I live in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, Canada, and I just discovered I can buy flour directly from the Rogers Mill. They carry a variety of flours that I can't buy in a local store. The two I want to play with are Organic White Flour, it is ground from Canadian hard spring wheat, and the other is No-Additive all purpose flour, also ground from Canadian hard spring wheat. The organic flour is twice the price of the non-organic one.
I have two questions for you experts, do you think it is likely I will notice a difference between the two flours? I have baked 90% of our bread for the last 30+ years (how did I get that old?), mostly non-artisan basic bread for sandwiches and toast.
The organic flour is $41 CAD for 20 kg and the additive free is $10 for 10 kg. Is this normal? Am I getting a deal? I have never bought organic flour before because no one sells bags of it large enough for me.
Thank you in advance.
Unless there is a protein difference between the two you are unlikely to see much variation. When I worked in an artisan bakery in Vancouver the organic also cost twice the price of the regular flour but there was zero difference in the final outcome of the loaves.
I have baked many a loaf at home with the Rogers No Additive, these days I buy unbleached no-name and whole wheat from the superstore. They make equivalent loaves (90% of which are sandwich loaves in a tin the rest being whatever artisan style tickles my fancy that week)
I think people buy organic generally because they prefer the method of growing. I will, however, add that in the bakery the organic starter was more active than the regular (eventually we switched to only using the organic starter.)
In short, any product labelled as certified organic really just means that it has been grown/harvested/made following a set of rules.
What those rules are will vary by the type of product and the country or even state/region so it's difficult to be much more specific than that. Additionally, organic certifications are usually by private bodies so can vary in that regard, to.
Although a certified organic product can be assured to have followed/fulfilled a certain set conditions, many of those same criteria are likely to apply to equivalent products that are not labelled as organic.
So, the difference between a certified organic flour and a 'normal' flour may be quite large or very small.
Taking Australia (where I live,) certified organic flours are required to be 100% non-GMO but then we don't have GMO wheat in Australia (in any commercial quantity) so the most bog-standard, home-brand Aussie flour on the lowliest supermarket is non-GMO anyway.
Organic flours will also be unbleached but, again, no flour in Australia is bleached so that is an empty criteria here - where you live may be different.
Organic flours will also tend to have no pesticides - or use only certified organic and 'natural' ones. Here is where you are going to find the most consistent difference and also the most justifiable reason for the increased price.
In short, there is a good reason why pesticides are used: they increase yield and profitability.
Beyond that, you may also find other omissions that are potentially negative, depending on your stance and or purposes. As Dave (idaveindy) has mentioned, below, organic flours may be additive free, in which case they will be without malted barley.
That's important in the US as most bread flour DOES have malted barley and that's generally desireable - or at least expected. Thus, its absence needs to be understood and accounted for. In Australia, none of our flours are malted so, as with bleaching, it makes no difference at all for us!
There may be other additives that are absent, too, which may or may not impact nutrition and/or baking performance. For example, and again, in Australia, our flours MUST contain a certain level of folic acid (2-3mg/kg). Organic flours, however, are exempt so may, at their discretion, omit that. I don't believe folate has any effect on a flour's performance for baking and thus any opposition to it is on medical grounds - whether scientifically justified or not.
But, again, all of this changes by the specific certification and the region - if where you live does not mandate the inclusion of a certain additive then its 'certified' absence in an organic product is irrelevant and a non-organic product likely doesn't contain it either. Conversely, where you live may not have an exemption for organic products, with the result that the additive in question MUST be present in ALL products of that type regardless of whether they are organic or not.
While I understand Phaz's comment, it's not helpful and reads as though the intended message is that organic certification is purely cosmetic and does not impact anything. That may not be the intention of the comment but it's how it appears to me and how I interpreted it (which may be my error).
The simple fact is that to be certified as 'organic', certain rules - above and beyond the norms - must be adhered to. If your desire is to avoid - so far as is possible - chemical pesticides, then the answer is clear: buy organic flour. If, in Australia, you rail against the fortification of flour with folic acid then, again, the answer is clear: buy organic.
Whether either of these - or any other difference - make any material difference to the flour's performance or taste is debatable.
Depending on where you live and the pesticides allowed under law, it is entirely possible that an organic flour may perform better, just as filtered water may perform better, depending on your local tap water.
But, as per Dave's astute observation, certified organic flours will usually be additive free and some additives improve the performance of flour, such as malted barley. To be clear, it's not at all needed and I have literally only ever baked three doughs in my entire life with malted barley or added amylase - one by adding diastic malt directly and the other two by using flours that had amylase enzymes added in some form or other. I can assure you that it is not required, but that doesn't mean there isn't a measurable, noticeable and material difference between flours that do and do not contain it.
Summary
Short version is that the most material and consistent differences that are likely to have any impact on baking performance or finished product taste are:
Some, none or all may be relevant where you live and, depending on the 'normal' flour you buy, you may find that a given non-organic product may fulfil several of those criteria anyway.
Addendum
With slipstream's note on the improved performance of a starter fed with organic flour, that may be a direct result of the organic difference(s) or an indirect one. One way it could be indirect is if the milling process of the organic flour is different. For example, at one of our bulk food places, the only organic 'white', wheat flour they sell is stoneground, while they have both stoneground and roller-milled versions of their non-organic flour.
If you were just buying a standard flour, it would generally be roller-milled so changing to an organic flour may also mean changing to a stoneground one as well - which has nothing inherently to do with the organic certification and you can get non-organic stoneground flours, too.
A stoneground flour will naturally have bits of bran in it and thus more nutrients for the wild yeasts, but, again, this particular difference is not due to it being organic.
Of course, it's possible that other more direct results of the organic process produce a flour with more nutrients for the yeast which would have an impact regardless of milling method but, again, that's all dependent on the factors above.
I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this I tried to read through them all but it is critical information to know that the MAJOR difference between organic and non organic, in the US at least, is the use of glyphosate in pesticides. Yes organic farms use pesticides derived from plants and are non toxic and easily washed off but non organic farms typically use pesticides with glyphosate and also in conjunction with gmo wheat.
Just a minor point... glyphosate is an herbicide (weed killer) not a pesticide (bug killer.)
Actually, herbicides are considered pesticides because weeds are pests. Insecticides are bug killers and also pesticides.
Thank-you.
And my apologies to P1982.
There is no GMO wheat in commercial use, whether in the US or in other countries.
Glyphosate is not widely used in wheat cultivation. When it is, the primary use is prior to the wheat being planted to kill weeds already growing in the fields. In very limited cases, it is used after the wheat is fully ripened (and the wheat plant is dead, therefore unable to absorb the herbicide) to kill weeds in the field prior to harvest.
Paul
Pesticides used in organic farming are not necessarily non-toxic. One example is rotenone and it is very toxic. It was only recently removed from the market. Plant-derived pyrethrins are also toxic.
Basically, if you think there will be a difference there will be. Outside of that, don't worry about it! Enjoy!
Welcome to TFL!
Canadian white flour (AP and bread) generally has added amylase, and sometimes ascorbic acid. (In the US, white flour usually, not always, has added malted barley flour.)
I couldn't find the ingredient list for their Organic White Flour, but their "additive free" AP does not list amylase. Their other white flours do have amylase added.
Flours with added amylase supposedly ferment faster than those without, and brown more.
HTH.
IMHO any flour you can get directly from a mill will be good flour. Just make sure it's not too freshly milled. Or if it's very fresh add some ascorbic acid. The value of 'organic' is mostly overrated and certainly not worth double the price.
Go for the $10 one!
I think the main plus point for organic is to have a sustainable farming system that doesn't leach nitrates into the land and water courses.
Lance
I use blood meal to supplement nitrogen to my plants. I suppose it's organic? Are nitrate leaching problems caused only by synthetic fertilizers and not by organic ones?
Thanks,
Yippee
Nitrate leaching is a more complex problem than just organic vs synthetic fertilizer use. There are even organic-permitted sources of nitrate (Chilean nitrate). The form (or source) of nitrogen applied is probably most important factors.
Water-insoluble nitrogen sources will have the lowest likelihood of leaching because they release the nitrogen slowly though microbial breakdown or hydrolysis. This allows the soil to retain the nitrogen applied to be used by the plant before it can leach from the soil.
Blood meal, feather meal, and cottonseed meal are some organic sources of water-insoluble nitrogen. Ureaform (UF) methylene diurea (MU), and isobutylidene diurea (IBDU) are synthetic sources.
Your soil's structure can help minimize leaching. Soils with higher clay content can retain more water and slow the mobility of nitrate.
The soil's cation-exchange capacity (CEC) of your soil is less important but will help retain any ammonium nitrogen in the soil. Any non-nitrate nitrogen that is applied will initially be converted to ammonium and can also be leached from the soil if the CEC is low. (Plants can use either ammonium or nitrate forms of nitrogen.)
Well explained. It has cleared up my confusion.
Thank you,
Yippee
I was buying flour from a farm where he changed over to organic farming. When he stopped using urea as a fertilizer (after going organic) the protein percentage of the final flour was reduced by around 2%.