Whole Wheat vs. Maida: Reading Between the Lines

Maida is what's left after wheat is milled, bleached, and stripped of its bran and germ — the parts that carry fiber, protein, and most of the grain's nutrients. What remains is a fine, white flour that bakes up soft and stretchy, and digests almost like sugar.

It's cheap, consistent, and used in the overwhelming majority of commercial baked goods, including most "healthy" cookies that swap out one ingredient while keeping maida in the mix.

Whole wheat flour keeps the bran and germ intact. It's higher in fiber, digests more slowly, and carries more of the grain's natural nutrition. It's also harder to work with — doughs behave differently, textures are less uniform, and consistency takes real skill to nail down.

We use stone-ground whole wheat flour in every Fondible cookie, along with grain flours like ragi and jowar in select recipes. Never maida — not even blended in for texture, which is a common shortcut we chose not to take.

If a cookie brand doesn't tell you what flour they use, that's usually the answer.