Azure Market Organics Unbleached Bread Flour, Ultra-Unifine, Organic
Azure is introducing several new varieties of flour from our heritage varieties of wheat. If you want to bake
a fantastic loaf of
rustic, artisan bread, this is the flour for you.
Azure Market Organics Unbleached Bread Flour Ultra-Unifine Organic is a unbleached flour and has a off white appearance but as it ages will continue to dull in appearance. Due to the nature of the Unifine process the
nutrition of the whole grain is not lost. This unbleached flour has been sifted to remove the largest particles from the whole grain Unifine flour meaning that the larger sharp-edged bits of bran are removed.
There is a growing movement of farmers, scientists and foodies who are working to bring back
heritage grains .
At Azure we believe this is a critically important effort, and we’re proud to be involved. A farmer’s right to
save his seed and propagate his own organic crops is a fundamental freedom that has been an indispensable part of farming since time began.
It starts with
heritage hard red spring wheat from our close friends at Jenkin’s Creek Ranch in Idaho. This heritage wheat has the highest concentration of protein of any flour you can find in the U.S. At less than 16 percent, it’s got plenty of gluten to make a light, deliciously crusty loaf every time.
“We’ve taken a strong, full-bodied hard red wheat flour and refined it slightly by removing about 10% of the bran,” said Azure Mill Manager. “In the milling industry it’s known as
a particle reduction processing technique. We’re taking an already fine Unifine flour, sifting out some of the bran and giving you a finished product that has softer flavor notes, rises better and adds a little lightness to your artisan breads.”
Many commercial bakers who have tried it say Azure’s unbleached flour softens the crust a bit and makes the bread easier to digest. They also blend it with other types of flour to get a truly proprietary, artisan loaf.
Azure Market Heritage Flour is milled at our Unifine mill in Dufur, Ore., one of only four such mills in the country.
The name Unifine comes from the milling process itself. It means the process takes just one step, not two, and it produces a very fine, uniform grind. Not only that, Unifine milling preserves more of the natural nutrients of the grain.
All commercial milling processes, other than Unifine, utilize some form of grinding or rolling that produces
heat that degrades or destroys the oils in the grain. It’s the oils that contain all the vitamins and nutrients.
“Many manufacturers imply that ‘stone-ground’ is a product benefit,” Stelzer said. “But it’s not really. It’s better than steel rollers, but it’s not nearly as good as the Unifine process.”
Steel roller mills can make whole-wheat flour, but only by separating the grain’s constituent parts, adding water, and then forcing them back together. It’s an extremely inefficient process, and the stamping, crushing, squeezing, hydrating, and rolling compromises the nutrition and the flavor of the flour. That’s where “enriched” flour comes from; the big manufacturers have to add vitamins and minerals back in.
In Azure’s Unifine process, the entire bran, germ and endosperm of the grain are processed into a nutritious whole grain flour in one step. Instead of crushing or cutting the grain like a typical commercial roller mill,
the Unifine process uses a high-speed rotor to instantly pulverize the kernels of grains, leaving the oils undamaged by heat. And there’s no added water, so the flour has a longer shelf life.
“With the Unifine process, the oil molecules are left whole,” Stelzer said. “That’s the main reason we have longer shelf life, better flavor and more nutrition.”
Compare the nutritional information, head-to-head, and you’ll see that
Unifine flour is far superior to other milled flour in every category: almost four times as much dietary fiber, more than twice as much potassium and three times as much magnesium.