The mysteries of white flour and how it becomes the ‘staff of life’

Photo by Cynthia Hochswender
I used to think of white flour as the food equivalent of printer paper: White and bland and not very nutritious.
Two things have given me increased respect for the powdery white stuff.
One is that when bears break into our kitchens, they seem to always end up with white flour on their noses. To me that’s as if a burglar broke into your house and went straight for the white printer paper. It’s perplexing and intriguing and makes me wonder, “Hmmm, what is there about white printer paper that I don’t understand?”
The other is that, like all the rest of you, I started making sourdough starter and bread at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. That wasn’t especially good timing, since of course both bread and starter require flour, and flour was in short supply until about two weeks ago.
Anyway, through a number of stealthy and clever maneuvers I have put together a large supply of King Arthur all-purpose flour, King Arthur bread flour, Maine Grains whole wheat flour and (as of last week) rye flour.
Creating new life
When you bake pastry, flour is just a means to an end: You need flour if you want to have cakes, cookies and pie crust.
When you make sourdough starter and you bake bread, you realize that flour is alive. Or rather (forgive me, I’m not a scientist): Flour used to be alive when it was wheat. It is no longer alive once it’s been milled into flour.
But something magical (Frankenstein’s monster?) occurs when you mix flour with water. The two of them combined entice bacteria to join them from the air and the result is a living, breathing substance called sourdough starter.
It’s important to note that good sourdough starter eats healthy bacteria that’s already in the air in your house (or your favorite bakery). There can also be bad bacteria on your flour, because wheat isn’t heavily cleansed before it is milled. That means it could be tainted with, for example, E. Coli from an animal relieving itself on a wheat stalk. For that reason, unless you’re a bear, you should not eat raw flour.
Wheat flour can, of course, also make anyone sick who is gluten intolerant. There are many other types of alternative flours. There isn’t room enough here to go into detail about all of them. But one thing I do feel confident about, even though I’m not a scientist, is that if you’re only vaguely gluten intolerant, your body will cope better with fresh bread, made either in a bakery or at home, rather than factory-made bread: The slower your flour transitions into bread, the easier it is for your body to absorb the gluten.
So many kinds of flour …
We are going to focus for the purposes of this article on the flours that lend themselves most easily to the creation of sourdough starter and, then, bread.
Last spring, I read multiple articles about people deciding to learn to bake bread during the COVID-19 quarantine. This led almost immediately to a shortage of flour, and also to a shortage of yeast for baking.
That kind of yeast comes in little cubes or packets. It’s a very easy, reliable method for making dough rise. It has been used for centuries all around the world and is especially useful for professional bakers, who need to wake up in the morning and make a set number of loaves that need to be more or less identical.
If you don’t have packaged yeast and if you are OK with your bread production being a little unpredictable, you can make sourdough starter and use it instead of yeast.
The process is very simple: You mix together water and flour and leave them out on the counter and, after a few days, you have starter and all you have to do is feed it daily with more flour and water. When you’re ready, you use it as the base for your bread dough.
It sounded simple, so I decided to try it myself. I figured then I could explain the technique to readers who were not able to find yeast but wanted to make bread.
That was back in about March. It’s now September and while I have managed to make excellent starter and, from it, really good bread, I have learned only one thing about making sourdough starter (and bread): It’s infinitely complicated and there are infinite ways to do it. Or rather, it’s incredibly simple and will work like a charm up until the minute that it stops working, and then you have to figure out another method.
Raising sourdough starter is like raising a child. Many people even animate their starter by giving it a name, or by taking it on vacation or sending it away to sourdough starter summer camp (not kidding).
It’s not necessary to get that wrapped up in your sourdough; and if you find it starting to take over your life, you can tuck it in the refrigerator. Once you do that, it’s like a houseplant and only needs to be fed and watered once a week.
I’m going to send you to the internet to get the instructions on how to make your starter. Again, they’re not complicated but every day is slightly different during the first week, and it would take up too much space here to explain it. I like the technique at Clever Carrot’s website (www.theclevercarrot.com “Beginner sourdough starter”). But there are lots of good methods out there. You can never go wrong with seeking guidance from the King Arthur Flour website, for example.
Helpful tips: What to buy
So I won’t tell you how to make starter from scratch — but I will tell you which supplies I’ve found to be useful.
Everyone who makes sourdough starter has their own things they like and methods they prefer.
But universally, one product that will make your bread-baking life easier is a small food scale. Scales are pretty similar, they all cost about $15 and they all do roughly the same thing. I bought one by Escali recently and it’s a cut above the other brands, in my experience.
Once you begin making starter, you’ll need to store it someplace. I have found that the Ball and Mason jars are too hard to clean; once the sourdough drips on your jar dry and get hard, they turn almost to stone. The Ball and Mason versions have a lot of pattern in their glass and once the sourdough gets into those nooks and crannies you almost need dynamite to get rid of it (or of course a long soak in warm water followed by a cleansing in the dishwasher).
I prefer the Weck jars, which are easy to clean and look nice in the kitchen (Weck 742 Mold Jar, .5 Liter; set of six: $40).
Which flours and why
Most important is your choice of flour and water.
I apologize to the planet and to all of us who are worried about its future but you really need to use a good quality bottled water for this; most tap water has bleach or other chemicals in it.
You also want a flour that doesn’t have bleach in it. Organic flours work well but aren’t essential, in my opinion.
I started out using King Arthur all-purpose flour, which worked great until it stopped working (bakers, by the way, prefer King Arthur because it has more protein than most of the other store brands and protein is very important to your bread and your starter).
My starter pooped out after a few weeks of just eating the all-purpose flour. I did some experiments and eventually found a very good organic whole wheat flour from Maine Grains. I shared some with my friend Anne, who reported that it made her starter go “berserk.”
That eventually pooped out too. Next I used a mix of 50% Maine Grains whole wheat and 50% King Arthur bread flour (which has even more protein than the all-purpose flour). I’m mixing it because I only have about 20 pounds of the Maine Grains, in my freezer, and I’m trying to make it last.
However, over the weekend I fed my starter some rye flour from Arrowhead Mills that I found at the Sharon Farm Market in the shopping plaza. The starter got very excited about the change in diet and got very big and bubbly on the first day, but then it calmed down on the second day.
The proof is in the bread, however, and the loaf I baked with that rye flour starter is especially delicious (photo above).
The bread I’ve been making with the whole wheat/bread flour starter has a definite sour tang to it, even though the dough itself is a mix of King Arthur all-purpose and bread flours.
The bread made with the rye starter just tastes deliciously like homemade bread. No tang.
I prefer it, honestly, to the bread made with the whole wheat-based starter. No doubt this will change over time —because the one constant in bread baking seems to be that nothing is constant.
On Saturday, Sept. 6, from 12 to 5 p.m., Rock Steady Farm in Millerton opens its fields once again for the third annual Farm Fall Block Party, a vibrant, heart-forward gathering of queer and BIPOC farmers, neighbors, families, artists, and allies from across the Hudson Valley and beyond.
Co-hosted with Catalyst Collaborative Farm, The Watershed Center, WILDSEED Community Farm & Healing Village, and Seasoned Delicious Foods, this year’s party promises its biggest celebration yet. Part harvest festival, part community reunion, the gathering is a reflection of the region’s rich agricultural and cultural ecosystem.
Rooted in justice and joy, the event will feature over 25 local vendors and organizations, live performances, healing workshops, family-friendly activities (yes, there’s a bouncy castle), and abundant local food. And while the festivities are certainly reason enough to show up, organizers remind us the purpose runs deeper.
“This isn’t just a party. It’s a place to build the kind of relationships that keep our food system alive,” said Maggie Cheney, Rock Steady’s co-founder and worker-owner. “We’re creating space where farmers, growers, families, and community organizers can connect, celebrate, and support one another.”
Proceeds from the event support Rock Steady’s POLLINATE program for queer and trans BIPOC beginning farmers, as well as Catalyst Collaborative Farm’s food justice initiatives. With sliding-scale tickets from $5 to $250, the organizers aim to make the event accessible to all, including free entry for children under 12 and volunteer options for those who want to pitch in.
For those who’ve attended before, it’s a welcome return. For newcomers, it may just feel like coming home.
More info and tickets: rocksteadyfarm.com/farm-block-party
Waterlily (8”x12”) made by Marilyn Hock
It takes a lot of courage to share your art for the first time and Marilyn Hock is taking that leap with her debut exhibition at Sharon Town Hall on Sept. 12. A realist painter with a deep love for wildlife, florals, and landscapes, Hock has spent the past few years immersed in watercolor, teaching herself, failing forward, and returning again and again to the page. This 18-piece collection is a testament to courage, practice and a genuine love for the craft.
“I always start with the eyes,” said Hock of her animal portraits. “That’s where the soul lives.” This attentiveness runs through her work, each piece rendered with care, clarity, and a respect for the subtle variations of color and light in the natural world.
After painting in oils earlier in life, Hock returned to art when she retired from working as a paralegal with a goal: to learn watercolor. It wasn’t easy.
“Oils and watercolor are opposites,” she explained. “With oils, you build your darks first. In watercolor, if you do that, you’re in trouble.” She studied online, finding instructors whose approach clicked, and adapted to the delicacy of the medium.
“When I’m working, everything else falls away,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what’s going on in life. While I’m painting, time disappears.”
Her studio, formerly a home office, is now her sanctuary and the pieces in this exhibition are the result of three years of that devoted studio work. While this is her first full public show, Hock previously tested the waters at a small fundraiser at Noble Horizons, where one of her pieces sold. That experience — and the consistent encouragement from her family, especially her husband — pushed her to pursue a full exhibition. With gentle encouragement from her husband and family, Hock reached out to the Town Hall’s curator, Zelina Blagden. “My husband kept saying, ‘You’re as good as all those other people out there, why not show your work?’” And so, here it is.
All paintings in the show are for sale, though Hock admits a few are priced high — not because of their size or complexity — but because she’s not quite ready to let them go. “There are a couple I’ve priced high because I’m not sure I want to part with them. But we’ll see,” she laughed. “It would be nice to support the habit a little bit.”
As for aspiring artists or anyone hesitating to begin something creative, Hock’s advice is simple: “Go for it. If it fails, toss it in the basket and start over.”
The exhibit will be on view at Sharon Town Hall through Oct. 31 with an opening reception on Sept. 12 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Light refreshments will be served.
Carissa Unite, general manager of Oblong Books in Millerton.
Carissa Unite of Millerton, began working at Oblong Books 16 years ago as a high schooler. She recently celebrated her eight-year anniversary as the general manager.
Unite’s journey at Oblong began even before she applied for her first position.An avid reader from a young age, she was a frequent customer at the store. During those years, Unite bonded with a former employee who encouraged her to apply for a position after connecting over their shared love of reading.
As a teenager, Unite enjoyed reading Ellen Hopkins, John Green and Ann Brashares. With the busyness of adulthood, she now favors the convenience of audio books. In the past year, however, she has made it a point to read more physical books.
With a preference for contemporary fiction, she raved about “Atmosphere” by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The story, set in the 1980s, follows two women who become astronauts at a time when women were not widely accepted in the field. A beautiful love story emerges between the two characters. Unite described the writing as sensational and commended Reid’s ability to tackle complex themes without them being muddied.
Unite has developed a deep appreciated for classic literature. Her two favorites are “Giovanni’s Room” by James Baldwin and “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde. She was amazed by the philosophical nature of both words and the way their dialogue challenged her perspective.
In an effort to read beyond her preferred genre, she recommends the following:
“Some Desperate Glory,” by Emily Tesh, “Midnight Rooms,” by Donyae Coles and “Clear” by Carys Davies.
For Unite, the beauty of reading lies in its power to develop perspective, empathy, and compassion. Through books, readers learn that everyone is fighting different battles and no two stories are the same. She encourages people to choose kindness because you never know what someone else is facing.
Above all, reading brings Unite peace. If offers transcendence to another world, a pause from outside noise, and for Unite, it is where she feels most at home.
For anyone hesitant to being reading, Unite suggests: just do it! Read 10 pages a day and find the book that speaks to you. Any Oblong staff member would be happy to offer recommendations.
Oblong is located at 26 Main St., in Millerton and 6422 Montgomery St. in Rhinebeck.