where should I buy flour?

We get asked a lot of really great questions

and we love that.

I cannot begin to count the number of flour brands, mills, and sources that I’ve tried and tested over the years. Especially in the last two years, as we tested endlessly for the best flour to use at The Bakery at 1871. We scoured the options, from near to far. After all, there is no single ingredient more fundamental and impactful to a bakery than it’s flour.  Its an ingredient a baker knows incredibly well. After all, it’s in nearly every baked good. Heck, its all over my shoes.

More often than not, this question is posed to us because someone bought a flour, then found the quality and performance of that flour disappointing in their home baking.

So, let’s talk about it. 

We’ve writing a series of posts to talk about grains and flours, so you can get the best (and healthiest) baked goods possible. We’ve got years of information and volumes of research, so we’ll break it up into several manageable posts. And we’re always here for questions.

We get asked a lot,

Where should I buy flour?

There are a handful of large mills in this country that supply flour, which is very often rebranded by stores, either directly by the mill or by the store themselves. Sadly, that’s how retail (especially in pretty, high priced stores) often works in this country. The first rule of thumb in flour, is that it isn’t necessarily better because it comes in a fancy labeled, high priced container. For instance, Central Milling (one of the largest, mass producing mills in our country) makes the flour frequently found all over- from small, locally rebranding stores to the largest grocery chains and box stores generic flour. They also make a very popular flour, touted as organic and high quality, called Artisan Bread Flour / Artisan Baker’s Craft. And Artisan Bread Flour / Artisan Baker’s Craft Plus, which is the malted version. Don’t get me wrong, its a fine flour. It is certified organic. But high quality? I guess that depends on the standards of the beholder.

Here’s why. 

Central Milling, in their quest to produce lots of flour at a low price for the masses, uses a volume producing steel milling process. This process strips the nutrient dense parts of the grain, milling in a high heat environment, and essentially destroying the nutritional value. The result is a very smooth and evenly ground, almost purely white flour. If you’re looking at pricy flour that looks like this, take pause. While, again, its perfectly fine, its certainly not the highest quality or, in our experience, the best performing. And you absolutely should not pay a premium for it. No matter how pretty it looks in that rebranded glass jar or bag.

Which leads me to a quick side point. We don’t recommend buying or storing flour in a light gathering glass jar. While we appreciate that its an environmentally friendly, reusable option for an air-tight container, it’s also heavy, awkwardly sized for most pantry or refrigerated storage, poorly utilized for efficient storage organization (as are basically all round storage containers whose shape limits capacity but take up the same physical space), make it difficult to access the flour through a small jar neck, and are very costly. But, most importantly, if its being sold in a clear glass container sitting on a shelf in a store, with lots of natural light and windows, you just don’t know how long its been exposed to light and heat. In an upcoming post we’ll go over the best ways to store flour (from shelf stable to fresh milled). However, all flour is susceptible to going rancid, a process which is expedited by light and heat. More over, if its a nutrient dense flour, it contains oils in the bran and germ. Sitting in light and heat, the flour could very quickly become unsafe.

So, where then?

There are a few high quality mills in this country that know more about flour than any store ever will. It’s just the nature of being true experts in their field. Unlike large mills and resellers, they are small enough to know exactly where their grains are grown, and only mill organic (therefore, never a concern for cross contamination). They understand the nuances of each crop’s yield, and how to craft the best flour for any purpose. They use real, commercially scaled equipment that does the job better than any home-intended mockmill could. And, paramount in our experience, buying directly from the source means you’re getting the freshest product possible. All without the added cost of middle man overhead or pretty re-packaging. Here’s a list of sources that provide honest, small batch milled, high quality grains and flours that we’ve used and loved over the years. They are the same ones we rely on for great bread at The Bakery at 1871.

Janie’s Mill - https://www.janiesmill.com/

Carolina Ground - https://carolinaground.com/

Nope, we aren’t making a dime for promoting them. And we never charge you for sharing information.