DIVERSITY FLOUR® – Milled by Hodmedods
The Foundation of an Architectural Change to Bread
You might think that the Diversity Flour story begins with flour. It didn’t. It began in 2017 when Dr Vanessa Kimbell met Josiah and Nick at the BBC Food and Farming Awards in Bristol and asked if they might make the grains she was using commercially available.
As Nick and Josiah of the founders of Hodmedod’s began working with Vanessa, something extraordinary became apparent. They had been approaching the same problem from opposite ends of the food system. Nick Saltmarsh, one of the other co founders, listened carefully looking at the principles and the economics of the circular system change through supporting the educational programme at The Sourdough School and they translated the principles of the flour Vanessa had created into the first Diversity Blend in 2020.
Hodmedods had already been working directly with farmers for many years, bringing forgotten British pulses and grains back into our food, supporting diverse rotations and helping create markets for crops that conventional agriculture had little reason to grow.
What Vanessa understood was that if we want to change bread, we have to begin at the beginning and understand that we had once had diversity in our bread as part of our staple diet. Whilst conventional supply chains have progressively separated the farmer, miller, baker and person eating the loaf. Diversity Flour® was created and designed to reconnect them.Hodmedod’s had been putting diversity back into the field. Kimbell had been putting diversity back into flour, fermentation and bread.
Not only do Hodmedods mill the flours, making the blends available, they also work with farmers and have over decade built resilient relationships with farmers to grow beans, peas, legumes, botanicals and pseudo grains that empower bakers who wish to mill their own diversity flour. It is a remarkable flour, precisely because it is the intersection of knowledge, of agriculture, gut health, soil ecology, environmentalism and baker combined and applied to make
Diversity in bread and bake goods available to all in our everyday bread so Farmer → crop → mill → baker → bread → you.
And the empowerment part is at the heart of the system change – because when you choose Diversity Bread®, you become part of that relationship too.
What Makes a Diversity Flour?
Why Change the Architecture of Flour?
For much of modern bread production, flour has been seen as commodity. It is required to be predictable with measurable levels of starch and percentages of gluten so that bread can be produced efficiently, consistently and at scale. Industrial flour has followed industrial agricultural practice where yield and uniformity have been priorities and the two systems preceding baking have become the bedrock of almost all bread – even artisan sourdough have in the main have been mono bread.
Diversity Flour® is the antithesis of monoculture. Instead it is made to reflect the whole environment, and when Dr Kimbell teaches this at the Sourdough School she explains that Diversity Flour is created. It is seasonal, and geographical and the balence of the grains, legumes pseudo grains and the botanicals are all modifiable. They are colours. that are used nt he same way that an artist might mix up colours to paint a new picture every time you bake.
Supporting All the Elements of Regenerative Farming
Why is Diversity Flour Radical?
Diversity Flour® was developed by Dr Vanessa Kimbell at The Sourdough School and is milled by Hodmedods. Standard industrial milling requires total uniformity to keep massive roller mills running smoothly; variation is penalized. Co-milling an erratic, multi-species Botanical Blend is an act of agricultural resistance.
Vanessa asks students to designed flour around what human health and the planet needs and that changes everything about the bread. Divestity Flour creates demand for a wider range of crops, including plants that have important roles within agricultural rotations. It gives those crops economic value because the baker actually needs them and in doing so this can help to support all 4 kinds of crops in the UK needed to grow regeneratively.
What Does Diversity Flour change for bakers?
It changes everything about your bread including the nutritional composition of the flour because multiple plant species bring different fibres, proteins, micronutrients and phytochemicals into the loaf. It changes milling because the objective is no longer to separate and refine, but to preserve the edible plant matrix.
And it changes fermentation. Diversity Bread® is long-fermented using sourdough, allowing the microbial ecology of the starter, together with endogenous grain enzymes, time and acidity, to transform the flour. Among the processes occurring during sourdough fermentation are phytate degradation and proteolysis, alongside changes in the accessibility and metabolism of nutrients and plant compounds. It changes flavour. Diversity bread is incredibly aromatic complex and utterly delicious.
So the model becomes beautifully simple:
Grow diversity → blend diversity → mill it whole → ferment it → eat the diversity.
Changing the Architecture of Bread
The simplicity is that Diversity Flour® is an ingredient, but it is also the foundation of an architectural change to bread.
Instead of beginning with the question how cheaply and uniformly can we produce flour?, it begins with a different one: what happens if the flour itself is designed to support diversity throughout the system? Suddenly the crops grown in rotation have value. The mill has a reason to preserve plants like poppy seeds that are seen as weeds by conventional farming. Bakers have a way of putting greater botanical diversity into bread every day. . Fermentation transforms that diverse substrate.
Follow the chain and the leverage becomes obvious:
Our Partnership with Hodmedod’s
Hodmedod’s mills Diversity Flour®, connecting British farmers, millers and bakers. Their work in British-grown grains, pulses and agroecological farming has been fundamental to making ingredients that were once almost impossible to source available at commercial scale. I think it’s absolutely key to understand that it is this remarkable relationship and community the Hodmedod’s have built sth meant that commercial bakers can buy the flour and home bakers can access many of the grains and pulses if they wish to mill the flour themselves at home.
And this work continues to evolve. Diversity Flour No. 2 Meadow Blend is now certified organic — a concrete step from principle into a flour that can move through a real commercial food system. Home bakers can buy Meadow Blend No. 2 directly. Bakers and trade customers can source the blends through Hodmedod’s trade sales.
The Circular Systems Change Is No Longer Theoretical
Diversity Bread® is already being baked commercially by dozens of bakers. It is now moving into nationwide online availability through Abel & Cole. That matters because it takes the idea out of the classroom and puts it on ordinary tables, week after week. along with the everyday toast by Paul Rhodes Bakery which is one of the most accessible everyday breads you could buy,.
Circular by Design: Every Loaf Contributes
The final part of the architecture is economic. Mills producing Diversity Flour® do so under licence, and income generated through that licence is returned to education through The Sourdough School’s educational awards. The value created by the flour does not stop when a bag is sold.
It circulates. Farmers grow the diversity. The mill gives those crops a market. Bakers turn the flour into bread. Customers make that bread commercially viable. The licence then helps fund access to the knowledge needed to teach more people how and why to bake this way — including through awards such as the EJ Osborne Social Change Bursary. Those people take that knowledge back into their homes, bakeries, healthcare practices and communities, creating more demand for the crops with which the cycle began.
Flour That Changes What Bakers can do
Diversity Flour has been designed to be fermented. Bread is eaten every day. That ordinariness is precisely what gives it such potential. We do not need another specialist food that only a handful of people can access. We need to change the architecture of an existing staple. Dr Vanessa Kimbell designed Diversity Flour to be slowly fermented using the Baking as Lifestyle Medicine (BALM) protocol to transform a complex matrix of grains and wild botanicals into a powerhouse for human health. This extended sourdough fermentation recontextualises bread by providing a rich fuel source that nourishes a diverse gut microbiome. Simultaneously, the slow process results in a drastic reduction of FODMAPs to eliminate bloating and digestive discomfort, while neutralising antinutrients like phytic acid to unlock essential minerals for superior absorption. Finally, this unhurried process mellows wild plants and seeds, maximising deep botanical flavours and aromas to create a deeply satisfying,
Diversity Flour® is the physical foundation that makes a different architecture of bread possible. Because flour connects the soil, the farmer, the miller and the baker to the loaf, changing the flour creates the faoundation to change the system around bread, making Diversity accessible to all.
⚠️ Note for Sensitive Tummies: an Important Advisory for Those with IBS
While the extended fermentation process drastically reduces fructans (the FODMAPs found in wheat and rye), Diversity Flour naturally contains a hyper-diverse matrix of ingredients—including peas, beans, and lentils. These legumes are high in GOS (galacto-oligosaccharides), a type of FODMAP. Although long-slow fermentation breaks down these complex sugars significantly, it does not eliminate them completely. The residual un-degraded sugars are intentionally left to be fermented by your gut microbes. For individuals with a highly sensitive gut or severe Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), this microbial activity can still trigger gas, bloating, and digestive discomfort. If you are currently following a strict Low-FODMAP elimination diet, we advise introducing Diversity Bread mindfully, starting with a very small portion to test your personal tolerance and fermenting longer for more breakdown if you are baking yourself Dr Kimbell advises introducing fibre slowly. for digestive comfort.