Intelligencer Journal

Wednesday, December 13, 2006, Lancaster, PA. Page A7

(Reprinted with permission)

 

Flour

Power

 

 

 

 

 

 

Text Box: Rae McDonald shapes pie crust from "a perfect round" that is rolled only once until it is uniformly thick or thin, without breaks or cracks. Repeated patching or working makes a pie dough tough.

Text Box: Traditional sand tarts - made with simple dough of flour, sugar and butter - are wafer thin and crisp. A uniformly thin cookie will stand the test of being held up to the light to see how the starch in the flour holds the other ingredients together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slow Food

Movement embraces regional mills

 

ROBERTA STRICKLER

Intelligencer Journal Staff

 

    Flour and water...basics of life.

Embellish these fundamentals with sugar, butter -maybe honey to keep it organic, or some yeast to get a rise out of it- and you have family traditions of holiday baking, and nourishing food.

    Through a series of links with history and tradition, a second-generation local grain merchant, David Poorbaugh, has revived a piece of Lancaster County's domestic history -milling Daisy flour.

    "Small regional mills are doing cool things," said Todd Bramble, a graduate of Kansas State University's unique college degree in milling science.

    "Regional mills can produce flours that allow for regional differences. They make interesting flours that people can use to bake breads from old family recipes, for example. You cannot get these flours from a big mill that produces to specifications to suit the entire country."

    Bramble works for King Arthur Flour, a conventional (not organic) flour that is distributed throughout the entire country, he said. Their goal is to produce a consistent flour that shies away from bleaching and use of bromates.

     Daisy Flour is a regional product that, according to Poorbaugh, picks up on the philosophy of the Slow Food movement.

    Slow Food, first organized in Italy, is named to emphasize a backlash to the popularity of fast food. The Slow Food Web site, www.slowfood.com, states that countless traditional grains, vegetables, fruits, animal breeds and food products are disappearing due to the prevalence of convenience food and industrial agribusiness.

    Slow Food wants to help people understand the importance of caring where their food comes from, who makes it and how it's made.

    At the turn of the 21st century, Poorbaugh saw Slow Food as an emerging trend and he realized that organic farmers needed places to sell organic wheat.

    As a grain and feed ingredient merchant who wanted to make organic flour, Poorbaugh searched for a small mill that could effectively keep organic flour production separate from that of other wheat and grains. He ended up buying a historic building.

    Brandt's Mill was built about 1740 -then on Lancaster County land- along the Quittapahilla Creek. Brandt's Mill is located in Annville now and is the oldest U.S. mill to be continually operating as a commercial flour mill. The only way to keep this building in service is to keep it operating, said Poorbaugh, by making flour there.

    The mill stones were replaced with roller mills in 1905 and in the 1990s pneumatic lifts and sifters were installed to make it sanitary. "Other than that," said Poorbaugh, "we have an old, very slow process."

    "Because we mill it slowly, the starch is not destroyed, as can happen when flour is processed very fast and therefore, very hot."

    These conditions were favorable for the return of the Daisy flour label, which was milled near Willow Street, from the 1800s until January 1981.

    During that time, said Poorbaugh, "no self-respecting housewife could bake without Daisy flour."

Because she would probably walk -or take the trolley- to the corner grocery store, a housewife would carry home a small, 2-pound bag of flour. She would use it quickly, not thinking that it was "organic" but that it would spoil if kept too long in her cupboard, he said.

    For that reason, many of the old pastry recipes, such as paper thin sand tarts and holiday pies, just don't "work" that is, they are not as effectively rolled and shaped when made with modern commercial flour that is milled hot and fast.

Poorbaugh wants to collect these old family recipes "before they are thrown away, because they don't work or because nobody has time to bake with them," he said.

    At the same time, a modern cook, Rae McDonald has always made pies for her friends. She has a good reputation as a baker but, until a year ago, she never heard of Daisy flour.

By chance, McDonald was given a bag of Daisy flour. When she made a pie with it, she saw on the first rolling "a perfect round."

    The dough does not crack or form lumps that have to be reworked, she said.

    "You can put your hands into two bags of flour. There is a silky texture to the Daisy, compared to highly processed national brands."

   "She was always a good pie baker, said her husband, Ray.   "Now she has gone over the top."