Rolled or ground?

We bakers at Bread of Heron, the Heron Corn Mill's community bread group, are extremely lucky to have our own working mill to explore and learn from. A big part of the mill's function is to get local people and visitors to look at what they have in front of them - history, heritage, culture, natural beauty and man-made functionality. And the best bit of course is that the mill actually is functioning, after the best part of 300 years!

So what about the flour that is produced at Heron Corn Mill? Just for fun, I thought I would compare a bake using Heron Corn Meal flour to a similar bake using Tesco's stoneground wholemeal flour.

Stoneground

On the face of it, my experiment is comparing like with like. Both flours are made from the whole of the grain - 100% of the grain is extracted into the flour, nothing is taken out and nothing is added. Both flours are stoneground, so they are both made by crushing the grain between two stones. So both should produce good, healthy, tasty bread. And they do. Up to this point there is not a lot to choose between the flours.

But there must be some differences. After all, the Tesco flour is retailing at £1.10 a bag. Stuart probably can't even get the grain for that price, let alone produce the flour. Heron Corn Mill flour retails at £3 a bag. It's quite a difference, so how is it justified?


Actually, I don't think it needs to be justified: we are very lucky to have the choice to buy it. Tesco's or any of the other supermarkets certainly don't offer a product which you can see being made, in the traditional way it has been made for centuries, and where you can talk to the person who is producing it, ask where the grain comes from, and learn all about the milling process and the history of the mill itself. The fact that Heron flour is being produced at the mill, and that we can buy it, offers us a connection to a basic aspect of a simpler life back through the ages.

Buying by price

But choosing which flour to use is not a clear cut case of price alone. It is a very English problem, that we can't look objectively at two products and compare them without being influenced by the price to look more favourably on the cheaper product. If you go to Italy, you will see good quality polenta, for instance, selling for three or four times as much as a cheaper alternative, sitting side by side on the same shelf, both selling well, and being used for different situations. Good bread selling at 6 euros a kilo would simply not be compared to a sliced white (if such a thing exists in Italy) on the basis of price: the difference is as much about quality as price. Unfortunately, twice as expensive may only mean a little bit better! In England, quality producers can only hope their product won't be compared to cheaper alternatives on price alone.

Start with the grain

Stuart buys grain from farmers that he knows and has spoken to personally. They are generally growing their crops organically, without chemicals. They are not necessarily certified as organic growers, because that actually costs quite a lot of money. How ironic that far from being held up by the organic movement as shining examples, farmers who are farming organically are effectively being excluded from it by cost.

Tesco's flour (and most other supermarket flours) is anonymous. You don't know how it was grown, who by, which country even. It may be perfectly good, but you just don't know. So one part of the value of the £3 Heron Corn Mill flour is traceability.

Provenance

Then as for quality, it is perfectly clear that a bag of flour that costs £1.10 has been sourced on price. It may well be perfectly well treated all the way through to the supermarket shelf, but it cannot have been made from a grain whose quality merited any kind of a premium. The cheapness of the flour undoubtedly reflects the cheapness of the grain. It isn't always true that you get what you pay for, but if you want to get something worth having, it is generally the case that you have to pay for what you get.

Let the grain take the strain - or preferably not

What about processing? Both Tesco's and Heron Corn Mill flour is stoneground. Is there a difference there? I don't know for sure, but I somehow think that Tesco's are unlikely to be using water power to grind their grain at the rate of about an hour per 25 kg sack. I am guessing there is a very large pile of grain being processed rather quicker by a very 21st century version of millstones. They will almost certainly be turned by electric engines - nothing wrong with that, but it does allow the miller to choose how fast to process the grain. Short of doing a rain dance, Stuart has very limited scope for adjusting the speed that the mill runs. He can slow the flow of water down, but he can't speed it up. Obviously faster processing of the grain keeps the cost of the flour down. As Tesco's flour is sold at rock bottom price, it is a fair assumption that it is probably ground relatively fast. The trouble with that is that the grain gets hotter if you process it faster - or harder for that matter: if the stones are closer together, they crush the grain harder.

Oils

The main difference in terms of quality between traditional stone milling and modern roller milling is how the wheatgerm is processed. This is the very best part of the grain, and it is the most volatile. In particular the oil can be damaged by heat. In roller mills the wheatgerm is separated from the main part of the flour, and the oil it contains is largely lost in commercial flour, both white and wholemeal.

Harder, faster processing by stone milling could easily damage the oils because of the extra heat generated. I am not saying that the Tesco flour is affected in this way, but I am saying that the Heron Corn Mill flour definitely does contain all the oils from the wheatgerm, and it has been relatively gently processed.

The bake off

My favourite wholemeal loaf is based on my mother in law's recipe, and she in turn based hers on the Grant recipe from a 1944 book (see Elizabeth David English Bread and Yeast Cookery p 272).

The main thing about the original is that because it is made very wet it makes a no-knead approach possible. I found that by mixing some roller-milled wholemeal in with the Heron Corn Mill stone ground wholemeal flour, I could just about knead it properly, so I do this as a normal 2-rise bake. The results can be very good indeed.

The flour

Here is the flour I used for the Tesco loaf - Carr's at the top of the picture, Tesco's at the bottom -

And just for comparison, in this picture the Tesco's is to the left of this picture, Carr's to the right, and the much finer ground Heron Corn Mill flour in my hand -

The Tesco bread

Good flavour, and it rose very well, even with only half a tsp of yeast in the sponge and 1 tsp more in the dough for 3 loaves.I was able to work it properly, even at 80% hydration (800 g of water to 1000 g of flour), which is certainly saying something. That made 2 risings possible.

There is a nice open texture, and plenty of roughness from the big bits of bran etc. The only significant thing is the relative lack of sponge-iness and strength to stand up to the knife. Feels a bit pappy compared to the Heron Corn Mill / Carr's mixture. It had a full 52 mins in the oven - 12 at gas mark 9+ and 40 at 8. Tapping the bottom, which had been out of the tin for the last 10 mins of cooking gave a "just about" hollow sound - I'd probably give it another 5 minutes if I baked it again, although some people might say the top was already burnt. Personally I like a good dark crust. I included 15 g of brown sugar for 3 loaves, and this always seems to give a good crispy crust.

All in all, perfectly respectable bread.

The Heron Corn Mill bread

Overall I definitely prefer the Heron Corn Mill / Carr's mix. The Tesco benefits from a coarser grind, though, which might be something for Stuart the miller at Heron Corn Mill to think about. The Heron flour, with one third Carr's mixed in, gives great flavour, and the spongy inside is very compelling, I must say.

Getting the best out of Heron Corn Mill flour

My top tip for people trying the flour out first time - cut with Carr's and use lots of water.

And finally, here is an interesting article about how yeast has changed over the centuries, due in effect to selective breeding by brewers and bakers.