Thousand-year-old mill has resumed production due to demand for flour

https://www.foodandwine.com/news/1000-year-old-mill-reopens-flour-demand

by rmason • 6 years ago

241 213 6 years ago

foodandwine.com

happytoexplain3• 6 years ago

Suggested title:

Thousand-Year-Old Mill Producing Flour for First Time in 50 Years Due to Demand

schnevets2• 6 years ago

How about:

Thousand-Year-Old Mill Producing Flour for First Time in 50 Years Due to Inability for Supply Chains to Divert Product from Shut-Down Commercial Buyers to Personal Customers

epicureanideal3• 6 years ago

Does anyone know why it is such a problem for our supply chain to shift from commercial buyers to consumers?

I imagine there are people out there willing to buy in commercial sizes, if packaging is the problem...

timthorn3• 6 years ago

But it's not producing for the first time in 50 years - it's just producing full time, whereas previously it was milling on a demonstration basis.

happytoexplain3• 6 years ago

Ah - unfortunately I can't think of a more concise way to put it than the article does: "Back In The Flour Business".

devmunchies3• 6 years ago

So much flour will sit in people’s pantry and go bad, never opened.

guerrilla2• 6 years ago

Based on...? It may do nothing but drive down future demand as people use up what they have.

blihp3• 6 years ago

The reality that many people buying it don't know how to cook, let alone bake. I'd bet that most of the people clearing out the baking aisles are doing so as an insurance policy (i.e. buy the raw materials now 'just in case' and learn how to use them later, if needed. Maybe, if they have kids they're baking some cookies.) The crisis will pass with the majority of the flour purchased just going bad.

Regarding driving down future demand: not likely more than in the very short term... flour has a fairly short shelf life. Have you ever used/tasted rancid flour? While it's not the end of the world, it's not something most people are likely to want use in a recipe more than once given a choice.

devmunchies3• 6 years ago

OP here. based on me owning a cookie company that makes thousands of cookies a week and being plugged-in because it's my industry. I ask people. many haven't used flour they've bought yet.

There are lots of people using flour who didn't before, but lots of it is going to go to waste.

BenjiWiebe• 6 years ago

It can be stored in the freezer.

vkou5• 6 years ago

If I were hoarding food, flour would be just about the last thing that I would devote freezer space to...

Scoundreller3• 6 years ago

Or any other cool dry place that is safe from insects.

I’m keeping my freezer space for the stuff that actually goes bad.

Bang2Bay2• 6 years ago

That is my worry as well. people who are used to eating out have now bought a lot of grains and flour. they would just sit in their pantries when they start eating out again. ironically, those who eat out would not be able to estimate what they need. the poor would be paying for the ensuing shortage unfortunately.

jetrink• 6 years ago

A lot of people I know are getting into baking their own bread right now. Sourdough seems to be particularly popular. I would guess that most people are buying the flour to use it, not to hoard it.

el_benhameen• 6 years ago

I thought this when I realized just how much flour was in the 25 lb bag I bought, but if you make a habit of baking even once a week, you end up going through it pretty quickly.

vkou5• 6 years ago

My wife and I have gone through more flour in the last two months than we have in the past five years. We've probably used 20 lbs of it, already.

Edit: We, of course, could not find any at the groceries, as of a few weeks ago. So, instead of buying two ten-pound bags, since none were available, we went to a restaurant supply store, to buy a fifty-pound bag... There were no lines, no shortage of product on the shelves, and if they sold it in smaller portions, we would have happily bought less.

On the bright side, we are now a strategic flour reserve for our friends and relatives.

MereInterest• 6 years ago

Exactly. My usual weekly recipe uses about 850-900 grams of flour, so I go through a 25 pound bag every 3 months or so. This has been roughly consistent for the past 2 years.

noughtme• 6 years ago

As someone who does bake bread every week, this has been super annoying. It is true that more people are taking up baking, but a lot of this is panic buying. My 30-40 year old friends have all admitted that they immediately purchased 2 bags of flour that remain unopened. Bakeries remain open and supermarket bread aisles are full. Most people with young kids have not suddenly started baking bread everyday.

Theodores• 6 years ago

I am like you - under normal circumstances flour is a staple, although I cheat by using a bread making machine. I don't have a car and flour plus a machine means I can have fresh bread, not stale bought stuff. Normally I buy 3kg at most in a week with a stockpile of less than that. So the current situation is annoying.

However, think of the OCD crew that are normally the only ones buying hand sanitizer. Us flour buyers can improvise with store bread but the OCD people must have had it hard when their essentials of hand sanitizer and toilet paper vanished from the aisles.

ghaff8• 6 years ago

Yeah. At my local grocery stores, there's never been any material shortage of bread. There hasn't even really been a lack of choice from mass market stuff to what at least passes for artisanal by supermarket standards. I have been baking (more than usual) at home but there's no shortage of breadstuffs in the supermarket if you'd rather buy. (TBH, bread has been more consistently in-stock than a lot of product categories.)

Mirioron2• 6 years ago

The preparations are unnecessary until they suddenly aren't. If you wait until bakeries close and supermarket bread aisles are empty, then it's too late.

This is like having backups and disaster recovery in IT. You spend resources on it, but get nothing in return. That one time things do go wrong though it can literally save your business and you'll be happy to have had backups and recovery in place.

I think that people's fears of a lack of food in first world countries are overblown, but people are still afraid.

exolymph• 6 years ago

Do you not grasp that having flour around provides optionality that your friends didn't previously have?

devmunchies3• 6 years ago

yeah i feel you. we bake thousand of cookies a week and its been a head ache working with suppliers. same for eggs. basically anything a bakery need.

rjsw2• 6 years ago

Particularly since it is really hard to find yeast for sale.

phillc73• 6 years ago

Drink Weissbier and harvest it yourself from the bottom of the bottles.

vkou5• 6 years ago

You can raise your own yeast + bacteria mix by following a recipe for making starter. As long as you wash your hands well before working with it, and are willing to wait a few weeks for it to establish, it's difficult to screw it up.

Shivetya• 6 years ago

I go the whole wheat route (hard red mostly) and that keeps in a sealed container nearly forever. I have had good luck with regular flour simply by keeping it in an old glass canister set. Honey of course keeps just fine when kept out of the light and also sealed.

many people let the humidity in their homes get too high and don't transfer some baking products to more appropriate containers than the simple paper bags mass packaging uses.

remmargorp64• 6 years ago

I personally bought 200 lbs of flour from a mill (they only sold 50 lb bags, and I needed a couple of different types of flour to do the different baking projects I wanted to do).

Each bag was around $30. With shipping and handling, the grand total came to around $200 total.

I've already made 6 pizzas, 8 loaves of sourdough bread, 3 cakes, and 4 batches of cookies. I've been baking about two new loaves of sourdough every week.

When you consider that a single pizza order for delivery typically costs around $30 after tip and your typical artisanal bread loaf at the store is around $5, my flour has already paid for itself, and I still have months of flour left (assuming I keep baking 2 loaves every week).

I would agree with you, though. Many people probably aren't actually using their flour and baking goods they have been hoarding (beyond making a couple of things).

For me, though, baking has essentially turned into my hobby.

$200 to fund an entire hobby that will keep me entertained (and and my little family fed) for months? Not the worst $200 I have spent, that's for sure.

tonyarkles4• 6 years ago

Heh, it's funny. I haven't baked nearly as much as you have during the lockdown, but it's been surprising! I admittedly panic bought a few things (e.g. rice and flour) but now that my wife and I have a bunch of time on our hands, we've been going through both of them at a pretty solid clip. What I thought was "excessive flour" is starting to run out, and we keep finding new stir fries and curries to cook together to eat with rice. Overall food bills have dropped significantly (it's easier to cook at home than to pick something up) and we're eating healthier too, and having fun together!

TylerE• 6 years ago

The expensive bits of the pizza are the cheese and toppings, no?

ido• 6 years ago

OT but by "a single pizza order" do you mean 1 pizza or several in one order? Even good (i.e. not fast-food) pizzas cost maybe €10-12 around here, if it's for a single pizza $30 sounds like a lot of money to pay for it!

zeristor• 6 years ago

I’ve been going deep on sour dough, like so many others.

A key thing people don’t seem to mention is having an oven that can get up to a high temperature 260° C seems to be the goal.

180°C seems to be as high as the oven I inherited in my flat will go.

bagacrap• 6 years ago

you got the yeast, eggs, sugar, cheese, toppings, milk etc all for free?

weaksauce• 6 years ago

a good sourdough pizza made from scratch in your own oven from your own starter is divine. definitely worth the hassle of making a starter.

joshvm• 6 years ago

Unopened I agree with, but bad? The quality of most people's homemade baked goods is dependent on skill and equipment, not the age of their flour. There is a risk of weevils over time perhaps, but that can ruin fresh flour too.

I've baked cakes with two year old self raising flour (it's getting on for three now) and it's fine. On the foreseeable timescale of covid it's certainly not an issue. I used to buy 16kg bags from Shipton Mill which would last 3-4 months no problem.

tim333• 6 years ago

sit in people’s pantry and go bad

The stuff keeps for years if it doesn't get wet or bugs in it. Certainly my mums flour jar has some pretty old flour in.

allannienhuis2• 6 years ago

different types of flours are less likely to have weevils. The more highly processed white flours are unlikely to have weevils. Less refined whole wheat flours can and do need different long-term storage. The usual recommendation is to freeze it in batches to kill the bugs, and then store in plastic or glass type containers (not paper).

Bang2Bay2• 6 years ago

people who are used to eating out have now bought a lot of grains and flour.

oh_sigh• 6 years ago

I can't really understand how this is economical. After 10 days, they produced 200 3-lbs bags of flour. I don't know what they sell for but I can get flour in a supermarket for 30c/lbs so maybe 60c/lbs since its artisanal? So that's $360 out the door, but how much did you pay for the wheat itself, to the grocer(if not direct to consumer), and for operating the mill?

hinkley2• 6 years ago

From what I understand, in at least some areas of the world the mill was a service model, not a manufacturing model.

You'd bring your grain in, they would mill it, and keep a fraction of the product as a fee. Sure, they're still selling flour for goods and services, but it's a fraction of the volume versus buying grain and selling flour.

The overhead is tiny, but the distribution area is, too.

Gibbon1• 6 years ago

What I understand is that's how it worked everywhere. Lots of small mills that took a cut as payment.

Friend of mine mentioned a while back one of his 12 year old nieces in India getting bread. Started with measuring out a wheat into a bucket. Then going down the street to a place that ground it into flour. Then to a place that turned that into dough. A place next door that beat it into shape. Finally to the baker. Each place took a bit as payment.

This isn't like way back when, it was a couple of years ago.

BTW: There is a working gristmill in St Helena, closed till further notice of course. I think they run it a couple of times a year.

https://napaoutdoors.org/parks/bale-grist-mill-state-histori...

abdullahkhalids• 6 years ago

That's how things still work in Pakistan to some extent. Especially if you want maize/barley/etc flour, you bring the seed, they will mill it for you.

pjc502• 6 years ago

I can get flour in a supermarket for 30c/lbs

Per the rest of the thread: you can't get it at that price in the supermarket in a lot of places. There's an empty shelf with that price tag on.

londons_explore2• 6 years ago

In 10 days of operation, they have 200 3lb bags of flour.

Each would be worth $1.50 in walmart, and due to anti price-gouging laws, it would be illegal to charge more than that.

So after 10 days operating, with presumably at least a few people on-site, they have produced goods which can sell for $300, or a revenue of $30 per day.

I think this is more a publicity excercise than a commercial operation...

starmftronajoll• 6 years ago

Yes. This is a charming story of kindness, community, and cultural heritage. It is not a business story.

dv_dt4• 6 years ago

Not that there aren't serious questions, but it's common for prototypes and early production runs to easily cost 100x vs optimized production runs.

And if it's meeting a need, I would suggest that the immediate cost isn't the primary concern or benefit here.

pjc502• 6 years ago

I suspect they were selling it for a higher price before the emergency as a souveneir.

tomxor3• 6 years ago

Thankfully this is in a tiny village in beautiful Dorset, England with a modest local population, and no there is no Walmart... so none of that applies.

rjsw2• 6 years ago

Technically there is Walmart in Dorset. Walmart owns the Asda supermarket chain and there are branches in the larger towns in Dorset.

tonyedgecombe4• 6 years ago

Nor do we have price gouging laws.

hinkley2• 6 years ago

No, in 10 days they have sold 200 bags of flour.

In its first fully functional 10-day period, they milled a ton of wheat; under normal circumstances, that would've been a year's worth. As a result, it has already been able to deliver 200 three-pound bags of flour to local stores and bakeries.

Assume that the ramp up was bumpy. Maybe they can do half a ton a day (5x), and they have >3x as much product as they've sold... they might be able to do $500 a day until the equipment breaks down. For a tourist trap that could be pretty respectable.

blihp3• 6 years ago

I think it's more a public service that happens to provide some publicity rather than the other way around. People want/need flour right now with various supply chain issues, and this mill can help produce some locally. Of course it makes no business sense (which is probably why the mill shut down 50 years ago)... that's not the immediate issue.

bhhaskin• 6 years ago

Anti price gouging likely won't come into play here.

sio8ohPi• 6 years ago

Price gouging laws won't generally prevent them from continuing to sell at the price they've been selling at. It's fancy artisanal flour with a story, so they charge twice that for a bag. [1]

[1] https://sturminsternewton-museum.co.uk/theme-content/uploads...

ghaff8• 6 years ago

$1/pound or so is pretty typical for even relatively mass-market "artisanal" flours in the US. That's about what Bob's Red Mill and King Arthur go for. (For their regular white flour. More specialty items are more.)

happytoexplain3• 6 years ago

Holy crap - what information do you have about these people that makes you think they are engaging in a publicity exercise, rather than simply trying to help?

throwaway373438• 6 years ago

The information we have is the scale of their operation.

If they were trying to get flour to people in the most efficient way possible they'd be using that manpower to repackage from wholesale distributors. There's no shortage of flour milling capacity -- the shortages are distribution related.

This is touched on in the article.

As it stands, they're really producing a negligible amount of flour. A nice gesture, but not the kind of thing you'd do if you're earnestly trying to address a problem. It's very clearly a stunt -- not that there's anything wrong with that.

floatrock• 6 years ago

millers Pete Loosmore and Imogen Bittner decided that, due to the current demand for flour and the loss of income from visitors, this would be a good time to re-embrace the mill's commercial production capabilities.

I mean, I wouldn't call it a publicity exercise, but they quite explicitly say they need to make up for lost tourism income. Call it an operational pivot.

The lesson here is it's good to have a diversity of offerings. Some of their budget probably comes from historic site funds and maybe they also offer weddings or events, but the point is there certainly is a commercial interest in this.

josinalvo• 6 years ago

The useful content of his(her?) reply is that the so called "price gouging laws" can not only have good effects, but also bad ones.

This flour could be selling higher, and creating more incentive to produce.

But I agree, that publicity stunt bit is needlessly agressive

timthorn3• 6 years ago

This is a heritage charity and most certainly not a commercial operation. There are many old mills around the UK, many still in working order, of multiple types.

Most are registered with the SPAB: https://www.spab.org.uk/mills

vanilla-almond• 6 years ago

"Each would be worth $1.50 in walmart"

This is stoneground flour produced in small batches which will almost certainly be sold at a premium price. Flour in the UK is commonly sold in 1 or 1.5kg packets in supermarkets and this would be priced anything from £2.00 to £4.00 ($2.5 to $5 / €2.3 to 4.6)

Mediterraneo10• 6 years ago

Is it really legal to sell stoneground flour in Britain or on the continent in this day and age? It is known from both archaeological excavations and studies of Third World populations that tiny little bits of the millstone flake off into ground flour, and gradually, over time, these stone fragments cause severe damage to people’s teeth. I would have imagined that there would already be legislation to require the use of metal milling.

renewiltord7• 6 years ago

Fascinating. Another example of the HN community's "Assume Bad Faith" in action. If I had to come up with a list of values for this community based on popular comments, I think it's a photo finish for the top between:

* Assume Bad Faith

* Be Pessimistic

throwaway_pdp09• 6 years ago

I know what you're saying but it's not HN, just a sizeable minority of misery-guts who can't tolerate success or decency in others.

And if I may add another bullet point to yours

+ It's all hopeless so why bother trying to change it.

polynomial2• 6 years ago

Out of curiosity, how is gouging calculated relative to profit? At one point does profit become gouging?

ctdonath• 6 years ago

Walmart sells premium flour (which this limited production product would count as) for much more than $1.50.

And it’s something for the limited staff to do while otherwise unemployed.

flatline• 6 years ago

Opening this page pegged one processor in firefox :/

tomxor3• 6 years ago

Something very daft going on inside a requestAnimationFrame loop causing lots of css style re-computation with no discernible affect, pretty sad.

gorgoiler2• 6 years ago

I had no idea about the businesses that are part of this word until we had to start hunting for bread flour and ended up finding:

1/ our city has an industrial wheat varietal breeder that makes a novel new brand based on Paragon,

2/ it also happens to be grown on an organic farm just west of us,

3/ and is milled and distributed by a nationwide famous windmill about 20 minutes to the north east.

It’s a whole little world of actually quite new tech in the area I had no idea existed, with this weird overlap with technology hundreds and thousands of years old.

dv_dt4• 6 years ago

I wish there were a commerce directory that would enable search and discovery for local businesses like this.

frandroid2• 6 years ago

Something printed on yellow paper, maybe!

HeyLaughingBoy• 6 years ago

Thomas Register perhaps? https://www.thomasnet.com/

gorgoiler2• 6 years ago

Instagram unlocked a lot of stuff here, though tbh it was mostly chatting with people on insta messaging rather than any kind of open discovery.

frandroid2• 6 years ago

Which city is this? I'd read this article/blog post...

aazaa• 6 years ago

Those talking about the economics appear to live in areas with abundant flour.

In many places in the US at least, it's very difficult to find any. It has been this way for weeks. Supermarkets get it and it flies off the shelves.

eatonphil• 6 years ago

Where are you? At the big stores in Brooklyn for a while there was no flour. But now going to smaller stores I see it no problem. Seems like less of a shortage issue than just that most folks in my area are all inefficiently picking their grocery store.

nickthegreek• 6 years ago

In Columbus, Ohio here. Last week was the first time we have had flour back on the shelves and the types were limited. Still haven't seen any yeast available.

ghaff8• 6 years ago

I don't need any more so haven't made a real study but I'd note that both King Arthur and Bob's Red Mill are out of their main products online. (But they're somewhat artisan so they probably have more capacity constraints than the bigger players do.)

r0m4n0• 6 years ago

Yea I live in NYC (fidi) and also been having problems finding flour. I can't necessarily travel long distances to different grocery stores because I don't want to ride the subway etc. The grocery stores around me don't have it and haven't had luck with delivery.

Last week finally got costco to deliver a 50lb bag which is apparently all they have at the moment...

But I think I agree with you, it's less of a true shortage and more of a supply chain to certain stores issue. Are we really consuming more flour at this point or are we just throwing all these established supply chains to completely restructure?

peeters2• 6 years ago

In Canada, there have been supply shortages but according to Robin Hood (major Canadian flour producer), the supply issues are both at the endpoint (grocery stores not stocking enough) as well as in secondary products, e.g. they cite that there's a lack of packaging, but that their flour supply is healthy.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/robin-hood-flour-baking-yel...

That said regions will obviously vary. Canada is a major wheat producer.

rhizome3• 6 years ago

In other words, supply-chain problems just like we're seeing in many other segments: paper products, sanitizer, rice/beans, etc.

Mirioron2• 6 years ago

This is another example of our economy being so interconnected that it's really hard to tell what is and isn't essential. If you lack enough "non-essential" goods for your business, then your business doesn't work either. I just hope that the businesses relying on machines for their output aren't reliant on some obscure parts that will be impossible to source if they break.

jschwartzi3• 6 years ago

This is an opportunity to reduce use of one-use packaging. Simply ship the flour in a gaylord to the point of distribution and have people bring their own canisters, tare them, and fill them.

Marsymars2• 6 years ago

That said regions will obviously vary. Canada is a major wheat producer.

Mildly interesting number I worked out the other day: Canada produces about enough wheat for 2000 Calories/day for 80 million people. (With a population of ~38m.)

morley• 6 years ago

It seems so bizarre that so much flour is being consumed now. Are people hoarding it, or would this demand otherwise have been met from restaurants?

peeters2• 6 years ago

I think it's more that people are going from purchasing fresh bread to purchasing the ingredients for fresh bread.

Mtinie• 6 years ago

A spike in demand for ingredients used to make baked goods. People have the time now to experiment with things they previously had an interest in but not enough motivation to see it through.

empath75• 6 years ago

https://xkcd.com/2296/

crazygringo• 6 years ago

Baking at home has skyrocketed. When you're bored it's an easy, family-friendly rewarding way to spend a couple hours.

Think about how often people bake normally. Not often. Now it's all the time.

Same reason why eggs and vanilla are also harder to find in some places.

aianus• 6 years ago

I doubt that much more flour is being consumed.

It's probably all logistics and supply chain issues because everything was geared towards delivering 1000lb loads of flour to a bakery instead of 100 x 10 lbs bags of flour to the grocery store.

vkou5• 6 years ago

People used to buy bread every few days, or go out to eat sandwiches, pizza, etc.

Now, my bread purchases have gone to zero (Since we go shopping every few weeks, and have no room, or interest in freezing bread.) I'm not eating out.

My net consumption of flour probably hasn't changed much, but my purchases of flour have gone up, dramatically.

m-i-l• 6 years ago

In the UK, according to various sources including the BBC[0], there is plenty of flour, but one of the main problems is that most of the production lines are geared up to producing large e.g. 25kg sacks, given 96% of sales are to bulk buyers for trades like bakeries, with only 4% of flour sold direct to consumers in retail outlets in small 1kg or 1.5kg bags. I'd imagine it might not be dissimilar in many other countries too. So in the UK you should no problem buying a 25kg sack of flour from a wholesaler. There are actually lots of companies who specialise in providing food in wholesale quantities to places like schools and restaurants, most of whoch are in difficulty given their market has disappeared, although some are now temporarily selling to the general public to try to stay afloat[1]. I feel like I've learned an unexpectedly large amount about supply chains in recent weeks.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52212760

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52066764

gingericha2• 6 years ago

... one of the main problems is that most of the production lines are geared up to producing large e.g. 25kg sacks, given 96% of sales are to bulk buyers for trades like bakeries, with only 4% of flour sold direct to consumers in retail outlets in small 1kg or 1.5kg bags.

For anyone who's interested, The Indicator podcast by Planet Money briefly touches on this point in their most recent episode on potatoes in the US.

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/23/843437140/the-great-potato-gi...

onetimemanytime• 6 years ago

In a lot of countries villagers plant their own wheat, mill it and bake bread for the entire year. Others buy 50-80lbs bags of wheat. Wheat is great for hard times, it fills your stomach and relatively cheap. It's a peace of mind as well, no matter what happens we have something

zabil2• 6 years ago

I live in London, it's been four weeks since I last saw a pack of flour on the store shelf. The demand is that high.

lb1lf3• 6 years ago

-Do you have yeast? Over on the other side of the North Sea, we've got more flour than we know what to do with on the shelves, as there is no yeast to be had - haven't seen a yeast cube in a month! (good thing sourdough is a thing!)

zabil2• 6 years ago

Yes! I managed to find a block of yeast last week. But, I can't use it as I got no flour :(

systemvoltage2• 6 years ago

Send me an email message, I can ship you some. I've got a kilo of SAF red and gold yeast, I can ship you 50g (or anyone on HN, feel free).

Btw, you don't need much yeast - just use less than 0.5 grams, let the dough rise for 8 hours at room temp. You can save that dough and continue making more bread from the culture.

ghaff8• 6 years ago

Of course if you have baking soda and/or baking powder (depending on what you're making), there are a lot of quick breads, scones, biscuits, etc. that you can make without yeast. I'm doing both yeast and non-yeast baking. I do have a sourdough starter although I also have yeast which can make things a bit easier.

trobertson• 6 years ago

If your flour is unbleached it'll already have yeast in it. You can turn it into a starter with a bit of easy regular work: https://www.alieward.com/ologies/gastroegyptology

gmac• 6 years ago

If you need it, mills are selling it directly. I bought a 16kg bag of strong white and another of strong wholemeal for delivery from Marriages (flour.co.uk) this morning — after a few hours of running a simple Bash script to poll occasionally and make a noise when the website no longer said ‘out of stock’. Shipton Mill are also delivering if you can get a slot.

gingericha2• 6 years ago

For anyone looking for flour, here's a nice resource I found that lists local grains & flours. (It looks like they list a couple options in England. Truthfully though, I'm not sure how close they are to you).

https://challengerbreadware.com/where-to-buy-grains-flours/

jvm_• 6 years ago

We've moved into a real-world board game. This tile over here has wheat, if you go get it and then move to this tile, you can process it and gain bread - but your bread resource declines by 1 loaf per day.

TLightful• 6 years ago

Funny, as there is no shortage of bread on the supermarket shelves.

tonyedgecombe4• 6 years ago

I think I read that only 4% of flour ends up in the shelves in normal times. Most of it goes direct to bakeries.

verytrivial2• 6 years ago

Tangential: The mill a mile up the road from my house was was listed in the Doomsday Book in 1089AD (though has likely burnt down a few times.) And when "attached" the local cathedral it produced the original hot crossed buns. It was printed in a visitor centre leaflet so it must be true.

myself2482• 6 years ago

Domesday

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verytrivial2• 6 years ago

.. yeah. Thanks autocorrect/HN edit lockout. Grumble.

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sriram_sun2• 6 years ago

Buy a mill folks! The one I bought for 10 years back cost me about $350. Steep, yes. Considering all that freshly ground flour in the proportions that I wanted, it was a no-brainer in hindsight. I cannot for the life of me find reasonably priced wheat kernels at this time. So paradoxically for the past 2 months it has been sitting idle!

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bovermyer• 6 years ago

When I first read this, I somehow thought you meant an actual building, and not the in-home type. Must be the whole Friday evening thing.

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jagannathtech• 6 years ago

You are not alone

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rmason• 6 years ago

This crisis has had an energizing effect not only on thousand year old mills but startups as well.

So there's a Michigan startup that makes... bamboo toilet paper. I don't know what kind of demand there is for bamboo toilet paper. A week after toilet paper became unavailable at any price they got a story written about them. They were having a warehouse sale where you could pick it up at the plant.

https://heybippy.com/

The next day the paper had a picture of a woman in a brand new Mercedes full to the brim. She couldn't see out of the back window, the passenger seat was full and she had some on her lap! Now apparently they're selling it as fast as they can make it as long as their bamboo supply holds.

I know someone whom I believe is an investor and I will check in with them later this summer. I am curious once the shortage is over and the supermarkets are stacked to the ceiling with Charmin will they still have a business?

Will people develop a fondness for bamboo toilet paper? If they do that founder will have the pandemic to thank.

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trhway• 6 years ago

TP is a bit unexpected. The local store got bamboo paper towels which supposedly can be washed and reused multiple times. That advantage would still be there even after pandemic. Probably they can always pivot from TP to towels.

Wrt. the original article - cool, the [cold] stone grounded flour is better then the industrial fast (and importantly - hot) crush which thus affects the floor's carbohydrates state (and resulting yeast action, etc.).

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renewiltord7• 6 years ago

You're supposed to wipe your butt with these and then wash the dirty cloth? Why on Earth would I do that? Am I supposed to be saving money with this or something?

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eisa01• 6 years ago

That doesn't immediately sound good. E.g., baby wipes thrown in the toilet will clog the sewage pumps and break them. If bamboo toilet paper works the same way, you'll have a big issue!

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7952• 6 years ago

I wonder what these bamboo paper products are actually made of. Because bamboo fabric is actually rayon and may not be great for the environment. A better comparison would be with normal washable cloths.

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ineedasername2• 6 years ago

I had to search out one of these TP startups in order to find any. My house is in full isolation mode: not trips to supermarkets, we piece together our grocery shopping from multiple online options since most are out of stock on at least 1/3 of our orders, and shopping online like this we can never get any toilet paper. None at all.

So about 4 weeks ago I orders from gono2. They aren't taking more subscriptions, but will allow one-off pre-orders for when they have stock. I have an order coming in about 2 weeks, and we hopefully have just enough to make it til then. If not, we have baby wipes for our young'un in diapers that will see us through.

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mef• 6 years ago

why are you in full isolation?

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rabboRubble2• 6 years ago

My backup plan for TP is to turn to old towels and rags. In the Middle Ages the rich used scraps of linen, so that’s the plan. Just don’t flush.

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mirimir2• 6 years ago

I don't recall the brand, but bamboo toilet paper was the last to disappear from the shelves last month.

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Jerry2• 6 years ago

Anecdotal: In the city where I live, my family hasn't been able to buy flour for the past 4 weeks. It's always out of stock. I hear from clerks that they get it occasionally but it sells out in under an hour. My closest grocery store also allots the first hour after they open to seniors and others who are vulnerable and most of the time, the flour is gone during this hour.

Since we export so much grain every year, I'm amazed that there's such a massive shortage of flour. I don't know if it's the shortage of grains or mills.

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GuB-42• 6 years ago

Flour have been in short supply at the nearby grocery store. First it was pasta and toilet paper, then flour and eggs, now it is mostly back to normal. My guess is that many people cook more than usual during the lockdown.

I don't think there is a significant shortage of the raw material, but maybe there is not enough of it packaged for grocery stores.

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lostlogin3• 6 years ago

Where I am (New Zealand) there is no shortage of flour, but a shortage of packaging. The vast bulk of flour was previously sold to bakers and other buyers in bulk - 25kg sacks. Now demand is for 1-5kg bags. The flour is here, but it's in the wrong bags and the suppliers have no staff or materials. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&object...

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Thousand-year-old mill has resumed production due to demand for flour

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