Organic Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

Grown & Milled From Organic Hard Red Spring Wheat 

If you're going to keep just a single type and brand of flour in your pantry, our unbleached all-purpose flour is your best choice. Bake everything from high-rising yeast breads to flaky pie crust to cookies. This flour does it all. While you wouldn't use bread flour for pie crust, or cake flour for yeast bread, you can confidently use all-purpose flour, with its moderate protein level, in every single recipe you bake.

Unbleached flour retains the natural creamy colour of the grain while still making your baking taste great. Unbleached flour is refined flour that has not had any whitening agents added to it. Bleached flour is flour that has been whitened using chemicals. Bleaching flour does not have much of an impact on the flavor of the flour, although some people say that they can taste the difference, so if you are very sensitive you may fall into this category, but it does change the color of the flour to a bright white. Bleaching also serves to lower the protein content of the flour, softening it so that baked goods made with it will be more tender. Most cake flours, for instance, are bleached.

Unbleached flour has a pale off-white color and the difference between it and bleached flour is very clear when you put the two side by side. Unbleached all-purpose flour is widely available and is a good choice for just about all baking projects, regardless of whether the recipe specifically calls for unbleached flour. In fact, a good number of bakers these days use unbleached all-purpose flour exclusively (using only bleached cake flour in recipes that specifically call for it), so many recipes are designed with it in mind.

Unbleached flour is allowed to age and whiten naturally, although the bran and germ have been removed, a process known as “bolting”. Unbleached flour and whole wheat flour surprisingly contain the same amount of vitamin E while bleached flour contains none.

The flavour and rising ability of unbleached flour are superior to bleached flour, as the aging process intensifies the gluten, making for a springier dough. Some all-purpose flours are a combination of hard and soft wheat, yielding a flour with between 9 and 11 % protein content, making it a good general flour for most baking. Store organic unbleached all-purpose flour at room temperature for up to a year.

Experience the difference of freshly milled organic flour

Credit Jan Hostyn, Edmonton Journal January 9, 2013

“We use Highwood Crossing flour in our sourdough breads, our baguettes — almost all of our breads, actually,” says Aviv Freid, owner of Calgary's Sidewalk Citizen Bakery, known for their superior artisan breads.  “Using freshly milled flour makes such a big difference. There’s an underlying sweetness to it and it just tastes better.”

“We go through an intense amount of effort to make bread and when you’re trying to get as much flavour as possible just from flour, water, and salt, you need to use the very best ingredients,” stresses Freid. “And I think Tony’s flour is one of the absolute best.”

“Opening up a bag of our flour is kind of like opening up a fresh bag of coffee beans,” says Tony Marshall, owner of Highwood Crossing. “They both give off this incredible smell. Our flour has a very distinctive bouquet; you can really smell the grain." Highwood Crossing produces an assortment of organic flours, cereals, and mixes. “All flour, even unbleached white flour, expires,” explains Marshall. “That’s why using freshly milled flour is so important. Not only does it taste much better than flour that’s been sitting around for a while, but it also reacts differently when you bake with it.

“All of our stone-ground flours are milled weekly, and the unbleached white is done every couple of weeks or as we need it. The whole process is determined by our customers and their orders — we don’t have a warehouse full of flour just sitting there waiting to be shipped.”