Trying Locally Sourced Flour!

In my pursuit to buy local flour, I did some research on what local flour mills I could find. Low and behold, Four Star Farms popped up on my search. This farm has been around for over 28 years and has a unique business where they mill to order and package orders once a week.

They share, while not efficient, the process they follow is one way to reduce food waste and ensure that their customers get the freshest product possible. Check them out, here! I received the flour three business days after they close out on orders Monday at 1PM.

I immediately went to bake with the fresh 20lbs of flour I ordered. Yes, I did buy 20 lbs, 2 orders of 5lb bags of bolted (sifted) bread flour and the same amount for pastry flour. As part of an experiment, I thought I would compare Four Star Farms’ flour with King Arthur’s Flour (KAF), which I had on hand. Just by smelling the two flours, the Four Star Farm’s product smelled sweeter and had a stronger flour scent.

Since I had an event to go to this weekend, I decided to bake brownies and do a side by side comparison.

The recipe I followed was one on Allrecipes that you can find here.

First I melted ½ cup of butter in the microwave and mixed in 1/2c of sugar, 2 eggs, and 1 tsp of vanilla. I only add about half of the sugar for a more dark chocolate brownie. Once that was combined, I added ⅓ c of unsweetened cocoa powder, 1/2c of flour, ¼ tsp of salt, and ¼ tsp of baking powder.

The batter on the left is made with KAF, the batter on the right is made with flour from Four Star Farms

I preheated the oven to 350 degrees and poured the brownie mix into two different pans. The FSF Flour went into the 8x8 pan and the KAF went into the 9x9. Unfortunately, I did not have the same pan size, so this could lead to differences in baking times.

I baked the KAF brownies for about 20 minutes and baked the FSF brownies for 25. Both looked the same out of the oven.

Let’s take a peek in the brownies to see any differences.




Both look pretty cakey, which could mean I overmixed the batters. The 9x9 KAF batter definitely spread too thin, which makes sense. The 8x8 Four Star Farms brownies were thicker but still looked similar. Now onto the TASTE TEST.

The brownies made with Four Star Farms were much more chocolatey, even though I added the same amount of cocoa powder in each batch. While I think it is not truly a side by side comparison due to the different sizes in pans, I ended up with two batches of awesome brownies. I hope this inspires you to do your own taste test with locally sourced ingredients!

Ingredients:
1/2c butter
1/2c sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3c unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2c flour
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp baking powder

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and grease pan with butter
 In a microwaveable bowl, melt 1/2 cup butter. Stir in sugar, eggs, and 1 teaspoon vanilla.
Lightly beat in 1/3 cup cocoa, 1/2 cup flour, salt, and baking powder. Spread batter into prepared pan.
Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes. Do not overcook.