01/09/2024
Hello everyone
I've explored a little down this path before and find it a hard one to
navigate so I'm going to ask you all for feedback and see what you think!
A couple of months ago wholegrain milling (my preferred flour mill) stopped making my favourite flour - Organic Heritage Wheat Flour. Since
then I have been using their regular Organic Wheat Flour (not heritage varieties). The problem is, is that it's not as good! I have tried ALL the other mills flours and they are all either similar or worse. It is
only the white that I'm having trouble with - (you may have noticed the white, pumpkin, olive are much worse, and the light rye is a little
worse than normal). Now they do still make heritage flour but not in organic, it is instead in certified sustainable.....so what's the
difference?....
Organic uses no chemical pesticides / herbicides in any part of the
process, and a sample of the final grain is tested annually. Sustainble
is allowed to use certain pesticides / herbicides under certain
circumstances, but all batches of the final product must test negative
by a 3rd party auditor and in addition must test negative to a much
larger range of chemicals etc. (limited use of a limited range of
chemicals and strictly cannot take place after plant reproduction cycle)
Sustainable has mandatory inputs to the soil (manure / compost), a
requirement to improve the soil and improve the surrounding natural
environment and waterways. The idea here is to make farms sustainable in
perpetuity. This results in highly nutritious grain. Many Organic
farmers practice this too, but it is not a requirement.
Sustainable must be 100% australian grown and owned.
The only other point to consider is that HERITAGE wheats (older
varieties of wheat) seem to produce better bread in both texture and
flavour, and for many people who have mild to moderate wheat issues
don't seem to have the same issues with Heritage wheat. The problem is I
can only get the good heritage wheat flour in certified sustainable, but
not in the certified organic....if that even is a problem?!!!
My thought is to......
make Organic wheat breads on one day (eg wednesday) and make Sustainable
wheat breads on the other day (eg saturday).
thoughts please?! would you prefer what i've suggested. would you prefer
all organic or all sustainable? if i did split the week - i still would
make pumpkin only one day - would you like that to be sustainable
(meaning heritage flour and nicer bread) or organic (less nice but
meeting the older requirements of organic that we are used to and
trust).....for some of you organic is the most important thing, for
others the most delicious bread possible is.....either way both of these
options are chemical free.
We have always tried to remain as transparent as possible and want you
to be happy with our bread for years to come - your input is really
important to us
an additional point with certified sustainable vs certified organic..... I believe the sustainable is fortified with thiamine and folate - why? australian legal requirements that all wheat flour is to be fortified with these two things - which for most is not a problem - but i believe a certain percentage of the population who lack an enzyme have a problem with consuming too much folate. Organic is legally exempt from the addition of thiamine and folate.
At the moment i am leaning towards wednesday organic, saturday not organic. But no decision made yet - and if I can't decide I'll just stick with organic as we currently do.
Thankyou
Shannon
