Liberté flour is a traditional organic T65 flour developed through a collaboration between the American miller Central Milling and Grands Moulins de Paris. It is a blend of our French organic flour concentrate and their American organic flour.
Read the testimonial from Vincent Mathieu, Sales Manager for North America, who recounts the story of how this flour came to be.
The Beginning: A Meeting Between the Two Millers
Central Milling and Grands Moulins de Paris joined forces in 2019.
Nicky Giusto, a fourth-generation Meunier baker at Central Milling, served as the coach for the U.S. team at that year’s World Bakery Cup. Since the competition was held in France using French ingredients, Nicky reached out to Grands Moulins de Paris through the Bread Bakers Guild of America.
We then donated our French Tradition T65 flour so that the American team could train in the United States under “real-world” conditions. Indeed, both companies are members of the bakers’ guild and are committed to offering their support whenever baking, education, and quality are at stake.
Central Milling x Grands Moulins de Paris: The Start of the Collaboration
Teams from both companies met in person for the first time at the IBIE trade show in Las Vegas in 2019. A year later, Grands Moulins de Paris traveled to Utah to visit the Central Milling mill and meet with fellow enthusiasts. It was an opportunity for employees to connect and strengthen the bonds between the teams.
This meeting gave rise to an idea: to combine the expertise of both countries to develop a shared flour and thus bring out the best of each continent.
Grands Moulins de Paris is renowned for its flour, which has maintained consistent quality over the years; it is used by nearly one in three bakers in France, and the “Tradition” baguette is on the verge of being designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. For its part, Central Milling is a major player in the premium organic flour market in the United States. It was, therefore, a perfect match.
Liberté: a flour born of two areas of expertise
So we set out to create a concentrate of our famous Tradition Française T65 flour to be blended with Central Milling’s organic artisanal flour.
“Liberté,” the name chosen for this new co-branded flour, takes us back to the time when the Frenchmen Lafayette and Rochambeau fought alongside the American people to win their freedom and bring a fresh breeze of brotherhood.
Liberté de Tradition T65 organic flour was tested during a two-day baking session in Petaluma, California, at the Central Milling bakery.
Using natural sourdough, a slow-rise process, and a long cold fermentation, the Tradition baguette delivers the following: a crispy baguette with a honeycomb-like crumb and the creamy color characteristic of Grands Moulins de Paros, and inside, the delicate sweet flavor that is the signature of Central Milling’s wheat selection.
This flour brings together two continents and two mills, combining their expertise to provide the finest organic flour to high-end artisan bakeries.
Three years later, in 2022, we are proud to showcase this new flour at the IBIE trade show in Las Vegas.
