I just came onto this site because I just finished reading an old Gold Medal flour Cook Book published in 1910 by the Washburn-Crosby Co. (the original developers of the flour). It is a neat book to read, as it explains methods of cooking along with the recipes. Not just baking, but covers all cooking. I have been cooking for over 50 years, doing catering and cake decorating, owned and operated a deli and I cook from scratch. I grow most of what we eat, and our meat is home grown or grown by people we know, or hunted. We buy very little meat at the supermarket. The cookbook was very interesting, as it decribed things that I have always heard of, but are not really popular any more like timbales, sweetbreads and forcemeats. I describes methods for preparing meat and bones for soups and how to make sauces that are hardly even seen in the best restaurants nowadays. The book extols the virtues of white flour (of course) as being far superior to"undigestable wheat shell", which we are now re-learning to eat more of! We will always need white flour for light, fluffy pastries, rolls, breads and for thickeners etc. but we really ought to be eating more bran and whole grains. It is hard to change habits of a lifetime, giving up soft, white bread for dry crunchy whole wheat but we really should. A fun read, and interesting to step back in time a little. I might even try some of the recipes, although I'm sure that things like baking powder have changed considerably over the years. It will let you know how they turn out.