The bread trail: how do those fields of wheat become our morning muffin, afternoon sandwich and dinner roll? - Industry Overview

Vegetarian Times, March, 1997 by T. Kelly Rossiter

It may be true, as the saying goes, that we cannot live by bread alone, but bread certainly is a mainstay of the American diet. It's our morning bagel, the basis of our sandwich it lunch, the croutons on our salad and the loaf that accompanies our dinner. Americans consume 22 billion pounds of bread a year -- that's 77.6 pounds for each one of us.

Part of bread's appeal is its simplicity. A loaf from the local bakery is little more than flour, water and yeast. So how is it, you might ask, that a loaf made from about 5 cents worth of wheat can cost you several dollars? The answer lies in the process the grain goes through on its way to you. Think of it as the bread trail.

Bob Quinn starts his days early, especially this time of year, when he's busy preparing his Montana fields for the spring planting of Hard Red organic wheat. Waking at 4 a.m., Bob barely has enough time to butter his toast before he's out the door and down to the machinery shed. For the next two hours, he'll do repairs and maintenance work on the cultivators, swathers, bailers, combines and grain trucks he uses on his 2,000 acres.

Then it's out to the fields, where he and his family will work until sundown tilling and aerating the soil, then planting the wheat that bakers will be clamoring for in October. Bob expects to harvest about 71,000 bushels this year, a typical yield for an independent wheat farmer. That's enough to make more than 5 million one-pound loaves. Bakers prize his wheat for its high-protein content, which yields dense, nutritious loaves. However, before bakers get their hands on it, the wheat must pass through several steps.

Most wheat leaves the farm on grain trucks destined for the local grain elevator. Because of last year's uncharacteristically dry growing season, farmers are receiving more than $4 a bushel -- historically, a very high price. When the wheat arrives at the elevator, a handful goes into a common bin so that the area's wheat can be tested for moisture and protein content. Bakers must take these figures into account when determining recipe mixtures. Small variations can make a big difference, especially in large-scale operations where mixing vats, baking pans, ovens and packaging are standardized for a specific product.

Bob's wheat, sans one handful, then heads for an elevator that loads it for transport to the mill. From here, the wheat can go one of two ways. Most wheat gets shipped via rail to the immense processing mills that supply flour to production bakeries such as Wonder, Pepperidge Farms and a host of other national brands that make up the $5.9 billion brand-level retail market. A much smaller amount, including Bob's organic wheat, will be transported by truck to the tiny mills that typically supply specialty bakeries.

Jay and Karrie Stemmler are on the receiving end for some of the wheat that takes the road less traveled. Four tons arrive each week at their Seattle-based Manna Mills, costing them about 4 cents a pound for transit -- about twice the transportation costs paid by larger mills that haul their wheat by rail. However, it would take Manna Mills a month to process the amount of wheat carried in one railcar. They also mill the wheat differently than the large mills do, using stone-grinding instead of steel rollers to keep the gluten and vitamins intact and leaving the nutritious bran and germ in the finished product. "Rather than being separated and sifted, our wheat is simply cleaned of dust and gravel, then ground into whole wheat flour," explains head miller Jeremy Walters, as he struggles to free a clogged gear and get the balky mill running again.

The Stemmlers' flour is somewhat more expensive than flour from larger mills, but specialty bakers like Julia Froese, owner of Seattle's Little Baking Co., are willing to pay the 30 cents a pound that Manna Mills charges. (Each pound nets Manna Mills a 6-cent profit.) Why? "You're buying good stuff," Julia says. She favors the wheat for its nutritional value -- vitamin E deterioration begins in flour within three weeks of milling, with 30 to 40 percent lost after one year -- and the intact gluten that gives added spring and stretchability to dough mixes. But Julia also buys conventionally grown and milled white flour at about half the price per pound for making the sourdough loaves that account for half of her sales. "People used to buy specialty bread because it was organic," she says. "The buyer has changed. [My customers are] now the more affluent types, people who can afford quality baking but don't care if it's organic."

Nutritional content and gluten aside, it's clear there are other reasons Julia chooses Manna Mills. As Jay banters with the slap-happy Julia -- who has been up since one in the morning -- the sense of community in small-scale baking becomes clear. "We're the little guys, and we like it that way," says Julia. About the only complaint she has is her schedule. "I don't really like the hours, but I love making bread -- the texture, the smells." It's this passion that propels her from her bed so early in the morning. Half an hour later she's elbow deep in a flour cloud of activity -- measuring, mixing and baking in a furious effort to have 900 loaves ready for delivery by 10 a.m.