Master Milling at the Heart of The Healthy Baker
With an Australian flour milling legacy spanning more than seven-decades, Manildra Group’s The Healthy Baker range of flours gives home bakers industry-quality bakery products at pantry-sized convenience.
Home to our retail range The Healthy Baker, in the quaint township of rural Manildra in central west New South Wales, Manildra Flour Mill stands surrounded by golden wheat fields on the banks of the
Mandagery Creek, as the birthplace of Manildra Group in 1952.
For more than 70 years, Manildra Group’s Gem of the West brand has been trusted by the professional baking industry for superior quality, strength, and purity.
To broaden access to home bakers nationwide, The Healthy Baker retail brand was launched in the mid-2000s, said Manildra Group Director Caroline Honan.
“Available to the home baker, our unbleached and triple-sifted signature flours are renowned for their quality, texture and impeccable consistency to elevate every bake,” said Ms Honan of the retail brand’s bold shift into innovative blends to revolutionise the supermarket baking aisle.
We know how important flour is to baking – impacting flavour, structure, texture, and even nutritional value,” she said of The Healthy Baker range of flours fortified with nutrition-boosting vitamins –such as calcium and folate – in another Australian-first.
Underpinning the family-owned company’s firm belief in “food you can feel good about” is an unwavering commitment to sustainably sourcing the highest-quality GMO-free Australian wheat.
In addition to milling flours for some of the world’s highest-profile brands, Ms Honan said The Healthy Baker retail range guaranteed home bakers a difference they could taste, from a brand they could always rely on.
“Whether you prefer to use a stand mixer or knead by hand, our flours excel in every bake – providing a lighter texture to sponges, extra-crunch to choc-chip biscuits, golden-crust and airy crumb to loaves,” she said.
Manildra Flour Mill Manager, John Gorringe said attention to detail is paramount for the team of 220 on-site workers in fields spanning flour milling and baking to engineering and chemistry, sales and transport, quality and exports, safety and maintenance, cleaning, packing and more.
“Our Australian-owned, grown and made flours meet the strictest milling tolerances for ash and mixing performance, with a carefully calibrated protein content,” said Mr Gorringe.
Leading quality assurance, Manager Nerida Thomson’s team of skilled Laboratory Technicians perform tests with “laser focused precision” at the mill’s innovative and modern qualitycontrol laboratory.
“Our flours undergo round-the-clock rigorous testing through every stage of the milling process – from wheat to flour and dough right through to the final loaf,” Ms Thomson said.
Further benefiting from one of Australia’s most advanced on-site test bakeries, Manildra Group’s team of highly skilled master bakers, food technologists, and scientists test-bake flour batches at the conclusion of the milling process.
Mr Gorringe said that the test bakery team is methodical and meticulous when it comes to flour characteristics and the milling process.
“A bake test will always tell you how the flour will perform,” said Mr Gorringe of our rigorous standard formula and baking procedure for doughs, to deliver flawless consistency in the final test-baked loaf.
“Once the loaves come out of the oven and have cooled, our technical baking team measures the height and assesses colour, crust, texture, crumb structure, and smell.
“From the humble loaf to the golden crust of a warm cherry pie or mastering the perfectly risen scone, we believe your flour must be right for the job every time you bake.”
At the Manildra mill’s state-of-the-art packaging facility, The Healthy Baker flours stand out in their innovative containers – with their resealable, reusable, and easy-to-grip packaging “key to the brand’s success as a top-seller”, said Ms Honan.
Guaranteeing fresher flour for optimum baking quality and shelf-life, the containers often found new purposes, said Ms Honan, from cosmetics and crafts to toys, plants and herbs, pantry staples and more.
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