The first week of December has been a momentous week for the Priors Flour. We have commissioned our new Grain Store and taken delivery of a fantastic parcel of high protein (13.8%) milling wheat from the 2025 harvest. You have a real treat in store baking with our 2025 harvest white and wholemeal additive-free organic bread flours!

2025 Harvest Edelmann Wheat

We have been lucky to secure a parcel of Edelmann variety milling wheat from the Ednaston Estate in Derbyshire. As you will have read from previous posts, the 2025 harvest was challenging in many ways, the drought led to grain being smaller, lower yielding, but also higher protein (important because this is what creates the gluten in the dough). We tested 6 samples of wheat, a number from farms in East Anglia. The best sample was the one from the Ednaston Estate. Edelmann is a continental variety of wheat, a winter wheat (sown in the autumn), a new variety – but one cultivated from heritage varieties of grain. It is tall stemmed and has well developed leaf structure which enables it to better out-compete weeds in an organic system.

As you can see from the photos, our 2025 harvest white & wholemeal flours produce a fantastic loaf, whether you are working with sourdough, yeasted or machine processes. There is bags of flavour, a lovely light crumb and an extensible dough as you build your loaves! We know you will enjoy it.

New Grain Store

Over the last two months we have been planning and then moving our grain store to Adventurers Farm on the Ely side of Swaffham Prior. We are grateful to Newton Farms Ltd for their help in establishing our store in a modern building, Rob and his team for moving our grain bins and associated infrastructure and James Wilmott and our other friends for their help and support; it has been a major undertaking. The new building offers us greater capacity and ability to scale the Priors Flour business. Here you see the new grain being blown into our storage bins:

The new flours are available here!

We are pleased to advise that following a short “out of stock” situation (due to a grain quality issue), we are re-stocked with spelt grain.

We are also pleased to announce that we have begun sourcing our spelt grain from Craggs & Co of Sedgefield. Where possible, we source our grains from East Anglia, but where we find best quality grains available elsewhere, we will bring them to you!

We will be updating our “meet our suppliers” pages shortly with information about Craggs farms.

Over the last few weeks we have had a number of enquiries from customers about the addition of folic acid to flour. As you will probably be aware, legislation has now been implemented adding folic acid to flour along with the other fortificants required under the Bread & Flour Regulations 1998. As I explain below, the Priors Flour is now entirely free of additives, including folic acid.

Since the 1940s, the UK Bread & Flour Regulations have existed to require flours to contain minimum amounts of essential vitamins and minerals for the protection of human health. In practice, this has meant that non-wholemeal flours have been fortified with a very small amount of additives including calcium carbonate, iron, thiamin (vitamin B1), and niacin (vitamin B3). Whilst there has been significant debate about the effectiveness of these additives, and many of us would have preferred not to have had to add them to flour, this has been the law and the Priors Flour has worked to meet its obligations in this regard.

This has always been challenging for traditional mills (wind and watermills) because the production process does not lend itself to the uniform addition of tiny amounts of fortificant. The uneven “dosing” which traditional mills typically achieved using the basic machinery available (adding the fortificant during the flour sieving process) presented no risks / issues to health. However, when successive governments (since the 1990s) made clear their desire to fortify flour with folic acid, this became a major issue for traditional mills.

Millers are not medics, so along with other members of the Traditional Cornmillers Guild, we have always acknowledged that we cannot comment on the efficacy of fortifying flour as a route to reducing the number of neural tube defects in unborn babies – a key aspiration of the drive for mandatory fortification of flour with folic acid.

What we did recognise, with authority, was that the traditional milling process could not be either adapted or used to dose flour uniformly and as a result, there was a significant risk if traditional mills were required to fortify flour with folic acid. Put simply, traditional mills would have had to stop milling certain flours for human consumption, putting their future viability at serious risk.

As Chairman of the Traditional Cornmillers Guild, I led a campaign over 15 years to raise awareness of these issues, working with a team and latterly with other organisations such as the Real Bread Campaign to engage with DEFRA and the Department for Health. I am pleased to say that with support from politicians and members of the House of Lords our voices were increasingly heard and were were invited to join a working group set up by DEFRA to explore fortification of flour with folic acid.

As a result of this work and the subsequent consultations that followed, an exemption was agreed meaning that “small mills” (producing less than 500 tonnes of non-wholemeal flours) would not only be exempted from the requirement to add folic acid, but also exempted from adding the other additivies required under the Bread & Flour Regulations. This wider exemption was necessary because it was not financially viable for the company that produces the cocktail of additives added to flour to produce a variation of the product without folic acid, small mills using such a tiny amount when compared to the commercial roller mills in the UK.

It was concluded that given the tiny proportion of flour produced by “small mills”, this would have no material effect on the overall health benefits afforded by fortifying flour.

As I stated above, we as a business have always worked to meet what is required in law. Our personal preference has always been to supply unadulterated flour. Happily, that preference has now been made a reality as the law has now changed, as I have explained.

Please note – whilst our labels have now been updated, we still have a stock of pre-printed 1.5kg white flour bags which include the fortificants on the ingredients label. We cannot afford to “trash” all these bags (nor believe that environmentally , so will use up the stock of bags before ordering new ones with the fortificant information removed.

Happy Baking – if you need to ‘top up’ your flour stocks – follow the link!

I am delighted to be able to announce that we have finalised our milling wheat for 2025 – 2026. After sampling and test baking 5 different potential parcels of wheat from the 2025 harvest, we have identified a stunning wheat for you to enjoy – great flavour and baking qualities. If you can excuse the “wine pun”, it’s a “rare vintage”! The variety is Edelmann with a protein content of 13.7%, grown near Derby, UK. With nice plump berries, it will be good to home-mill as well as enjoy as The Priors Flour.

The 2025 harvest was certainly challenging. I found that whilst protein content was typically higher than average, grain size was smaller and for most of the samples, the balance of the two proteins (glutenin and gliadin) was poor leading to doughs that did not maintain elasticity, nor remain robust and viable for long enough to work well when used for sourdough, or to deliver a good rise as a wholemeal bread machine loaf.

All our wheats are test baked in a bread machine, hand-baked with dried yeast and as sourdough. Before our final decision, I share the sample flours with other talented artisan bakers to get their feedback.

As you can see from the photos below, our 2025 harvest wheat produces bountiful oven spring, a lovely open crumb and a great loaf in a bread machine, both wholemeal and white using standard recipes (we use a Panasonic Machine for testing).

The grain will enter production later in November 2025. In the meantime, please continue to enjoy our 2024 harvest grain flours!

I am often asked how we sharpen or dress our millstones. It is a logical question and one which illuminates a whole ancient craft discipline of its own.

In many ways, we have lost much of the learning and understanding which our forebears posessed. Up until the 20th Century, Stone Dressers were a craft profession in their own right, good Master Stone Dressers were highly sought after by millers and they knew precisely how to cut millstones to suit the kinds of grain being grown and milled in particular regions / areas of the country. It was a hard, exacting physical job using basic tools which did not change for centuries.

Our language is littered with phrases which arise from stone dressing – for example “show us your metal” – a phrase which arose from the tradition of asking a Stone Dresser to show their hands – the darker they looked (the more fragments of steel that were embedded in their fingers from the mill bill tools they used), the more experience they had, the more proficient they were likely to be!

Thankfully, some of their understanding and experience has been passed down to us 21st Century Millers. We also now use steel tools with tungsten carbide tips which prevents the fragments getting into our hands!

I have created a training video, primarily for those involved in milling, which you may enjoy watching which explains the process. It take around 15 minutes to watch – enjoy if you’re interested and have time:

If you can’t see the link in your email, please follow the link to the main Priors Flour website!

Still Milling in the Heat!

We’re still milling away in the warm weather, so if you’d like to order flour, find your way to the Online Store

Happy Baking! Jon Cook