High-extraction, also called bolted flour, hits the sweet spot between white and whole wheat: It brings the rich nuttiness of whole grains, while also providing the loft and chew many bakers look for when making artisan loaves. To get bolted flour, millers sift out only the coarsest bran and germ. The resulting flour brings depth, caramelization, and complexity to baked goods. For bakers who want both flavor and texture, this is a great flour to use.

I’ve never been great at picking up casual hobbies—the moment something gets its hooks in me, I become fixated. After a successful run of no-knead loaves made with all-purpose flour, I immediately built two different sourdough starters and read every article and recipe I could find to replicate the best naturally leavened loaves from local bakeries. My pantry soon overflowed with bags of different flours from mills across the country. There was spelt for added flavor, light rye for feeding my starter, a variety of heirloom whole wheat flours for texture and tang, and artisanal white flour to act as a base for the mix.

But the most prized flour in my collection was also the one I knew least about: a bag of bolted flour—a sifted flour with the bran removed—from a local mill in Wisconsin. The ingredient added depth and richness to my bread. Whenever I leaned heavily on bolted flour for my country loaves, focaccia, pizza, or baguettes, I unlocked new levels of nuttiness with a tender crumb that I couldn’t achieve with either white flour or whole wheat flour alone. The only issue? I didn’t really know why.

What Is High-Extraction Flour?

The term bolted “refers to a bolting cloth used to separate the bran from your wheat flour,” says Wes Gardner, mill manager at Meadowlark Organics in Ridgeway, Wisconsin. “It’s the term we use for the high-extraction flours that we offer—basically, a type of flour with some of the bran and germ removed.” Wheat is composed of three parts: the germ, which serves as nutritional storage for the plant; the bran, which is the tough, outer shell; and the endosperm, the white starch that gives flour its structure and texture in baked goods.

White flours have most of the bran and germ removed, allowing the endosperm-rich flour to bond more easily with water, form strong gluten strands, and give bread its height. In whole wheat flours, the tough bran flakes hinder gluten development, resulting in dense loaves with a tight crumb structure. “High-extraction flours, like our bolted flour, remove the larger particles of the bran and germ,“ Gardner says. The smaller particles that make it through contribute a nutty, grassy flavor reminiscent of whole wheat, while still allowing the bread to achieve the height and dough strength of white flour.

“High extraction flours are the best of both worlds for performance and flavor,” says Serious Eats contributor Andrew Janjigian, author of the Wordloaf newsletter and upcoming cookbook Breaducation. “If I had a bakery, I’d try to make almost everything with high-extraction flours,” Janjigian says. He explained that removing bran from flour is an old technique among bakers of naturally leavened breads in France—and part of the reason people romanticize the baguettes they tried at a local bakery in Paris. “You get the complex flavor of whole wheat while still retaining the delicate, open crumb that baguettes are known for.”

Regular whole wheat flour can produce an overly dense crumb, as the bran particles inhibit gluten development, while standard white flour alone can yield bland loaves. High-extraction flour falls somewhere in the middle, bringing sweetness, nuttiness, and minerality to breads while allowing for an open, light, airy crumb. It also promotes more browning, resulting in loaves with deeper caramelization than those made with white flour.

How Is High-Extraction Flour Made?

Meadowlark, like many smaller regional flour mills, uses a stone mill to grind its wheat berries. Stone mills operate with two grooved stones set against each other: One remains stationary, while the other rotates in a circle. As wheat berries are fed into the mill, the stones grind the germ, endosperm, and bran together into a fine powder. The result is whole wheat flour, which then goes into a barrel sifter—a long barrel with an auger that moves the flour through it. Inside the barrel is a mesh sleeve with specific hole sizes measured in microns. “As the flour is spun by the auger, it’s pressed against the sleeve,” says Garder. The larger particles are trapped by the mesh, while the smaller ones pass through to become high-extraction flour.

“Most white flours have so much of the bran and germ sifted out that they only represent around 50 to 55% of the weight of the wheat berries that were milled in the first place,” explains Gardner. Whole wheat flours, on the other hand, represent a 100% yield from the milled berries. High-extraction flours fall somewhere in the middle, typically yielding around 70 to 85% of the starting wheat’s total weight. “Some mills will even label their high-extraction flours as T80 or T85,” says Janjigian. “That number indirectly refers to the extraction rate of the flour.” (“T” means type of flour.)

High-extraction, then, refers to how much material has been extracted from the wheat. Typically, this is measured by burning a small amount of flour and weighing the resulting ash, which reflects the amount of bran remaining. “That’s why some high-extraction flours are labeled with the term ‘ash content,’“ says Janjigian.

Roller Milled vs. Stone Ground High-Extraction Flour

Large commercial mills often use roller mills, which rely on a series of grinding cylinders arranged in sequence. As the flour passes through each set of rollers, the bran and germ are naturally sifted out, making it easier to produce commercially available white flours. For a roller mill to produce high-extraction flour, the bran and germ removed during milling must be blended back in at the end to achieve the desired mix. With stone mills, by contrast, the bran, germ, and endosperm are ground together and sifted only after milling. Because the bran and germ are milled with the endosperm, finer particles of each can pass through the sifter. These finer particles add classic whole wheat flavor to the bread while remaining small enough to let the flour perform more like white flour, which is why Janjigian prefers stone-ground high-extraction flour.

How to Bake With High-Extraction Flour

“At Gusto, we rely exclusively on high-extraction flours, and often blend them with whole grains like spelt, rye, and durum rather than white flour,” says Arturio Enciso, founder of Gusto Bread in Long Beach. Gusto Bread also incorporates nixtamalized corn in its baking and pays tribute to panadería classics such as conchas and pastelitos, alongside various naturally leavened breads. “Working with high-extraction flours has completely reshaped how I think about bread,” Enciso says. “It’s pushed me to be more intentional with fermentation, hydration, and flavor development. These flours have more personality—they demand attention and reward care.”

Unlike regular whole wheat flour, high-extraction flours can often be substituted one-to-one for white flour in most bread recipes. However, Janjigian notes that high-extraction flours absorb more water than white flours, so you might need to adjust the hydration ratio by adding 5 to 10% more water than called for in a recipe.. Janjigian recommends beginners use a 50/50 mix of white and high-extraction flours until they feel more comfortable incorporating more of the latter. He also mentions that smaller quantities of high-extraction flour, around 10 to 20% of the total flour weight, can be added to pastries to boost flavor without affecting the structure of the dough too much. However, most croissants and other laminated pastries—which have more delicate doughs than most breads—will likely lose some of their height. Still, for many bakers, the trade-off is worth it.

“High-extraction flour has made breadmaking more meaningful to me—not just technically, but also emotionally and philosophically,” says Enciso. “It’s deepened my connection to the grain itself and where it comes from. I now think of bread less as a blank canvas and more as an expression of the land, the miller, and the baker.”

Where Can You Find High-Extraction Flour?

“At Gusto Bread, we work with Cairnspring Mills flours. Our primary high-extraction flours are Trailblazer and Glacier Peak, which we use regularly in our bread production,” says Enciso. There are a variety of other online retailers offering high-extraction flours, such as Central Milling from Utah and Janie’s Mill in Illinois. Janjigian recommends supporting local mills that sell directly through on-site stores or have their flour available in local markets, grocery stores, and online.

In my own baking, I incorporate Meadowlark’s bolted flour in almost everything I bake. While I started by mixing a small amount of bolted flour into white flour for a country-style sourdough loaf, I eventually replaced 50% of the white flour for most white-flour-dominant recipes without changing any other part of the process. I still get lofty focaccias and pizza with an airy cornicione, but now the flavor is undeniably more unique and delicious.