Flourist
Fresh is best. This is not grocery store flour.
No chemicals or bleaching, and the supply chain transparency you've come to know and trust from Flourist.
Grocery store flour is a casualty of the over industrialization of our food systems. Bleached, deconstructed, heated and chemically altered.
Most flour found at your grocery store is the product of highly mechanized food processing that prioritizes efficiency, economy, and shelf-life over flavour and nutrition.
Mass produced, commodified foods dominate the wholesale dry goods industry. Our basic necessities are bought and sold on markets like oil and gas. Flourist offers an opportunity for you to regain control of your food sources and reclaim freshness in your cupboard.
There's no better place to start than flour. Ditch your grocery store flour and reclaim freshness. Our hand-crafted Austrian stone mill slowly and gently crushes grain at a low temperature, producing beautiful, aromatic, highly-nutritious and delicious flour. Our mill grinds the entire grain kernel (germ, bran and endosperm) at once, maintaining all the nutrition and flavour of the whole grain. Flourist does not add chemicals or whitening agents to its flour like large scale commercial millers.
They did what to your flour?
Canadian commercial flour producers are permitted to use “bleaching, maturing or dough conditioning agents” in the production of grocery store flour. The list of permitted agents includes: Acetone Peroxide, Ammonium Persulphate, Ascorbic Acid, Azodicarbonamide, Benzoyl Peroxide, Chlorine, and Chlorine Dioxide. The maximum amount of use of these agents is often limited only by the regulation which reads “good manufacturing practice.”
Industrial flour producers remove portions of the grain that could lead to rancidity, namely the germ, which contains nutritious b-vitamins, anti-oxidants and unsaturated fatty acids. This is because flour sold in grocery stores must be shelf-stable—that is, the product must not degrade in quality during the time it takes for the batch to be shipped from the mill to the distribution warehouse and then to the grocery store, where it will likely sit for some time, before ending up in your cupboard.
Even grocery store whole wheat flour lacks the nutrients found in the germ and includes only a percentage of the bran that was originally removed. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency permits up to five per cent of the wheat kernel to be removed from whole wheat flours, “which includes much of the germ and some of the bran—to help reduce rancidity and prolong the shelf life of whole wheat flour.” The fresh alternative, milled to order, slow and steady.
Fresh flour is the best alternative to the typical, highly processed, shelf stable flour found on grocery store shelves, which is often chemically altered, rancid and/or devoid of nutrition. This includes the better known organic flour alternatives as well.
Flourist guarantees freshness by milling flour to order.
We never stock flour in our warehouse.
Flourist uses 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. The resulting product bears little resemblance to the typical, highly processed shelf stable flour found on grocery store shelves. You’ll notice the difference right away. the colour is natural, the aroma is unmistakable, and your breads, pastas, pizza crusts, muffins, pancakes and cookies will never taste better.
Flourist mills 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. Flour, freshly milled from the highest quality Canadian grains, and delivered right to your door.
Because Flourist 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. It’s easy to order freshly milled flour.
New to our flour or looking for more resources? Read our Beginner's Guide to Flourist Flour here.