The Daily Grind: Restaurants Are All About In-House Flour Milling

Walk into a restaurant kitchen these days, and you'll notice some new machinery taking up space. Designed to grind heirloom and heritage grains, in-house mills are popping up everywhere from low-key pizza joints to white tablecloth dining rooms, and everywhere in between. Restaurants that used to buy ground flour wholesale are now buying intact grains so they can grind themselves. So, why are some of the country's best chefs getting down with in-house milling?

For one thing, it's about flavor. Flour should not sit on a pantry shelf for all of time. (Even if you buy locally-milled whole-grain flour, chances are it was ground three days ago and, unless you keep it in a sealed package in the freezer, it's going to go south anywhere between a few days and a few weeks depending on the type of grain.) It begins to go rancid as soon as it's ground, so fresh flour, made from intact heritage and heirloom grains, has more dimension, a richer mouthfeel, and just tastes better. Chef Marco Canora of New York's Hearth restaurant compared this race against time to that of fresh herbs: "Pick a piece of fresh thyme. Grind or pulverize it, and the aroma is insane. All of that volatile stuff is released. But that vibrancy is diminished with every passing hour."

Not to mention, fresh-ground grains may actually be better for you, says Canora. "An intact grain is beautiful because you have the germ, which has good fat, protected by the shell of the bran. That good fat becomes bad fat very quickly when you pulverize it," he said. White flour contains only endosperm because the germ is removed, and is made to be shelf-stable, not full of healthy fats—or delicious, Canora emphasizes. "So, if I can buy intact grains, pull them out of my freezer, and grind them on a daily basis for pasta, I'm essentially on the verge of creating a healthy bowl of pasta."

Nathan Michael