Why you should seek out local whole-grain flour, and how to use it

Do you know where your flour comes from? If you value local food, care about the way ingredients are grown and support people working to improve the food system, then the next time you buy a bag of flour, make it regionally sourced and (preferably) whole grain.

“I truly believe that using locally milled, freshly milled flour is just overall better for you,” says chef and owner Miles Odell of Odell’s Bagel and The Counter at Odell’s in Denver, Colorado. “To rely less on commercial [ingredients] that you have no idea where it comes from, it’s my philosophy with most things culinarily.”

Normalize imperfection; dense and flat isn’t a failure if it tastes good. (If you’re unhappy with the texture of your loaf, you can always use it like you would stale bread, to thicken soup, make breadcrumbs, croutons and so on.) The more often you bake, the more you build on prior experiences; take your current technique and adjust for different results. “Give it a few more folds, cut back on hydration, change whatever percentage of starter or your fermentation — there’s a million variables to change,” says Woodward. “That’s also the beauty of bread.”

Start with the basics, but don’t stay there

“It’s like jazz, right? You gotta know the fundamentals before you start improvising,” says Thompson Duffy. Start with something you know, whether that’s a loaf of bread or chocolate chip cookies.

For certain baked goods, you will want to know certain characteristics about a flour, such as the protein amount. “In general, the harder the flour or the more protein is in it, the better for lower hydration doughs, [for example] bagels,” says Odell. “And then if we’re going into batters and doughs or soft white bread, a softer wheat is usually better,” he says.

But unless you have highly specific needs, you can let go of preconceived notions that you need a specific type of flour for a particular type of bake. “Get to know the flours on their own,” Lapidus urges.

Learn baker’s percentages

While you don’t need to lean on specifics all of the time, one particular tool will help you more thoroughly understand bread baking: baker’s percentage. “It’s really hard to understand changes if you’re not doing them proportionately and that’s what baker’s percentage enables you to do,” says Lapidus.

Baker’s percentage is “the percentage by weight of the ingredients in relation to the flour in the recipe,” writes Lapidus in her book, “Southern Ground.” It can be confusing, but the percentage of flour is 100 percent (even though a loaf of bread is not literally made of 100 percent flour). The percentages of the remaining ingredients are determined by their ratio to the flour. So for a dough made with 1,000 grams of flour, 800 grams of water is 80 percent of 1,000 grams, 200 grams of leaven is 20 percent, and 20 grams of salt is 2 percent. (Using the metric system makes things easier, too.)

“Chad Robertson [baker-owner of San Francisco’s beloved Tartine bakery] did a great service to all of us by just breaking it down into starting with 1,000 grams of flour,” says Lapidus. Andrew Janjigian also explains this thoroughly in his popular bread-focused newsletter, Wordloaf.

Get a digital scale

Digital kitchen scales are cheap and easy to find. Get one. “The weight of a cup of stone-ground flour is different from the weight of a roller-milled flour,” explains Lapidus. “The heaviest part of the wheat berry is that starchy endosperm, which is all that is extracted from a roller-milled product.” Conversion charts vary greatly, but let’s say 1 cup of store-bought, roller-milled, all-purpose flour weighs 125 grams, while 1 cup of a regionally sourced, whole-grain flour weighs 130 grams. If you measure by volume, making a cake with 2 cups of flour, then the all-purpose flour totals 250 grams, while the same volume of whole-grain flour totals 260 grams. In other words, you’d end up using more whole-grain than all-purpose flour, which would likely lead to a drier baked good unless you also adjusted the moisture.

Some home bakers want to do things by feel, but, “If you really want to succeed in transitioning from something that you knew to something that is different, start with some basic foundational things like using a scale,” says Lapidus. “My experience has been that if I’m going by weight, it’s pretty much fine,” she adds.

Pay attention to moisture

Whole-grain flours absorb more moisture. (You may have heard them described as “thirsty.”) This is when starting with recipes that you know and learning to adapt comes into play: If the biscuit dough isn’t coming together, add a little more buttermilk. If the pancake batter is stiff, whisk in a little more milk. If the bread dough is dry, work in more water. Odell recommends starting with slightly less liquid, then working your way up; it’s always easier to add something that’s lacking than to take it away.

If you’re making bread, the process will inherently involve several hours of rest time. But most batters and doughs also benefit from a little snooze. For cookies and pastry, Lapidus makes the dough one day and bakes it the next. That extra time not only lets flour more fully absorb moisture, but it also develops flavor.

Lean into flour as flavor

While advice may vary slightly from baker to baker, there is one universal truth when working with whole-grain, locally sourced flour: flavor. “The flour in and of itself is a flavor-forward ingredient,” says Lapidus.

Rouge de Bordeaux, a hard red wheat originating from at least the 1300s in southwestern France, adds nuttiness and sweetness. Spelt adds similar notes, while Sonora, a soft white wheat cultivated by the Akimel O’odham in the Sonoran desert in the 1600s, lends a subtle buttery taste. Different rye varieties will give you hints of vanilla, spice or brown butter.

Thinking of the flour first for its flavor and then for its function ties it all together and ultimately serves you better. “Flavor first, and then volume and appearance second,” says Thompson Duffy.

For more resources, tap into your baking and milling community

“Whenever we sell people flour or grains, I’m like, let me know if you’re not satisfied with what you got, let me know what you’re looking for,” says Thompson Duffy, who gives out his email and phone number to customers so they can easily send pictures and he can help diagnose issues. Tap into your local network of bakers and millers; if they’re working with regional grains, chances are high that they’re passionate about teaching others to use them, too.