Flour …

I’ve written about the flour from the excellent Stoate’s Mill before. It really is fantastic for both yeasted breads and sourdoughs. We’ve always managed to visit the mill in person for our previous purchases, and it’s worth a detour for its picturesque setting. But this time we have no scheduled journeys anywhere near, so mail order it was.

Very good service from Big Barn, who handle the orders. But to our horror, although our 8kg bags of rye and malted flours were fine, the 25kg bag was apparently wholemeal, not the strong white that we’d ordered.

We do use wholemeal flour in some of our breads, but it would take us so long to work our way through 25 kilos that it would be stale before we’d finished it.

So we were a bit appalled, and immediately called Stoate’s to find out what could be done. The prospect of returning a 25kg sack of flour was not an enticing one. Turned out that they’d packed the bag of white inside a spare sack, which just happened to be a wholemeal bag. From the outside it just looked like a sack of wholemeal flour, all properly sealed. Good use of packing materials, Stoate’s, but not good for the customer’s anxiety levels!

Minor panic over, I couldn’t resist making a simple yeasted rye with seeds in the breadmaker. Meanwhile a sourdough starter is on its way for a bigger batch later in the week.