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The little thing that defined Graison Gill’s life
was the smell of freshly ground flour. It was
2014, and the 27-year-old owner of the newly
opened Bellegarde Bakery had already taken
New Orleans by storm, wowing customers at
the farmers market with whole-grain loaves
unlike anything this town of po’boys and
beignets had ever seen. But despite Gill’s suc-
cess, he was never satisfied with his flour.VIRTUALLY ALL FLOUR in this country, whether organic or
conventional, is produced (often months before use) by a
handful of megamills. Gill knew that baking with flour off
a stone mill was like stepping up from a can of Folgers to
a freshly ground pour-over, but he never realized it could
provide enough flour for Bellegarde. Then, he traveled to
Vermont, where Andrew Heyn, the founder of New Ameri-
can Stone Mills and Elmore Mountain Bread, had built his
own mill, researching techniques in old milling books. Gill
was curious, but he had no idea what he was in for until he
stepped into Heyn’s millhouse and inhaled the sweet scent
of fresh-cracked wheat. “The aroma!” he recalls. “And the
rhythm of it. The slow waltz of the stone moving on top of
the other stone. It blew me away.”
The next thing he knew, Gill had ordered a mill with a
40-inch granite millstone, the largest millstone Heyn had
ever cut at that point, and had hurdled into the forefront of
the grain revolution. “I didn’t want to become a miller,” Gill
says. “But I wanted to bake with flour that was alive, aromatic,
nuanced, unique, fatty, creamy, and silky. And the only way
to do so was to mill the flour myself.”IN THE PAST TWO DECADES, quality has come to virtually every
piece of the food system, as chefs and eaters have rediscovered
the importance of well-produced ingredients. Whether it’s
wine or chocolate, pork or oysters, we know the importance
of terroir and technique. Yet one pillar of the American food
system has barely budged, and it happens to be the one that
serves up more of our calories than any other: grain.
Grain is a triumph of civilization. We’ve transformed the
seeds of various grasses—wheat, rice, maize—into the ulti-
mate commodity crops, generic calories that can be stored
indefinitely. But along with their bran and germ, we removed
their character. Seeds, we know, are some of our healthiest
foods, yet we strip grains of so much of their nutrition andHeirloom Wrens Abruzzi rye ber-
ries (left) and organic Ruby Lee
wheat flour.
opposite, from left: A baker cuts
fresh epi loaves before baking;
freshly baked baguettes.M
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flavor that most people don’t think of them as seeds at all.
“White flour is a corpse,” says Gill, in his typical under-
stated style. “It’s a dead, shelf-stable product. Freshly stone-
milled flour is a living ingredient, full of flavor, texture,
aroma, nutrition, and nuance.”
There was a time when nearly every town with a source of
waterpower had a mill and everyone used freshly milled grain.
That ended in the mid-1800s as settlers moved to the prairie,
where wheat grew easily. Soon giant roller mills followed,
processing all that Plains grain into the basic, indestructible
white flour that powered America in the 20th century. By
stripping each kernel of its oil-filled germ, which gives grain
its richness, roller mills created a product with a virtually
unlimited shelf life. And with national distribution systems
in place that could deliver to every corner of America via
railroads, the Midwest took over the bulk of grain growing,
and regional mills disappeared. Today, more than 70 percent
of the global grain trade is controlled by just four corporations.
The old books and seed catalogs are peppered with the
names of heirloom grains that were famous for their dis-
tinctive looks, textures, and tastes: Red Fife wheat, Bloody
Butcher corn, Abruzzi rye. But even if a baker wanted to work
with these heirloom varieties and could find a farmer willing
to grow them, there’s no one to mill them.
Once Gill had his mill, however, all he needed was grain.
And he has found it. He gets red Ruby Lee wheat from Brett
Carver, a wheat breeder at Oklahoma State University;
hard white winter wheat from Kansas; and heirloom corn