Weekend read: How do you buy flour?
On last Friday @shanibeer wrote about her flour (and other tasty food) shopping.
#marketfriday meets #breadbakers! by @shanibeer
Last year @breadcentric mentioned some mills from which he buys flour in his post. (Back then #breadbakers community hasn't started yet ;) )
What's better: organic or local? Co lepsze: ekologiczne czy lokalne? [EN/PL] by @breadcentric
Recently I (@akipponn, host of the community) found an interesting statistics about German mills.
Verband deutscher Mühlen: Mühlen in Deutschland<
According to the web page, the number of mills has drastically decreased.
In 1950 there were still almost 19,000 mills in Germany, compared to 2,500 in 1980. Today there are 550.
Once I had chance to visit a family owned mill Hummel's Mühle in Blackforest in Southern Germany. It was nice to see how the main ingredient of bread is produced in an environment full of nature ... Silly me I only have the photo shown on top of this post. I would love to visit the mill again and write a post about the visit in the future. And I wish nice small size mills survive with support of bakers.
Coming back to how to buy flour, one strategy for bread baking fans can be ...
- If you buy more than 10kg, it makes sense to order it to a mill and receive it at home.
- Flour you use less with little amount such as 1kg of spelt can be added to an order to a mill or bought from local shops.
How do you buy flour? Happy to read about it as a comment or as a post :)
Happy baking!
It is a pity that in my country there is not much to choose. the government has full control of wheat flour which is imported from Russia
thanks you @breadcentric @akipponn
I hope things will finally get better for you.
From Russia! Same as breadcentric wrote, I wish the situation get better. It's not because of the government (or can be because of the government) most of flour is imported in Japan too. America, Canada and Australia are the biggest sources.
I buy my flour at the supermarket or at the local branch of the Rossmann drug store chain. Right now the supermarket here is closed till June due to construction and I have problems to get normal rye flour. The discount supermarket only have wheat and perhaps spelt, Rossmann only has rye in whole grain. That's the thing that's not so great about not living in a big city - nicer environment but less shops.
So I feed my sourdough with whole grain flour and afterwards add wheat or spelt. I don't buy enough flour that it's worth it to take the bus to the county seat to buy rye flour ;)
Oh I didn't know flour is available in Rossmann ;) I must see one in our area next week. It will be super convenient as I used to go to dm and carried heavy backpack all the way ... Non whole grain rye is one thing I'm also looking for.
Talking about sourdough starter, I feed whole wheat according to @breadcentric's post.
A baker needs to measure everything
I notice my starter is energetic with whole wheat :)
Well, my "Horst" is a rye sourdough. I'm considering taking a part of it and changing it to wheat but I don't bake enough bread to keep two sour doughs active.
Rossmann has seed mixes etc. that are great for bread - I always look into the adds and buy them when they're cheaper.
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Same! I can only maintain one ... So now I gave up rye sourdough. Visiting Rossmann is added to my TODOs tomorrow :D
I love Rossmann, too, because they have coupons for a 10% discount :)
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Wow I must search for this ... still many things to learn after 5 years in Germany 😄
Fortunately we have a good quality stone ground flour available locally, so much better than the flour from the large mills!
You live in a great environment! Sometimes I miss good old days in Blackforest in Southern Germany where agricultural coops with good flour were accessible.
Just realised they're is a typo in breadbakers tag :)
Good point ... ;)
Fixed!