What's wrong with grocery store flour? I don't think that's what they mean by "processed foods", do they?

Yeah… Flour has got to be some of the lesser processed of all the possible processed foods out there.

Crop dessication is the biggest issue with conventionally sourced flour--namely pesticide residues.

Flour is generally in the minimally-processed category [1, 2]. But grocery store flour has the problem that its too white. In principle, we should consume whole wheat flour, to ensure we obtain all micro-nutrients from it.

[1] https://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/CA5644EN.pdf

[2] https://world.openfoodfacts.org/cgi/search.pl?search_terms=f...

Gotcha, that makes sense. I thought the "grocery store" part was the problem. Thanks.

If you want even tastier bread I'd recommend Ken Forkish - Flour Water Salt Yeast.

I started baking bread after moving to Canada because American/Canadian bread is horrific.

It was never as good as the bread in Germany or France though.

After Reading this book I was able to make better bread than I can find at almost any bakery in Germany.

I'd also recommend The Fresh Loaf (thefreshloaf.com) and the Chain Baker on YouTube. The latter is a gold mine for understanding how certain ingredients and techniques will effect your end result.

I oscillate between making bread by hand and by machine. Both are incredibly time, money, and energy efficient and the end results are better than anything you can buy in a supermarket, and in many cases, bakeries. I cannot recommend them enough for anyone looking to eat, uh, holistically while being frugal.

I recently started baking large miches (e.g. 4kg 90% whole wheat/10% whole rye sourdough boules) because I'd rather bake once a week instead of heating a somewhat large oven daily and I prefer heartier bread during the winter. The actual time investment for preparing the dough is minimal, especially with a few tricks up your sleeve (namely, cold bulk fermentation and letting time build your gluten with periodic folds).