Honey Powder

I’m excited to tell you about a new product….well, new to me. I’ve talked in the past about honey and how much I love it. My only problem with honey is that it has drastically increased in price from when I first started storing it. It stores forever but I find myself rethinking about how I use it sometimes. I always want to have honey on hand to eat, but I have wondered if I want to use it in all my bread recipes or if I’d rather use it on top of the warm bread with butter. In other words, I’m a little stingy with my honey at times.

My point is that I don’t really know how much honey I would use if I couldn’t replace it or if I didn’t have any other sweetener. Well…I heard some time ago, talk about honey powder. It really made me curious. I have looked at several of my regular food storage suppliers but couldn’t find it. This weekend, totally by accident, I found it. In a grocery store near my home. And the best part is that it was on sale. It is regularly priced at about $10.69 for a #10 can and was on sale for $7.99 a can with a $1 off coupon attached to the can. You can bet I was all over that one. I’m excited to use this and have it in my storage.

This Honey Powder is distributed by Augason Farms (formerly Blue Chip Group) of Salt Lake. They have quite a few sales on now. Check out their site at http://augasonfarms.com/ Here is a great recipe to try with the honey powder or just regular honey.

HONEY WHOLE WHEAT PIZZA CRUST
1 c. warm water
1 T. active dry yeast
½ t. sugar
1 ½ c. white flour (plus more if needed)
1 ½ c. wheat flour
3 T. Olive Oil
3T. Honey (or reconstituted Honey Powder)
Put yeast into bowl of a bread mixer (you can also mix by hand). Sprinkle yeast with sugar and whisk together. Add 1 cup warm water and whisk together with yeast. Let mixture proof for 10 minutes. Add 1/2 of the flour, salt, honey and olive oil. Turn mixer on low, combine well. Add the remaining flour; if dough is still very sticky add more flour, a little at a time, but careful not to add too much. Once combined, turn mixer up and let dough knead for 5 minutes. Place dough in lightly oiled bowl and cover; the dough should be soft and almost sticky; you should just barely be able to place in bowl without it sticking to your hands. Let rise until TRIPLED in bulk- about 2 hours. The secret to really good pizza dough is not to rush it. Make sure it has plenty of time to rise. Shape dough into a round ball, adding flour to your hands if necessary till you can work with it. Begin to flatten dough by hand into a disc. Put on lightly floured board and roll or stretch into a pizza size. Dough turns out best when placed on a slightly heated pizza stone (use what you have). Put the dough on whatever you are going to bake it on, then add pizza toppings
Bake at 400º for 12 to 15 minutes