The finest pastry flour you can find! Our soft, white Azure Market Organics Heirloom Pastry Flour (Unifine) is low in gluten, so is perfect for making flaky pie crusts, delicate cakes, and delicious cookies. Use in your favorite recipes calling for pastry flour or all-purpose flour.
In 1982, David Stelzer was a 16-year-old kid on a quest for better wheat for his family’s organic farm. He wanted something that would grow taller than the standard, hybridized wheat that is still the industry standard. Because taller means more straw in his fields. And more straw means better soil. Even then, David knew that his farm’s success hinged on the soil.
So he did his research and found a farmer in Kansas who was still growing tall, ancient wheat.
“We took a family trip to Colorado, so I borrowed my uncle’s pickup and drove the rest of the way to Kansas,” David said. “It was a big deal because I just got my driver’s license a month earlier. When I got there, the farmer told me that his family had been growing this same wheat for more than 100 years. His great-grandfather brought it over from Europe. I bought a bag of that, and we’ve been growing it on the Azure farm ever since.”
Compared to modern varieties of wheat, Azure Market Organics Heirloom Pastry Flour Unifine is lower in gluten and higher in protein, micronutrients, minerals, and antioxidants. 120 years ago the ancient wheat that David found would have been the standard. These days the typical, commercially-produced wheat in this country has been hybridized for higher yields and easier harvesting, not for nutrition. Modern wheat is dwarf wheat. The plants grow shorter and produce more grain per acre, but as David suggests, it requires a lot of nitrogen and other chemicals that he wasn’t willing to use on the Azure farm.
“I wanted more organic matter in the soil – more straw to increase the humus content,” he said. “This heirloom variety is taller and whiskerless. It looks like spelt in the field and you have to harvest it the minute it’s ripe. Otherwise, the wind just shoots all the grain out onto the ground. You can’t grow this type of heirloom wheat on big, corporate-run farms. It’s just not efficient.”
When you combine this superior, ancient variety of wheat with Azure’s own Unifine milling process, you get a pastry flour that bakes up brilliantly.
“It has a very thin bran layer, so it makes a fantastic, 100% whole grain pastry flour,” David said. “It’s ideal for everything BUT bread… pancakes, muffins, pastries of any sort. And pie dough! This flour makes the best whole grain pie crust you’ll ever get, that’s for sure.”
- Organic
- Non-GMO
- Kosher
- This Unifine flour contains 100% of the bran and germ.
You can grow this ancient grain yourself: Azure sells the grain in 25-lb bags. GR304
Azure Market products are packaged in a facility that meets the Safe Quality Food (SQF) standards which includes an approved allergen control program.
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