Meet Our New Producer: The Fresh Flour Company

Flour makes the world go round

Think fresh bread, spag bol, doughy pizzas and flaky pastries – flour is the key ingredient in many of our fave foods. It’s one of the top traded goods in the world, but the process of growing and producing grain has become horribly industrialised. Much of flour’s wonderfully natural, nutritional properties have been lost.

 

Money madness

Did you know that, over the years, we’ve added a new type of harmful gluten to our flour? As well as many other synthetic nasties, because it makes wheat (and the grain we take from that) much easier to produce on a large scale. The machine made flour we know today has been poked, prodded and tampered with to make it profitable. It’s caused people to develop a whole heap of allergies and tummy troubles as well as leaving the farmer, miller, baker and pasta maker out of work. Precious, ancient arts have long been forgotten as we opt for supermarket ease over sustainably grown grain.

 

A man on a flour mission

That’s where people like Andrew Gilhespy come in. Growing up around his family’s allotment, tending to a bountiful crop of runner beans, Andrew has always had a connection to the land and how it can help us. After making his way in the world working for a big corporation, he realised it wasn’t nourishing him or his family. So he moved to Totnes and studied sustainable agriculture and food systems. It’s here where he uncovered the myths and mysteries of growing wheat and rediscovered the grains we once used.

 

The taste of good grain

Andrew, and his friends on the Dartington Estate, grow wheat using ancient and organic methods. They pick the crop and use the whole grain to mill flour just a few fields away – like people used to in the good ol’ days. The lovely taste comes from the way Andrew looks after the soil, bringing out unbelievably deep, earthy flavours. The grain’s picked, stone-ground and packed (using recycled paper sacks) the very same day – this is ancient flour as fresh as it gets.

 

Fresh flour, pasta perfection

Andrew uses his flour to make biscuits, crackers and other yummy goods including pastas (our fave). Unlike anyone else in the UK, he uses the ancient Emmer or Einknorn grain to make his pasta in the same place it’s been milled. But this isn’t just ordinary pasta. Andrew uses only his special flour and crystal clear spring water, fresh from Dartmoor, to create this tasty range – nothing else.

Beautiful tastes and shapes

From the fantastic fusilli to the rigatoni all-rounder, these pastas have astounding flavours. They feel like they’re good for you –  tasting of the golden sun on wheat fields and forming beautiful shapes like the careful hands who made them. Hardly any (natural) gluten means you’re looking after your gut as well as Devon’s precious farming land.

 

 

Welcome to the future of food.

Pick your pasta from this incredible collection…