Milled fresh per order, taste the difference that our flour brings to your baking creations. Our pastry flour is a soft and light flour that elevates cookies, muffins, cakes, and pies to create a tender and flavorful crumb. Our bread flour will make your loaves creamy in color and open in texture. The grain flavor and nutrition are most pronounced in our whole grain wheat and rye flours.
Fresh flour is better. Better is subjective and here it means more flavor, nutrition and fiber compared to industrial flour.
When flour is milled, oxidation begins immediately. As flour sets and oxidation continues, its nutrients are diminished. Industrial flour is milled for consistency and to maximize shelf life, with little consideration given to flavor.
We mill whole grain and high extraction (80-85%) flour. By doing one pass on a stone mill we are able to get even particles of all three components in the grain - endosperm, germ, and bran. The even particles aid in absorption of water, gluten formation, and increased volume of a loaf. By maintaining elements of the germ and bran in our bread flour and all parts of the kernel in our whole grain flour, fiber is made more readily available for digestion. Long fermentation of dough further enables the body to maximize fiber uptake.
Fresh flour is different to use than industrial flour. It generally absorbs more water, can not be mixed as long before degrading, and does not produce as much volume when baked into loaves. Every grain has different characteristics and produces different flour, ranging from elastic (strong) to very extensible (weak). We recommend starting with a flour that suits your end goal first. How does it perform and how does it taste? Baking is observation, adjustment, and repetition.
Happy Baking!
If you have questions about our flour, please email us at contact@bakersfieldflour.com.