Hi! I’m looking through a couple of recipes from breadtopia, particularly the Artisan Whole Grain Sourdough. I see that the recipe, and many others on breadtopia, call for whole wheat flour, (white) bread flour, rye, or spelt flour. Is the whole wheat flour the kind that you can get at the store, can it be any wholemeal flour, if I want to mill it myself what type of wheat should I use? For bread flour I’m guessing it’s referring to the breadtopia bread flour or any grocery store bread flour. I’m guessing the other flours like rye or spelt can be wholemeal or store bought.
In terms of freshness, flavor and nutritional value, you want to use home-milled flour or flour from a place like Breadtopia where the grains is milled on demand. The longer a whole grain/whole meal flour sits on a shelf, the older the oil in the bran will get (oxidation).
If you buy whole grain flour, you should store it in the fridge or freezer for this reason. (Covid lockdown bakeathons have probably made it so the whole grain flours spend less time on store shelves, but it can be hard to tell without opening a bag and smelling it.)
Here is a blog post I wrote on home-milling grains (with links to research about the nutritional value claim I made above) and another I wrote on substituting flours. I hope this helps clear up some of the confusion.