The difference a flour can bake

When Dean Nole, owner of Café CaNole in Utica, New York, shared his ideas on how General Mills could improve its flour, he wasn’t expecting to get a new product out of it.

Nole, a traditionally trained Italian baker and a General Mills customer for 25 years, sat down with Tom Santos, a General Mills “Doughminator” over some coffee and biscotti and shared how our flour could better serve bakers.

“He told me, ‘You have great flour, but unless you have the size right, and the packaging right, and unless it looks Italian, you’re going to have a lot of trouble selling it,” says Santos.

Our Neapolitan winter wheat flour originally came in 50-pound bags with packaging that looked American.

“I told Tom, Italians will never buy this flour because it screams ‘America,’” says Nole. “The flour coming in from Italy is great, but you’ve got Mills right here and it’s a fresher product. It just needs a new look.”

Our Convenience & Foodservice team took the idea and moved it forward, launching Di Prim´Ordine Farina, a premium European-style flour, now in 27.5-pound bags with traditional Italian packaging.