Local grains on the rise with kneading conference, which heads west for the first time this year (2024)

View full sizeJOHN VALLSGrand Central Bakery's Cinnamon Rolls

For the past five years, bakers, millers, farmers and oven crafters have converged on Skowhegan, Maine, (somewhat near the other Portland) for its annual Kneading Conference and Artisan Bread Fair. Enterprising residents there are reviving regional wheat cultivation and are once again, more than a century later, starting to grind flour (at a gristmill in an erstwhile jail) in this mill town. Vermont-based King Arthur Flour, which gets most of its premium wheat from Kansas, has nonetheless signed on as the conference's lead sponsor.

It's a sign of the re-decentralization of grain cultivation catching on nationwide. Such commodities used to be blind spots of the locavore movement, which mostly accepted that, just as with imported coffee and chocolate, only the amber waves of the Midwest plains could yield bread wheat with the right high-protein, low-moisture profile.

Recipe included with this story: Grand Central Bakery's Cinnamon Rolls.

Only now are bakers waking up to these freshly milled, locally grown heirloom grains taken for granted until the early 20th century. It turns out terroir matters.

"It's all about capturing forgotten flavors in something as mundane as wheat," says Stephen Jones, the Washington State University plant breeder behind much of this region's wheat revival. "It's really an international movement now, that's baker-driven. It's giving growers a place to sell their wheat."

A Northwest movement

Jones encouraged the folks from Maine to convene a satellite conference in the Pacific Northwest. King Arthur Flour sales manager Tod Bramble first looked to Portland. But then he visited Jones' Mount Vernon research center in Washington's maritime Skagit Valley, touring its test-plots of some 35,000 experimental lines of wheat and 2,500 more of barley.

He was sold. So 200-plus participants are gathering there for the inaugural

this weekend in Mount Vernon, Wash.

"In Oregon and Washington, you have the bakers, you have the farmers, the millers and the enthusiastic eaters who want locally grown food, but the connections among them weren't necessarily in place," says Wendy Hebb, program director for both the West Coast and Maine conferences.

Conventional grass-seed farmers are forging those unlikely bonds in the Willamette Valley, transitioning some acreage to organic wheat and beans. They always grew grains and vegetable seed crops in their rotations, to break disease cycles, improve soil quality and provide animal feed, Jones says. They just never realized a local market would want them. Their surplus shipped out of the Port of Portland, the largest wheat and barley export point in the U.S.

A new harvest

Enter business-savvy farmer Tom Hunton of Junction City, who runs seed-cleaning and fertilizer-supply companies. Now he's built his own Camas Country Mill, with financial backing from Lane County and distributor Hummingbird Wholesale in Eugene. Camas Country installed one of the large Danish-made grindstones used by Bob's Red Mill.

Hunton is partnering with other grass-seed farmers to mill their just-harvested hard spring wheat into flour for big players like Eugene's Bethel School District, New Seasons Market, Market of Choice and Grand Central Bakery. His underused mill can process 800 pounds of wheat an hour.

"We'd love to add a second or third shift," Hunton says. "We need more market before we add more growers."

A local cinnamon roll

Long a champion of the green Shepherd's Grain co-op in Eastern Washington, Grand Central Bakery is switching to Camas Country for its less substantial whole-wheat bread flour needs. Shepherd's Grain will still supply the bakery's staple (unbleached) all-purpose flour.

At the Kneading Conference West, Grand Central co-owner Piper Davis will bake the new flour into her famous cinnamon rolls (see accompanying recipe). Grand Central head baker Mel Darbyshire will join Davis for a discussion on balancing scale with sustainability (a concern that Hunton, who says local trumps organic, shares). Davis will partner with Baker & Spice's Julie Richardson for sessions on efficient pastry production and baking seasonal fruit in a wood-fired oven.

Blodgett artist Kiko Denzer will lead a hands-on workshop on building his famous earth-ovens for micro-bakeries, while Mark Doxtader of Portland's Tastebud will dish on pizza for the wood-fired oven. A more commercial class will play with a cutting edge steam-injected oven that W.P. Kemper shipped cross-country for the conference. Jesse Dodson, the bakery director for New Seasons Market, will co-teach that workshop, comparing hand versus machine kneading techniques.

A different whole wheat

Darbyshire and Dodson say bakers will have to add a bit more water when working with whole-wheat flour made from locally grown heritage wheat varieties such as Red Fife and Buck Parano, because the more-intact stone-ground bran and germ absorb more water than more-pulverized flour.

Another difference is freshness. Most artisan bread flour is aged, which allows the enzymes to go dormant, extending the product's shelf life. But Camas Country mills its flour just days before delivery. The wheat is ground at a lower temperature than in conventional roller mills, preserving the grain's nutritional benefits and oils.

"The whole wheat is super delicious, really a nice color, a little darker and redder, with a subtle, inherent sweetness," Dodson says. "The biggest difference is they're milling it fresh."

A complement to hops

Though the Maine conferences zeroes in on bread, here in microbrew territory craft brewers are clamoring for more specialty, small-batch malts worthy of their local hops.

Kneading West has responded by focusing more on malting. This includes Oregon State University barley breeder Patrick Hayes co-directing a malting workshop, and OSU cereal chemist Andrew Ross sharing formulas for adding malted barley flour to breads to maintain freshness and add fiber.

Although $300 tickets to the Kneading Conference West sold out weeks ago, it's likely to become an annual event, with a segment open to the public.

"The West Coast conference has very readily and quickly taken on its own personality," says Hebb, the program director. "You're so much more organized and sophisticated about food."

Laura McCandlish

is a Corvallis food writer and radio producer who blogs at

.