Flour.
It’s simply a milled (i.e. ground up) cereal grain.
In the case of most bread, the cereal grain is good ol’ Wheat.
There are two main methods to produce it:-
1) Grinding it between two big stones (stoneground) – an old, slow, cool process which leaves a lot of goodness in
2) Rolling between multiple metal rollers (rollermilled) – a new, fast, hot process which takes a lot of goodness out
In the shop you can typically buy the following types of flour:-
1) Wholemeal flour – the whole grain, milled up.
2) White flour – the whole grain, milled up, is then sieved to get all the bran (the bits) out.
3) Brown flour – White flour with a bit of bran put back in
4) Self raising flour – White flour with a raising agent added (i.e. bicarbonate of soda)
5) Flours made from different cereal types & blends (i.e. spelt, rye etc)
So what are we using at Doughies?
For the bakers dozen experiment, we’re going for “slow” – stoneground, organic, local flour from Stoates Mill in Sturminster, Dorset – here’s the first batch which we just picked up!
doughies 