The home of stone-ground artisan flour ground by wind power
You might be interested to know that Fosters Mill is due to appear on Alan Titchmarsh’s Love your Weekend programme on ITV on the 26th February 2023 from 9.30am! The crew joined us last week for a days’ filming and we are advised that the piece they created should be shown on the 26th February. We look forward to seeing it too!
We’ve been rather quiet over the last few months in terms of blog post updates, but behind the scenes, Priors Flour HQ has been a hive of activity.
To enable us to have a larger shop area and to provide a better service, including a more efficient flour bagging, packing and dispatch set of processes, we have converted an existing building to create our new shop and packing space! The work was completed at the end of December 2022, but the last few weeks have allowed us to add some of the finishing touches, so we’re proud to present:
Traditional flour milling has to balance age-old tradition and historic machinery / buildings with modern food production requirements, so whilst our production processes remain the same, we’ve been able to improve the packing & flour dispatch facilities we have:
Each year we rigorously test samples of wheat to find the best available milling wheat for you! The 2022 harvest was… trying! At last however, we have found a parcel of wheat from Devon which meets our exacting standards. The flour will be in production from April / May onwards when we will publicise the farm where it was grown. Here are some pictures of white sourdough battards made with the flour here at Priors’ Flour HQ:
As a UK consumer, you are probably aware of the long-running discussions around the fortification of flour with folic acid. You may have already contributed to the campaigns traditional millers have been engaged in raising awareness of the issues that potentially arise for us millers should the final legislation require us to add folate (folic acid) to flour.
Whilst not wanting to re-cap the whole issue, a couple of key points:
As a result of the campaigns and awareness raising millers undertook with your help and in my capacity as Chairman of the Traditional Cornmillers Guild, I was asked to represent traditional millers on a forum convened by DEFRA to discuss changes to the Bread & Flour Regulations, the legislation which determines what is added to flour. I am pleased to say that the Forum took our concerns seriously and after a visit to see traditional mills by a team from DEFRA and the DHSC (Department for Health & Social Care), discussion and economic modelling, an exemption for small mills producing less than 500 tonnes of non-wholemeal wheat flour per annum is being considered.
Before DEFRA’s recommendations are considered by Ministers and a final decision made on the implementation of the legislation to fortify flour with flour acid, a final consultation is being conducted to gather views on the options to change / update the Bread & Flour Regulations. One of the options is the small mills exemption mentioned above. If this exemption is enacted, it will actually mean that all fortification of flour will be exempted for small mills (producing less than 500 tonnes of non-wholemeal wheat flour). You may be aware, that all millers are currently required to ensure our flours reach the ‘minimal nutritional compositional standards’ as defined in the legislation (hence why we are required to add fortificants to our white flour). This is because (as noted above) the vehicle by which folic acid will be added is the same cocktail of vitamins, nutrients etc that enable flour to meet the minimal nutritional compositional standards.
I am aware that many of our customers would prefer that their flour did not contain additives..!
The consultation is open to anyone and can be found here.
I appreciate there are rather a lot of sections to the online consultation, but would urge you to register your views. This is a deal-breaking issue for traditional mills and could force many mills to cease flour production should they be required to fortify flour as they would not be able to meet the precise “dosing” requirements (see above).
Thank you in advance for your attention and help. Jon Cook
Members of the Priors Flour team are taking a break during September. As a result our mail order service will be suspended between the 1st September and the 18th September 2022. If you would like to order in advance of the break, please place your orders as soon as possible so we can pack and dispatch them before the team begin their break.
The shop and mill remain open as usual (Thursdays 9am to 1pm and Sunday 11th September 2pm to 5pm), so if you are local, you are welcome to drop in and pick up flour at these times and potentially other times by arrangement.
Traditional milling is a very labour intensive activity. As the years have gone on and the Prior’s Flour has grown in popularity, we have been faced with real challenges to find ways to innovate our production processes whilst maintaining the tradition and ethos of the business and conserving / protecting the historic fabric of Fosters Mill.
One particular area of challenge has been finding safe and efficient ways to handle grain. In some years, we now handle over 60 tonnes of grain which until now has arrived at the mill in 25kg sacks. It does not take a mathematical genius to recognise that 60 tonnes divided by 25kgs equals a large number of sacks and each of those sacks is typically moved at least 5 times during the production process!
To preserve the miller’s back and muscular skeletal structure (!), we’ve needed to evolve the way we handle grain. Over the last few months, we have installed a vertical auger system which enables us to lift grain from the Meal Floor (ground flour) to the Dust Floor (the top floor) and from there, grain is now able to flow into the grain storage bins which sit above the millstones. We have installed this piece of equipment in the corner of the mill’s sack hoist chamber such that we have not altered the original fabric of the mill in any way.
As can be seen from the photo, the grain flows by gravity from a grain trailer through galvanised steel pipework into the grain auger boot and from there is whisked up the mill to be stored in the grain bins.
This represents an important step forward which will improve our productivity as well as the health and wellbeing of the milling team! The photos show our first trial run and we are now finalising the process and finishing off the installation / guarding of the equipment. We can and do still hoist grain and flour using the wind with our trusty sack hoist when required!
