Send us a question or voice memo!
What changes when flour stops being the background of a loaf and becomes the whole party?
In this episode of Saving Bread, Allison talks with baker and miller Baylin Speidel, head baker at Chimacum Valley Grainery in Chimacum, Washington.
Chimacum Valley Grainery brings farming, stone milling, baking, malting, and brewing together on one property. Baylin shares how working this closely with grain transformed the way she understands flour, flavor, fermentation, and bread.
Baylin walks us through what happens when a wheat berry passes through a stone mill and explains the meaning of extraction rate, high extraction flour, and one hundred percent whole grain flour. She also shares a practical and encouraging path for bakers who want to begin using more local and freshly milled grain without changing everything at once.
You can begin with a familiar bread formula, replace five or twenty percent of the flour, observe what changes, and slowly build your confidence from there.
For bakers ready to use larger percentages of whole grain flour, Baylin offers guidance on choosing a flour blend, increasing hydration, shortening mixing time, using an autolyse and bassinage, managing levain percentage, and paying attention to fermentation.
She explains why whole grain dough often needs more water than expected, why fresh flour benefits from a gentler approach, and why the way a dough feels is often more important than the hydration number written on the formula.
This conversation is also about the relationships behind a loaf of bread. Baylin and Allison discuss the importance of connecting bakers with farmers, millers, grain breeders, and other bakers. They explore how curiosity, communication, and community can help create a stronger and more resilient local grain economy.
Whether you are curious about stone milled flour, beginning to experiment with whole grains, or already baking with one hundred percent extraction flour, this episode offers practical guidance and plenty of encouragement to keep learning.
