Nelstrops Family Flour Millers

Nelstrops, a Cheshire flour miller for craft and artisan bakers

Nelstrops Family Flour Millers operates from Albion Mills in Stockport, Cheshire, and describes itself as a sixth-generation family business that has been milling flour for more than 200 years. The company recently marked its 200th anniversary. Its output is aimed at craft bakers and artisan bakeries, as well as large-scale producers, and the mill positions itself as a source of bread-making flour in the UK.

The company states that it works with farms to source grain and that its flours are neither bleached nor otherwise treated; they are described as selected natural wheat ground into flour. Nelstrops presents flour as the foundation of flavour, structure and consistency in baking rather than a background ingredient.

Flours for bread, cake, pastry and pizza

The shop is organised into bread-making flours, flours for cakes, biscuits and pastry, and pizza-making flours. The selected range for the artisan baker, as listed on the site, includes the following 16 kg bags:

• Traditional Strong White flour, £17.50
• Traditional Wholemeal flour, £17.50
• Plain flour, £17.00
• Self Raising flour, £17.00
• Multiseed and Flake, £27.50
• Maltflake flour, £24.50
• Spelt wholemeal flour, £34.00
• Spelt white flour, £34.00
• 00 Pizza flour – FORZA, £18.50
• Dark rye flour, £19.00
• Light rye flour, £19.00

At the time of writing this profile, the product listings showed review counts for each item, ranging from 26 reviews for the spelt flours to 552 for the Traditional Strong White. The site also displayed an aggregate figure of 1,301 reviews.

Recognition and use by bakeries

Nelstrops states that its flours have won multiple three-star Golds at the Great Taste Awards. The site includes comments from professional and home bakers. Among them, Matt Townley of MOST Artisan Bakery describes the flour as seriously good, Orchardpigs Bakery mentions more than six years of use, Barbakan Artisan Bakery in Manchester cites several years of use and a family-business connection, and a chef named Nikolai calls the strong white bread flour the best he has used. These are individual testimonials rather than verified assessments.

Packaging and delivery

The company says its flour is packed in paper bags made in the UK from renewable forests, using natural, unbleached craft paper. The online shop offers free delivery on orders over £45; standard delivery costs £4.95, with Northern Ireland, islands and the Highlands excluded from that free-delivery threshold.

Direct sales from the mill

Nelstrops sells its flour directly through its online shop as well as through stockists. The site lists a contact phone number and an email address for enquiries, and provides a stockist page. The company also publishes a blog, FAQs and a modern slavery policy.