Sadly I didn't get to do a very thorough going over of the stands as HB had a rather trying week in the lead-up to it and the rain was comically awful, but I did get to talk to the wonderful people of Matthews Cotswold Flour, who sheltered me from the rain and talked to me about flour. Which made me feel like me again. Thanks guys :-)
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| Hats off to their merch person. This is darned pretty. |
The exciting thing about their flour is that it's stone ground. Now, this isn't just a marketing term, it's an actual whole different way of milling. Most milling these days is done using machinery which uses metal plates to separate the endosperm (the main bit of the wheat), the germ (the growing tip of the seed), and the bran (the outer casing of the grain). Once separated the endosperm is ground into wheat flour, and the wheat germ and wheat bran are sold to you separately as items you can add to your breakfast cereal. #cynical.
If you want to watch a video, I found this one on YouTube from the Discovery Channel. It's very facty. I particularly enjoyed how they managed to spend a full 20 seconds filming a bowl of flour at the start.
https://youtu.be/0gITBy-N6X0
Anyways.
In stone ground flour either the whole lot are ground together to make whole wheat flour (literally, whole wheat), or the outer bran is removed before the endosperm and germ are ground together to make white flour.
The difference is that the wheat germ is included, and that's where all the goodies are - all the lovely protein and oils that don't generally make it into your standard British loaf of bread.
But, you can see why I'm excited. I have many and varied issues about the quality of day-to-day* food in this country, and top of my gripe list is the Chorleywood Process for making bread. "What's that?" you ask. Well, it's the reason your daily bread looks like a pale squashy building brick with a list of ingredients as long as your arm rather than a crunchy, crusty, doughy work of art which contains four ingredients: flour, water, salt and yeast. *salivates*
More (ranting) on this another time.
But I just wanted to spread the love. I am so excited when I see businesses like this as they are perpetuating older methods of food production. Small really is beautiful.
And it certainly gave me a kick in the pants to get making my own bread again. Granted it's in a bread maker rather than done properly, but at least this way I know what's going into me and my baby - and it doesn't include Calcium Proprionate.
I'm off to buy me some stoneground flour :D
TTFN,
Bee x
* sure, you can buy from small independent sellers to get the good stuff, but that's not how the majority of people buy their food.
