The Beginner's Guide to Flourist Flour

The Beginner's Guide to Flourist Flour

New to our brand? Use this guide to assist you when beginning to incorporate our flour into your home baking. Want to experiment further? The sky is the limit; especially the more comfortable you become in the art of baking with freshly milled flour. The above chart represents our top uses for Flourist flour in each baking category, to achieve the most consistent results. 

Why are Flourist freshly milled flours so different? Shelf stable flour has been processed heavily to create a predictable, consistent product that has been widely used and accepted for decades. Freshly milled flour, on the other hand, has no additives and is, therefore, a completely different product.

Because it is just pure grain it is affected greatly by the growing conditions, storage, and age of the grain, along with many other factors to do with each specific grain. Working with freshly milled grains yields a product that is dynamic in nature, incredibly nutritious and more easily digestible; though making the switch requires an open mind to experimentation at first. 

This is where we come in. We have developed many recipes on our Journal to help you make the change to using our freshly milled flours exclusively. These recipes have already gone through the testing and tweaking process that is sometimes necessary when substituting grocery store flour for the real thing. Our recipes are a great place to start when you are beginning to experiment and we are constantly working to add more recipes to our collection.

We have divided our flours into Everyday Flours and Specialty Flours. The flours in our Everyday Flours category are geared towards daily baking and are the easiest to substitute for all-purpose, bread, and pastry flours. 

Our Specialty Flours are milled using harder to find grains, such as Spelt, Einkorn, and Durum Wheat. While Spelt and Einkorn flours can easily be used one for one in most everyday baking situations, they require much more care and attention when being used for bread baking, both in yeasted and sourdough recipes. If you are a beginner sourdough baker, we recommend you try baking with our Everyday Flours before attempting bread recipes using our Specialty Flours. 

Learn more about each of our flours, and our most recommended ways to incorporate them into your baking below. 

EVERYDAY FLOURS

This flour can be used in the same ways as the Whole Grain Red Spring Wheat Flour. Whole Grain Red Fife can easily be substituted for any recipes that call for whole wheat flour. 

5. Whole Grain Rye Flour 
Our Whole Grain Rye Flour has an intense, robust flavour. It is beautiful for use in denser cakes (especially chocolate cakes) and quick bread like banana bread. It will yield soft cakes with the added benefit of whole grains. 

Rye flour is notoriously low in gluten and therefore it is difficult, though not impossible, to make bread with 100% rye flour. We recommend using our Whole Grain Rye Flour in combination with our Sifted Red Spring Wheat Flour. That way you get the taste and nutritional value of our Whole Grain Rye Flour with the strength of our Sifted Red Spring Wheat Flour. This will yield a less dense, stronger loaf.

SPECIALTY FLOURS

Kabuli Chickpea Flour
Our Kabuli Chickpea Flour is limited in its uses but is an amazing product. We especially love it in recipes like this Italian Chickpea Farinata and other pancake recipes. It also makes an excellent thickener in soups and stews. 

Another popular use for chickpea flour is as a binder in veggie patties. Not only does it help to keep your patties intact, but it also adds a high amount of protein. Our Kabuli Chickpea Flour is milled with wheat so it is not safe for celiacs because of potential cross-contamination but it is naturally gluten-free. 

Whole Grain Einkorn Flour
Our Whole Grain Einkorn Flour is surprisingly light and airy, making it ideal for cakes and muffins. Surprisingly, even though it is whole grain, we believe this to be the closest to pastry flour. The bran breaks down very small so it does not add too much of a different texture to your cakes than a store bought all purpose flour but the flavour that it adds cannot be beat. It is also a wheat that has not been modified, and is, therefore, easier for those with gluten sensitivity to digest than other flours. Please note that it is not gluten-free. We especially love it in pound cake recipes. It also makes for an incredibly flaky pie pastry.   

Sifted Spelt Flour
The gluten in our Sifted Spelt Flour is more sensitive than other wheat such as Red Spring or Red Fife. This makes it excellent for cakes, pastries, and cookies, as it is difficult to overwork the gluten. The flavour is also amazing in sugar cookies. Sifted Spelt Flour can be used to make bread but will yield better results when combined with one of our everyday sifted flours. 

Whole Grain Spelt Flour
Whole Grain Spelt Flour can be used in the same was as Sifted Spelt Flour but note that it will add more texture to your batters due to the bran. It can also be used in bread to amp up the taste and nutrition. We recommend using 40% Whole Grain Spelt Flour and 60% Sifted Red Spring Wheat Flour in your sourdough recipes for best results.

Durum '00' Flour
This flour is perhaps one of the most specialized. It is primarily used for making fresh pasta but has also been used in combination with other flours in bread making. It is often used in unleavened bread recipes such as this recipe for chapati. Durum '00' Flour can also be used as a substitute for semolina flour in some cake recipes.  

Storing your freshly milled Flourist flour

Because Flourist flours include wheat germ, which naturally contains nutritious oils, we recommend using it right away and storing the remainder in the fridge or the freezer for up to six months. If you do not have room in your fridge or freezer, room temperature flour is ideally best used within 4 weeks. 

We advise to buy smaller quantities, more often. We mill your flour to order, and ship it right away, we never stock flour in our warehouse.

Have more questions? Visit our FAQ here or email us! 

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We love to hear how our community is using our flours. Have a success story to share? A favourite flour combination? Leave us your comments below.