Don't put this flour in your pantry.
Food this fresh belongs in your fridge.
Most flour is made to sit on a shelf. Ours isn't.
We stone-mill organic Canadian grains fresh to order, producing beautiful, aromatic flour full of flavour and nutrition. We believe flour should be treated like the fresh food it was meant to be, not a commodity designed to sit on a shelf to last indefinitely.
Our stone mills slowly and gently crush organic grains at a low temperature. This process maintains the integrity of the natural oils present in the grains. It's the way we think flour should be. Once you try it, there is no going back.
Why Freshly Milled Flour?
Flour is one of the most important ingredients in our kitchens, yet most of us rarely stop to think about where it comes from, how it's made, or how long it's been sitting on a shelf.
Most conventional white flour is produced using industrial roller mills that separate the bran and germ from the endosperm to create a consistent, shelf-stable product.
A New, Old Approach.
There's a reason this became the industry standard, but we decided it was time to take a different approach. An approach invented during the beginnings of human civilization. Our stone mills grind fresh organic grains, bringing out their natural character and producing flour with exceptional aroma, texture and flavour. It sounds new, but it's actually a modern return to an ancient method.
We work directly with Canadian farmers to source premium organic grains. Once the grains arrive, we mill them to order. We don't use additives or fortification, nor do we bleach our flour. What can you expect? Just what's listed on the bag: carefully sourced organic grains, milled with care by our team. Every bag is still hand-packed, and we recommend you store your flour in the fridge or freezer.
FRESHNESS, DELIVERED
No hidden ingredients. Just freshly milled, organic grains.
Because our flours include wheat germ (which contains nutritious oils), we recommend storing your flour in the fridge or the freezer and buying smaller quantities, more often.
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At Flourist, we use two different stone mills to mill our flours. When we started, we used an Austrian stone mill, hand crafted from stone and pine wood by the Osttiroler Getreidemьhlen Green company in East Tyrolia, Austria.
The Green family have been building stone flour mills for bakeries and restaurants around the world for more than 100 years. Except for the electric motor, their stone mill technology is based on an ancient, proven method of transforming whole grain wheat into delicious, aromatic flour. Two thick, heavy stones with tapered grooves carved in them rotate against each other, slowly grinding whole kernels into fine flour. The slow-moving stones are key to keeping the flour temperature low, ensuring minimal effect on the end product.
Our second Osttiroler mill came when we opened our bakery in East Vancouver. This mill is positioned in the centre of our Commercial Street space, behind glass windows, and in the early days, provided all the flour needed for our bakery production.
In 2021, we added third mill to our operation, a larger mill from New American Stone Mills in Vermont. Andrew Heyn and the team at New American have created a modern, industrial take on the same ancient milling technology the Green family has used for the last century. Each machine uses, as its primary feature, millstones fashioned from gray Barre granite. Etched with a series of furrows, the stones cut the wheat with a scissor-like action as the grain goes round the stone. A kernel of grain, making one rotation, is cut 36 times by the pair of millstones. The mill produces a fine flour that retains (without separating) the full properties of the wheat, including germ, oil and bran.
We now mill all of the flour we produce at our milling facility, and retired the Osttiroler we built our bakery around. We couldn't have imagined the amount of flour we would need when we began our journey, and it's since become more efficient to concentrate our milling to just one facility. Of course we've kept the mill inside the bakery, since it's beautiful and a symbol of our mission to help put fresh flour in every fridge.
We mill the entire wheat kernel in our stone mill. With our 100% whole grain flours, you get exactly that, 100% of the grain, crushed into a fine and beautiful flour.
Flourist sifted flours also start out as crushed 100% whole grains. After the slow-moving stones crush the grains, the flour passes through fine screens to remove the larger bran and germ particles leaving beautiful, soft and richly textured flour.
A stone-milled sifted flour produced in this way contains more nutritious and delicious whole grain elements than a whole grain flour produced in a commercial milling environment. This is because commercial millers remove the bran and germ completely before milling the grain.
Unlike processed grocery store flour, our freshly milled flours contain all the natural oils present in the whole grains we mill. We don't add anything to your flour to preserve it, which is why we don't recommend to store it in your pantry.
Fridge or Freezer?
Both the fridge and the freezer do a great job of preserving the integrity of the natural oils found in our flour. What's most important is that the fresh flours are kept cool.
Store your flour in the fridge or the freezer for up to 6 months. The flour is perfectly safe and edible after that, but you may find that the flour loses some of its natural flavours and instead tastes a bit like the inside of your fridge.
No space in the fridge? We get it. If you need to store your flour at room temperature, we suggest a cool, dark and dry spot. In light of space challenges, our flour will be fine stored at room temperature for short periods. We recommend to use your flour within 4-6 weeks for best results if keeping it at room temperature.
What do I use to store it in?
You can keep the flour right in our bags, just roll the top down and seal well with a clip. You could also enclose the paper bag within a plastic bag. Or, take it a step further and decant your flour into a large glass jar or plastic canister.
Preserving your flour in the fridge is an important step to getting the most out of our freshly milled flour. It's such a great way to ensure you'll be taking advantage of all the flavour and nutrition inherent in the grains we mill.
We recommend that you let your flour come to room temperature if you're doing any kind of leavened baking. If you're baking pies, the cold flour will work to your advantage.
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