The Dales bakery that mills its own flour

There is a small stone mill in the back room of Dales Bakery in Hawes that runs every night between 9pm and 11pm. It is older than the bakery itself — Will Pritchard, the baker, found it in pieces in a Yorkshire farm sale in 2017 and put it back together over a winter.

"You can’t buy fresh flour," he says. "By the time it reaches a wholesaler it’s already six weeks old. The oils have started to oxidise, the bran is bitter. You taste the difference in a loaf within ten minutes."

Will buys his wheat from a single farm in Wensleydale that switched to regenerative practices in 2022 (see our recent piece on the Wensleydale regen pilot). The wheat is delivered in 25kg sacks, stored cold, and milled the night before each bake — about 40kg a night, enough for the next morning’s 150 loaves.

The knock-on effects on the bread are real. The bran in fresh-milled wholemeal is sweeter; the loaves rise higher because the protein hasn’t been beaten up by industrial milling and storage; and the crust develops a darker, more savoury char in the wood-fired oven.

The bakery sells out by 10:30am most days. They don’t take pre-orders for the shop, but Parish Larder customers can reserve weekly via standing orders.