sugar and butter baked together. Health conscious people are encouraged to bake with millet flour, whole wheat flour, and multigrain flour. White sugar can be replaced with palm sugar/brown sugar. In the baking industry, wheat is utilized primarily in the form of flour. It enables a light, airy, soft loaf of bread because of gluten proteins. The cohesive properties of gluten proteins provide for their ability to entrap carbon dioxide and water vapor during leavening, causing the loaf to rise.