It’s only been a week since we introduced you to our new mill, but we’re already going full steam ahead and have milled over 300 pounds of organic rye that we’ve sourced from Breslin Farms, a father-and-daughter operation focused on biodiversity and sustainability in northern Illinois.
We’re excited about this for a couple reasons: It’s the first grain that we’ve been able to mill ourselves on a larger scale. Freshly milled flour has a number of benefits, among them, that it’s more flavorful and it’s more nutritious, that’s a win-win in our book. An easy comparison is coffee: Would you rather have a cup of coffee made from freshly ground beans or one from beans ground months ago? Fresh, right? We believe the same goes for flour—fresh is better. And freshness doesn’t just apply to the flour, when properly made, breads made with freshly milled flours will stay fresh for longer thanks to the natural oils present in the flour. We’re also excited about milling more flours ourselves due to the benefits of eating whole grains—you can read a little bit about that in our post about our new mill and we’ll be talking more about that in the months ahead, too.
And second, it’s helping us with our goal of going more organic at the Bakehouse. You might remember that in April of last year we shifted to using 100% organic all-purpose wheat flour. We use exponentially more all-purpose flour than any other ingredient, so that switch was a big deal, but one that we felt was an important one to make. Now we’re able to add one of our rye flours to the list of organic ingredients we use including all-purpose wheat flour, cornmeal, 7-grain mix, and more.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Zingerman’s Bakehouse
