Firstly, our apologies for the recent radio silence from Priors Flour HQ! A well needed holiday in September followed by a very busy period of customer orders has meant much of our time has been milling and packing flour.

However, along with the milling, we are also finding time to assess samples of 2020 harvest wheat to decide which parcel of wheat we will buy to provide you with your wheat flours – wholemeal, white, wheaten meal and the base for all our flour mixes as we go forward in to 20201.

You will have heard that this year has been extremely challenging for our farmers given the weather. As a result, we have had fewer samples from our East Anglian farmers to try. I am pleased to say that we are now assessing two promising samples, so in this post and the next post, I explain what goes on as we clean, mill and test bake the wheat samples:

Arrival of the wheat samples

We receive samples from our farmers in the state in which they come off the combine – full of chaff, straw, seeds from other plants and dust.

We can tell a good deal from the colour of the berries (grains) and the old fashioned ‘chew’ test where by chewing a mouthful of grains you can break down the starch, swallow the bran and be left with a ball of gluten!

We also get a laboratory test from the farmer telling us the amount of protein in the grain, the bushel weight, the amount of admix (seeds / muck) and the falling hagberg number – the test used to assess the level of α-amylase activity in the grain (how much the starch in the grain has started to become sugar).

We request around 20kgs of the samples we like the look of from the farmer and then, in the next stage, clean the grain.

Cleaning the Grain

In this short video, I explain how we prepare the grain for milling:

In the next blog post, we’ll look out the process we follow to test bake the samples of wheat, using our current flours as a ‘control’.

Swaffham Prior is unique in the UK – it has two windmills in close proximity both with their sails!

The mills worked together from 1896 until 1927, with Fosters Mill gristing animal feed and the Smock Tower mill (built around 1820) providing flour for human consumption. Then, on an horrendous autumn night, during an almighty storm, the Smock Tower Mill was struck by lightening and the sails and going gears badly damaged.

Sadly, the economic case for repairs was not great and the Foster Family who ran both mills decided to leave the mill to rest.

The Smock Tower mill was almost lost, but saved by the Bradley family who carried out repairs in the 1980s to secure the Smock Tower and rebuild the cap and sails.

Here is the view today from Smock Tower Mill looking towards Fosters Mill, home of the Prior’s Flour

Watch this space for exciting news about the future of the Smock Tower Mill!

You may have noticed that the Prior’s Flour website has changed a little over the last two weeks! Your eyes and your memory are not deceiving you!

We have introduced a new eCommerce platform!

To compliment our continued membership of Bigbarn, we have now introduced the iZettle eCommerce platform to our website enabling you to order your flour, muesli and oat products securely, quickly and simply.

We have used iZettle to manage our shop sales and stock management for some years and have been impressed by the functionality and useability of their systems. So, having explored their eCommerce functionality and the fact it could so easily integrate with our existing website, the decision was easy!

We hope you also find it easy to use and welcome any feedback. As part of the integration, we have re-launched our newsletter to keep you up-to-date with events and news from the Priors Flour!

Wednesday 19th August Update:

Online Ordering (see below for the Mill Shop)

Our online shop is now fully back open for business! We pack most of our parcels for dispatch each Thursday, so please assume your order will be dispatched on a Thursday unless advised to the contrary.

We will email you with an estimated time to dispatch.

Mill Shop

Our mill shop continues to be open on Thursday mornings from 9am to 1pm and on the 2nd Sunday of each month (not other Sundays). Whilst we still get short queues of people at times, things are much more manageable and you should not have to wait long, if at all. We are doing all we can to prepare and to reduce the time it takes to serve customers.

Great to hear the inspirational story of one our trade customers Mini Miss Bread! shared by our friends at the Sourdough School (credit the photo below). Megan loves our Dark Malt Flour which you can now buy in our shop!

We are indebted to our friend Wouter Pfeiffer (on the right) at the Friendship Mill in Weesp, the Netherlands. He inspired this wonderful flour blend recipe! His team are a wonderful group of dedicated volunteers who run this stunning corn mill supplying customers in the same we do at Fosters Mill!