Flour Power
As the holidays approach, home bakers are preparing to create all varieties of cakes, bread, cookies and pie.
Although their dinner guests might travel from afar, bakers can find one staple ingredient — flour — freshly milled at home.
“I'm fascinated by the things you can do that you don't have to buy in a package,” said Rebecca Wirtz of Middlesex Township, pouring a mixture of wheat, kamut (an organic grain) and spelt (a type of wheat) into an electric tabletop grinder.
With the flip of a switch, the grains would soon be turned to flour, then baked into pumpkin gingerbread for a special event at her children's school.“This is so freshly ground: None of the nutrition is taken away,” Wirtz said, citing claims that 90 percent of some nutrients are lost within 72 hours of milling.“Once milled, it sits on my shelf. It loses value,” she said.Seeking to maximize nutrition, Wirtz experiments with the kamut and spelt because both are high in protein.She buys the grains from Frankferd Farms, which sells whole and organic foods at a retail store in Clinton Township.Frankferd also owns one of two flour mills operating in Butler County.Owners T.Lyle and Betty Ferderber house the mill at their farm in Middlesex Township, using a 20-inch stonemill and three hammermills to create a line of flours and baking mixes.Depending on the grain and its intended application and consistency, flours are made as grains pass between the stonemill's Carolina granite cylinders or undergo repeated pummeling in the hammermills.Some grains, like hard spring wheat, are imported from out of state. Others, like the soft winter wheat in the Ferderbers' fields, come from local farms.
“Bakers can tell the difference between fresher flour and product that has spent a long time in the supply chain,” T.Lyle said, explaining consumers place increasing value on nutrition and freshness along with supporting local agriculture.The Ferderbers began milling flour in the 1970s, adding value to their existing crop to increase the farm's viability.“Raising grain on a small Western Pennsylvania farm does not make you a living,” said Ferderber, who lives on 80 acres.Each year, they grind more than 600,000 pounds of grain, which includes 250,000 pounds of hard spring wheat.Their top selling products include organic whole wheat bread flour, whole wheat pastry flour, whole spelt flour and buckwheat pancake mix.“Fresh organic flour must be gaining in popularity, because our mill's sales go up every year,” Ferderber said.<B>A taste of tradition</B>While many consumers are discovering freshly milled flour south of Butler, others have long upheld its virtues in West Sunbury, where Zanella Milling maintains the age-old tradition of grinding buckwheat.“If you look back in history, Butler County used to be called Buckwheat County,” said John Zanella, who operates a roller mill once powered by steam in the 1800s.Owners of the mill since 1983, Zanella and his wife Anita supplement their animal feed business with a line of products that includes buckwheat, corn meal and wheat flour.
To become flour, the grain passes through rolling grinders, traveling with help from belts and pullies that move through three stories of the rustic building, where two layers of hulls are removed to produce a product called fancy white buckwheat.Milling 25 to 30 tons of buckwheat annually, John Zanella is hard to catch come October, when the crop is harvested and customers begin to request the hearty, winter staple.Although the Zanellas offer a mix that can be used like boxed pancake mix, traditional buckwheat batter is soured in a crock.“Before we bought the place 30 some years ago, I don't know that I had ever eaten it. It's a product that was local,” Anita said, explaining many former residents still order the buckwheat from out of state.“I think that takes them back to when they were kids: It's a distinct taste they remember from the past,” she said.As for in-state clients, John Zanella has cultivated a sales route that takes at least a week to service.“We sell within a 100- to 150-mile radius,” he said, listing rural markets and feed stores among his regular clients.Although some of the buckwheat still is harvested locally, Zanella said dwindling agriculture has altered the supply base, which now reaches to Indiana and Ohio.
Greg Roth, an agronomy professor at Penn State University, said although wheat and buckwheat were among the state's leading crops in the early 20th century, corn and eventually soybeans largely displaced those crops because of higher margins of profit.Simultaneously, consumers gained access to hard wheats grown in the Midwest, which contain more protein and suffer less damage from summer rains, Roth said.Soft red wheat for the flour industry, however, still occupies about 400,000 acres of Pennsylvania's 2.5 million acres planted in grains for humans and livestock.“In the last few years there was sort of a renaissance in folks interested in growing and utilizing some of the specialty wheats and spelt for human consumption — still on a very small scale,” Roth noted.“I think people enjoy using stuff we grow in our backyard,” he said.That renaissance may be boosting continued success of millers like Ferderber, whose customers include artisan bakeries that introduce such grains to the public.“Our audience is wide and varied,” Ferderber said, speculating on what draws them.Some seek organic or hard-to-find grains. Others might care about local commerce. Still others embrace the quaint novelty of shopping at a family-owned mill.“Some country folk will just like the fact that we're country folk too,” he said.
