October 10, 2010 - 8:20pm
Local flour sources in New England
My wife and I are visiting my parents in Massachusetts this week. I usually pick up some locally food products that are unique to the area every time we visit and this year won't be an exception. I know where to find sublime cheddar cheeses and am familiar with most of the local brewers products but this year I'm searching out flour for baking bread. I'm hoping that the Yankee bakers will divulge their sources for the locally unique flours that originate in New England.
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whose brand is known as King Arthur Flour. Maybe you could check them out?
Sorry, PG, I just couldn't resist. '-)
Paul
Well, actually Paul, I made the pilgrimage up to the KA store last year at Christmastime. It is a fun stop even if everything is at full cost. I hadn't realized that there were so many things that I could use once in a great while in the store even if I didn't need them. We took my mother to a Costco in Nashua, NH today and I found KA AP in 25# bags for around $11. All the Yankee TFL people should consider if they can take advantage of that opportunity.
I did find two small farms on the internet that sell their own flour, one in Northfield, MA and another in the Northern Kingdom of Vermont. However, flour sales don't seem to be a large enough part of their business for the websites to mention if they have any local stores or food co-ops selling their flour. But, the weather will be New England crisp and the skies fair for the next two days, perfect conditions to take classic foliage tours up Rte. 100 in Vermont and along the Mohawk Trail. If I find some local flour along the way and another knife at the Lamson Sharp factory store, all the better.
We did stop in Norwich, VT to shop at the KA store but there was no Jeff Hamelman sighting, just a meagher $42 worth of purchases transacted.
I have looked about a year ago, and found some information on a farm that only sells VERY locally. I am in a Boston area, and could not buy their flour. I can't buy King Arthur flour, because most of it is not nut-free. The closest I found is New Jersey, and unless I buy in 50 pound increments, it is prohibitively expensive. And I do not need 50 pounds of every kind of flour that I buy, just some :) As a result, I buy (lovely) flour from Minnesota. So I would love to know of local sources. Thanks in advance!
Kroha
Do you get flour from Minnesota mail order, or do you travel there. I live around Boston as well. I would like to find a source for white rye, which no one seems to carry locallly.
I stopped by the Middlebury, VT Co-op yesterday and found some flours from a local source. IIRC, the name of the producer was Gleason Grains. The Co-op may have more information on the properties of the grain and where and how it was milled.
I bought a three pound bag of this in Burlington last month. It has a bit of bran still in the flour, but I really like the way this flour tastes. Has any body else used it?
Today, we stopped at the co-op in Greenfield, MA where found some more local flour from Four Star Farms in Northfield, MA. There was a WW pastry flour from soft winter wheat and a WW bread flour from hard red winter wheat. Both are priced high at about $2.99/pound. I will try some in a sourdough when I get back to my kitchen but am also planning on seeing what results from using the flours I find to build up starters. It's a curiosity kind of experiment.
It turns out that there's plenty of agriculture going on in Northfield. I just got my new issue of Yankee Brew News and it mentions that hops and barley are being grown there for commercial sales to breweries. Obviously, there's more than politics going on in Massachusetts.