Stone-Milled vs. Roller-Milled Flour: What's the Difference?

How Your Flour Gets Made (And Why You Should Care)

There are two ways to turn grain into flour: the old way and the fast way. Most of the flour you buy at the grocery store is made the fast way. Ours isn't.

Roller milling (the modern method):

Picture a grain kernel getting ripped apart at high speed. Modern roller mills separate the bran, germ, and endosperm before grinding. Then they throw away the bran and germ (the most nutritious parts) to make white flour. Or they add them back in for "whole wheat" flour, but by then the damage is done—the natural oils oxidize, nutrients degrade, and you're left with flour that needs synthetic vitamins added back in just to call it "enriched."

It's efficient. It's shelf-stable. It's also kind of pointless.

Stone milling (the traditional method):

Stone milling uses actual stones (ours are Austrian) to slowly grind the entire grain kernel together. The bran, germ, and endosperm stay mixed throughout the process. Nothing gets stripped out. Nothing gets added back in.

The result is flour that tastes like something. The natural oils from the germ give it richness. The bran adds texture and fiber. And because it's ground slowly with less heat, the vitamins and enzymes stay intact.

What this means for your cake:

Stone-milled flour makes cake that's more interesting to eat. There's actual flavor—nutty, complex, not just sweet. The texture is more tender because the bran and germ are evenly distributed throughout. And yeah, there's more nutrition, but honestly that's just a bonus. The real reason to care is that it tastes better.

The trade-off? Shorter shelf life. Stone-milled flour doesn't sit on shelves for months because those natural oils can go rancid. We're fine with that. You should be too.