Stone-Milled Flour: Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

In Texas and Louisiana, chefs, millers, and home bakers are increasingly turning to using whole-grain, stone-milled flour in their breads, cakes, and pastries. These flours are milled with the ancient process of stone milling: flour is produced by crushing the whole kernel of the wheat grain between enormous stones, versus the more modern process of roller milling, which produces the finely grained, snow-white flour most of us are accustomed to. Stone-ground flour is coarser and more nutrient dense, and can also be more difficult to source, use, and store thanconventional flour. Despite that, these flours are no longer the sole purview of professional pastry chefs and artisan bread bakers. A new group of consumers are turning to organic, stone ground, and so-called heritage or ancient strains of wheat: followers of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. These home bakers are increasingly convinced that modern, roller-milled wheat is making them sick, resulting in diagnoses as broad as chronic inflammation, IBS, and non-Celiac gluten intolerance.

As a baker and recipe developer, Bronwen Wyatt wanted to get to the bottom of the flour debate, which reflects a growing anxiety around the safety of American food. She speaks to bakers Pamela Thibodeaux of Barton Springs Mill in Dripping Springs, Texas and Keira Watt of Bellegarde Bakery in New Orleans to learn why they choose to use stone milled flour, and what their customers are communicating to them about their flour choices. She also turns to scientistsDr. Jessica Biesiekierski, an expert in non-celiac gluten intolerance, and Dr. Aaron Fox, who specializes in organic and sustainable agriculture, to learn more about whether our fears aroundwheat mean we need to change our shopping and baking behaviors. Do we need to have an all-or-nothing approach to conventional flour, or can all the South’s many diverse, long-standing baking traditions continue to co-exist?

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