The red mill

kw: holidays, photographs

Friday (11/27/2009) we avoided "Black Friday syndrome" and slept in. Just before noontime we went on a tour of Bob's Red Mill, a whole grain miller that caters especially to health food enthusiasts and those needing a gluten-free diet. There is a special gluten-free area of the millworks. Later in the day, at lunch, we met Bob, a very personable 80-year-old. All the employees seem to be chosen for upbeat, good attitudes.

The mill uses stone wheels for most of its milling. There was a good explanation of how the wheels never touch, but are kept a tiny distance apart, depending on the fineness of the meal or flour being produced. Some grains just gum up a millstone, and these are ground using other methods such as steel wheels or cutters. Their steel-cut oats just won an international award, the "golden spurtle", at a contest held in Scotland, the land of oat enthusiasts. I've had oatmeal from those oats, and it is definitely superior.

The guide explained that we would not actually see mill wheels in action. We could see some of the mills, but they just look like large washing machines. Without their cover, the air would be filled with flour and you wouldn't see anything! But on one close to the window, we could see the grain going into the shaker or "damsel", from which it enters the millstone's center hole. The guide told us this bit of folklore:

Since mills were invented, they have had a shaker attached at the top, which feeds the grain to the stones. It is the noisiest part of the operation, and for centuries it has been called the Damsel because it chatters like a young girl. No matter where you are in a millworks, you can hear the damsel. When the hopper feeding grain runs out, the sound of the damsel changes dramatically, and the miller will say, "I have a damsel in distress" and rush to the "rescue", adding a new bag of grain to the hopper. That is the origin of the term "damsel in distress".

Near the packaging area they have a selection of antique milling machinery, including these stones and the original "Mill #1" that Bob started with. If I understand rightly, all millstones are taken from a quarry near Paris, France, which has been mined for quartzite for the stones since Roman times.

The stones wear slowly, but do need dressing and sharpening a couple times yearly. This is a much easier task now with power tools. Imagine refurbishing the surface of a stone about a meter in diameter with a hammer and chisel!

We found out that if the milling is done too fast, the bran and germ come out coarser than the white flour and can easily be separated. Slower milling produces a more homogeneous whole grain flour. Some entrepreneur, a century ago or so, made a virtue of haste and invented white flour. It is so low in nutrition (being almost entirely starch) that by the mid-1900s federal regulations were imposed requiring millers to "enrich" white bread with vitamins and minerals. One of the early white-flour separators was on display. We use only whole grain breads, as I have done for decades.

Just as the tour ended, we all were given a few souvenirs (samples of various products), and these wooden "coins" that have, on the other side, a coupon for a free cookie at the store and restaurant Bob runs just down the road. Of course we went there for lunch. We used one of our wooden coins for a cookie and I kept the other one as an added souvenir.