I have been working with sourdough and milling my own flour for at least eight years. I have always shied away from baking anything besides bread. I haven’t been able to perfect “baking” (besides bread) because most recipes called for store bought all purpose flour.
For those of you that aren’t familiar with milled flour versus store bought flour, I will give a brief explanation. All flour is milled from some kind of grain and there many different varieties. When the grain is crushed or milled, the nutrients in the grain are exposed to air (oxidized). Once oxidized the nutrients lose any benefit after approximately 72 hours. Flour can also become rancid especially if the bran and the germ remain in the flour. Flour you buy at the store, no matter what kind, has had the bran and the germ removed. The bran and the germ is where all the nutrients are stored. Flour companies sell the bran and the germ to companies to use as nutrients and then the flour company “enriches” their flour with “nutrients,” because their removed all of the nutrients that were naturally found in the grain.
I explained all of this because store bought flour is light and fluffy and makes beautiful baked goods. I don’t sift my flour (I want the bran and the germ!) so my flour is much more dense. It is difficult to make beautiful baked goods with freshly milled flour unless you have a specific recipe. Thankfully as more and more people are investing in milling their own flour, there are more recipes and cookbooks available.

Two dear friends and I got together and decided we wanted to dive deeper with sourdough and how to best use our milled flour. We started with tortillas and a basic Einkorn sourdough loaf. We had so much fun and learned so much. Not only that, it has inspired each of us in the kitchen to be learning and studying on our own. I can’t wait until our next girls night to see what we learn next.