Hungarian Flour
The following comment was in
response to an inquiry for a source of Hungarian Flour:
I am going to give you a little history about
Hungarian Flour. Years ago I worked for a company called Denver
Flour Mills where High Altitude Hungarian Flour was milled. The
gentleman who founded Denver Flour Mills was from Hungary.
In the late 60's Denver Flour Mills was
bought out by Great Western Sugar Company at which time I, among others,
was laid off. I am not sure when GW Sugar Company sold the flour portion
of the merged company, but now Hungarian Flour is now milled in Nebraska
by a company called ConAgra Mills. www.conagramills.com.
By jacsisk on December 20, 2007.
Source: https://chowhound.chow.com
/topics/469654
A Flour Mill, circa 1870.
Location unknown.
This is one of the few flour and grist mills
that had a clerestory monitor. Note the sack host for raising sacks of
grain from the wagon. A miller holding the sack on the second floor,
while another miller holds a wooden grain shovel and broom on the third
floor. Also note, the boy sitting on a grain dump projecting from the
wall of the mill, just left of the front doorway where another miller is
standing.
The grain dump or sink is the Oliver Evans
method of introducing grain into the milling system from the exterior of
the mill directly from the farmer on a wagon to the mills elevators. The
chimney notes that the mill has a miller's office and the building is
protected by lighting rods. The ground cable runs up the side of the
building. The above grist or flour mill bears no resemblance to an
English country mill. Photograph is from a tintype.
Source: https://www.angelfire.com/folk/molinologist/america.html
Denver Flour Mills & Hungarian Flour Mills
According to the "Rio Grande Freight Traffic
Guide" of 1951 (Tramway Press, 1983) the Hungarian Flour Mills and the
Denver Flour Mills were one of the same and in 1951 had an office and
elevator at 1441 7th Street, Denver and was serviced by D&RGW & CRI&P.
There were also branch elevators at 3750 Wynkoop Street (UP) and West
29th & Jason Streets (AT&SF & C&S).
William Reich's very helpful book "Colorado
Industries" (Johnson Books, 2008) credits John K. Mullen, a young Irish
immigrant from New York (where he had worked in a flour mill from the
age of 14), as being the first person to bring the Hungarian roller
process of gradual reduction of wheat to flour to Denver. In 1883 he
built the Hungarian Milling and Elevator Company Mill.
Colorado Milling and Elevator Company (CM&E)
Mullen went on to create the Colorado
Milling and Elevator Company (CM&E) which by 1889 owned four mills
in Denver and mills at Golden, Longmont, Greeley, Fort Collins and
Almosa.
According to the "Rio Grande
Freight Traffic Guide" the CM&E still owned five mills in Denver in
1951 being:
Flour Milling in America, A General Overview
During the seventeenth century the colonist
who came from Europe brought with them their grains to Virginia and
Massachusetts. Along the eastern shore of the content they built their
first wind, and tidal powered mills. There were few roads, mainly paths,
and it was easier to get from place to place by boat. In 1626 the Dutch
brought buckwheat to New Amsterdam. The Dutch settlers would develop the
area into a milling and marketing center for flour. During the
seventeenth century most mills were simply carbon copies of mills in
Europe, built by the Dutch, German, and English. It was not until the
second half of the seventeenth century did someone think of producing
mill products from other than the local consumption. More land was being
cleared and more grain was being grown as time went on.
In the
English settlements, the colonial trades and crafts were manipulated
with bounties, tariffs, and regulated markets that favored production of
goods other than flour. Millwrights were limited to building and
maintaining mills, millers were bound to operate mills, and millstone
dressers dressed millstones for the various mills in a route they could
safely travel. The food staple needs of the people living in the
colonies along with the difficulties of transportation limited the
export flour trade during the seventeenth century. It was not until the
mid-eighteenth century did things begin to change for the flour milling
trade. In the State of Maryland, it was not until 1740 they prohibited
the export of flour and wheat feared by famine. It was not until after
1750, did the markets in the West Indies, particularly Barbados,
Jamaica, and the Leeward Islands develop of the local sugar production
excluded practically every other form of agriculture. The Dutch out of
New Amsterdam first carried flour to the West Indies. Between 1763 and
1766, Philadelphia, exported 350,000 barrels of flour, mainly to the
West Indies.
One of the big developments in milling in the early
colonies was the movement away from the coast and tidal areas. This mean
that mills that were once powered only by wind and tidal power could now
be built along inland streams. Wind and tidal powered mills operate on
an off-on basis. Wind does not always blow to turn the sails of the
windmill, and tidal powered mills operate on a schedule of twice a day
for about 5 to 6 hours each. Tidal power is more dependable because it
is not effect by the seasons flow along a stream, and the water is
saline so it does not freeze, like a stream powered mill may be locked
tight with ice during the winter months. Stream powered mills meant that
they could be built as the people moved away from the coast.
Colonial mills of America, whether wind, tidal or water powered,
involved a great deal of human labor. Millstone dressing and
millwrighting required a great deal of skill. The itinerant millstone
dresser often had to lay out the furrows on a blank millstone according
to the direction that the runner would turn. A millwright had to know
what trees were used in the forest to make the various parts of a mill,
when to cut the wood, and how long to season it. The job of the miller
and his helpers required much less skill, and a great deal of carrying
sacks of grain and flour in the constant heavy work involved with
operating a mill. This method of milling was known as "back and bag,"
because they mainly carried the bags on their back up narrow ladders to
the upper level of the mill. Traditional laws usually fixed a miller's
toll by law, the cost of labor figured most important in the profit or
loss of a mill's operation. Sometimes a millwright built a mill and the
gears would not operate properly and had to be redone. A mill with a new
water wheel could be shut down for a long time and a great deal of
losses if a new water wheel shaft was found to be defective after a
short period of operation. The mill owner and or mill might miss the
harvest season of being able to grind.
One of the most important
things to fall out of favor during the seventeenth century was some
people's idea of wanting to recreate the feudal system in America. This
would have meant that the miller and the peasants would have been bound
to the lord of the land with soke rights. So in this place developed the
idea of the honest miller because people now had the freedom to go to
which ever mill they chose to go within reasonable travel. So then
during the eighteenth century the people's ideas about the mill began to
change. Originally in the very beginning of the seventeenth century,
intelligent people like millwrights and millstone dressers did not want
to come to the colonies but in the eighteenth century that all changed.
Miller's in Europe could escape the system that bound them to a mill and
the lord of the land, and they could perhaps get away from the
stereotypes about the dishonest miller.
Oliver Evans originated
the idea of a mill where the grain and flour would be moved
mechanically, and not by the backs of children. One of the things that
Oliver Evans also did was change the craft system in the milling
business. With his publication of "The Young Mill-Wright and Miller's
Guide," published in Philadelphia, in 1795, it meant that there was
not a technical manual for millwrights and millers. Before this
everything was passed on though the apprenticeship program, from one
person to another, with no possibility of improving or changing the
technology of milling. In his work, Oliver Evans described a continuous
system of elevators, conveyors, and other automatic devices all
connected by a system of chutes, and bins. Oliver Evans system of
automated flour milling could best describe the process of milling wheat
as "from wagon to wagon again," with out the need for human
intervention. Evans's milling machinery represented the beginning and
first automation in an industrial process. The term industry did not
come into existence until 1812.
After the American Revolution,
and until about 1830, Baltimore was the leading flour milling trade
center in America. Baltimore like may other cities along the coast of
America lay on the Fall Line. This meant that there was abundant water
power to operate mills, and boats could used the inland waterways to
gain access to the wheat growing and milling centers. In the Chesapeake
Coastal Pain and the Virginia Piedmont areas, the millers were quick to
adopt Oliver Evans automated flour milling machinery. Also by this time
many of the mills had changed form a custom or grist mill operation to a
merchant milling trade, and Evans' system was more suited for that type
of operation. Now the merchants could consider a trade exchange of flour
and grain for European manufactured goods needed by colonies. The wars
of Europe also greatly boosted the flour milling trade in America, the
wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars opened both the
British and French ports to American goods. During the period of the
American Revolution, American was closed off to the importation of
English millstones, and the merchant millers switched to the French
millstones which was more suited for making white flour. The merchant
mills of the Brandywine and Baltimore sold flour in England, the West
Indies, and to even Wellington's army fighting on the Iberian peninsula.
The flour milling trade that had resulted in milling prosperity lasted
until 1814, when the English Corn Laws virtually shut off any markets.
Before the Napoleonic war, a barrel of flour sold for 4 dollars and
fifty cents, but when the war started it rose to an all time height of
11 dollars a barrel. Then afterwards the milling trade went into a
decline.
This is where Isaac Pearce only makes sense in taring
down the second mill built on the site, that of William Deakin's Oliver
Evans equipped mill, was the the death of Oliver Evans in 1919. Mr.
Pearce must have realized that he could not build a larger stone flour
mill without out paying a second user fee to Oliver Evans and perhaps
his estate. During this period of 1820 to 1860, merchant milling waited
for the important technological developments in farming, transportation,
and grain storage to catch up with the mill revolution that Evans' began
in the 1780's.
The American Civil War meant rapid growth for
mills in the North, but mills in the South often fell victim to passing
armies, like in any war, they become targets to destroy the enemies
bread basket. With the American adaptation of the Greek or Norse water
wheel the French developed the water turbine in the 1840's, and well
before the war water turbines were manufactured in America. From the
1820's to the 1860's the water wheel's design changed form being
predominately wood to a metal based one. Inventions in Agricultural
machinery allowed farmers to handle grain in greater amounts.
McCormick's reaper (1831), Deer's plow (1837), Pitts brothers' thresher
(1837), Gibbons' grain drill (1840), combines with the building of the
canal system cut freight cost between distant wheat growing areas and
the milling centers. Railroads after 1830, were quick to tap the new
agricultural lands for freight cargo. The improved transportation
created a surplus of agricultural goods that forced farmers to
specialize in wheat, corn, dairy, vegetables, or livestock. In Buffalo,
Joseph Dart installed Oliver Evans marine elevator leg and automatic
machinery into his mills. He also applied steam power to operate grain
storage elevators in 1837.
Besides the back and forth action of
invention and innovation, new wheat were imported into America. This
brought a higher gluten content wheat and one whose bran was more easily
shattered than the soft wheat variety. The Mennonites brought hard wheat
to the plans of the United States and Canada, by the 1860's. This meant
that a new system of milling had to be developed, a better grinding and
separation ground what was necessary. As the milling system went from
Oliver Evans' automated flour milling, to "new process milling" the
millers struggled with the millstones and bolters to keep up with the
changes in wheats and milling. The largest water powered flour mill in
Minneapolis had 42 pairs of millstones. Water driven turbines came on
the market in the mid-nineteenth century but did not in themselves
constitute a revolution in the milling business.
The key machine
that caused the milling revolution to happen was the middlings purifier.
The first practical middlings purifier was built by a French scientist,
Joseph Perngault, after noticing the phenomenon of dust particles
penetrating all the farthest corners of a pigeon hole desk and then
setting down evenly as if attracted to the wooden shelving of the desk
itself. The purifier was a large wooden box, where partially ground
flour particles would settle on silk screens in the organized horizontal
narrow compartments. General Cadwallader Colden Washburn bought one of
the purifiers from Paris to Minneapolis where in 1871, it was vastly
improved by Edmond W. La Croix, and George T. Smith, both experienced
head millers. In 1873, Edmund La Croix and George T. Smith, both in
Minneapolis, patented a middlings purifier for better separating the
flour, middlings, bran and dust using air currents blown through screens
which dated from Ignaz Paur's invention of the purifier in Austria, in
1807. What happened was the "famous purifier war" between La Croix and
Smith, Smith added moving brushes to unclog the silk, and an endless
discussion ensued as to who invented what, needless to say, they both
went their separate ways. It was not until La Croix introduced the
machine to America in 1870, did an inferior hard wheat could become a
superior wheat flour.
The big milling companies of Minneapolis
brought the Hungarian system of milling using iron rollers, corrugated
rollers to America, which began to replace the traditional millstone for
grinding was now only used half as much as it was used before. As early
as the 1820's European inventors tried various methods of grinding wheat
between iron, porcelain covered or stone rollers that do many things
besides just grinding the wheat. The millers of Pesth, Hungary enjoyed
some success with rollers producing Hungarian Flour, which was ghostly
white flour that was never before sold to the public. A successful
roller mill was built in Fiume Hungary (now Rigeka in Yugoslavia).
A
"Hungarian" type roller mill was set up in Milwaukee in 1876, but was
not successful because the true Hungarian method was not automatic and
entailed considerable hand transfer of the batches of flour and chop,
and constant sampling by tough on the part of the head miller.
Roller sawing or breaking was perfected in Hungary, that twisted the
grain rather than shearing it. It allowed more precise spacing between
the grinding surfaces and more even stock feeding than with the burr
stones. However, the roller milling system was not automatic in Hungary,
it was not until it came to American, did the mills of Minneapolis mesh
the two system together. The first important American mill to use
rollers was Cadwalder C. Washburn's Washburn Crosby Mill in 1878. The
"experimental" roller mill was not an all roller mill because the last
stage of grinding was done with millstones. John Stevens, an inventor
from Neenah, Wisconsin, developed in 1874 chilled steel roller mills for
grinding flour and received a patent for them in 1880. The main
Pillsbury Mill in 1884, had a steam powered, automatic all roller
gradual reduction system that produced 5,000 barrels of flour a day. The
Minneapolis flour shipments rose from five to ten million barrels
between 1884 to 1894.
Several other inventions and adaptations
improved the milling operation. Germ scalpers, were machines that sifted
off the wheat germ after flattening it out came into used after R. L.
Downton's invention in 1875. Carl Haggenmacher, a Hungarian, patented a
plansifter In 1888 that better separated the ground flour between
grindings. In 1886, O. M. Morse invented the "cyclone" dust collector
which reduced the hazard of dust explosion in flour mills. Electric
power came into used in operating mills in 1887. The westward expansion
brought new land under cultivation and new markets for farm products.
The freight cost for either wheat (grain) and flour were the same,
milling centers tended to coincide with the areas of most intense wheat
cultivation. You need three things to create a milling center, the first
one is wheat, the second one is transportation and the third one is
being close the markets. Pittsburgh never became a grain milling center
because it did not have the wheat growing centers around it. Rochester,
Buffalo, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Minneapolis became the new milling
centers of the United States. The old former milling centers along the
Fall Line was New Amsterdam, the Brandywine, Wilmington, Baltimore,
Georgetown and Alexandra, and Richmond.
Before 1840, American
millers ground soft wheat between millstones that were set close
together. "Low," "flat," or American milling extracted as much flour as
possible in one grinding. The close grinding pulverized the wheat
kernel, flour particles, germ, bran and middlings all together. The
wheat germ enzymes and the moisture from bran injured the flour's
keeping quality. From the 1840's to the 1860's millers were
experimenting with "half-high" grinding, that used smaller diameter
middling stones and more bolters for sifting during the process of
extracting and reducing the middlings. Finally in 1870's, millers
(mainly in Minneapolis) were experimenting again with the European
technique of "high" grinding and "gradual reduction." "New process"
milling that involved several pairs of millstones (usually 3 to 5)
grindings with the millstones set progressively closer together as the
material became progressively smaller. The initial breaks stripped off
the outer most bran covering and granulated the middlings (the part of
the kernel; between the inner endosperm and the outer pericarp layers).
Increased bolting and sifting between grindings helped separate the bran
and middlings from the flour. high grinding and gradual reduction
produced a finer flour and more flour per bushel of wheat. Minneapolis
flour shipments rose from one to five milling barrels between 1876 and
1884. At one time Oliver Evans automatic flour milling system was the
high-tech of the milling industry, and now Cadwalder C. Washburn,
Charles A. Pillsbury, and George H. Christian took the lead by
installing machinery into their flour mills in Minneapolis so all across
America, the American housewife wanted Minneapolis style flour.
When Minneapolis style flour was first made, it was difficult to get the
American housewife to used it because of the wheat cleaning, and milling
operations they stripped all of the flavor and taste out of the flour.
They tried putting additives into the flour and discovered that street
sweepings off of the the streets of Minneapolis gave the flour its taste
that it once had. In the process of the growth and development of
Minneapolis as the world's largest flour milling center, mills back in
east either went out of business because it became cheaper for the mills
of Minneapolis to get wheat and ship flour to the easier markets, than
the mills in the east to get wheat from their traditional markets. Some
mills when out of business, and others installed smaller versions of the
roller milling system into their millstone mills so they too, could make
Minneapolis style white flour.
Hard spring wheat grown in the
Minnesota and the Dakotas after 1865, required certain improvements in
the gradual reduction milling system. There is its different growth
habit that it grows best in an arid climate, hard spring wheat sold for
twice as much as soft wheat did in the east. The automatic, all roller
mill using gradual reduction system of milling was used in the large
scale milling operations of Minneapolis. Even 20 years after the roller
milling revolution basically began in America, by 1890 most of the flour
made in America was still made with millstones. In 1873, a trade journal
began being published in Ottawa, Illinois, "American Miller,"
whose pages heralded the endeavors of the Western flour millers who were
building monster flour mills on "the platform" at the Falls of Saint
Anthony and making flour out of previously despised inferior hard red
wheat. Small country mills began to order rollers from jobbers and
millwrights so they too could make Minneapolis style flour. Anyone who
owned two millstones or a roller mill was a miller, and the same arcane
profession as the people in Minneapolis.
In the passing years
there was a decline for flour in foreign markets. Europeans developed
their milling systems where they required more wheat and less flour from
America. Between 1889 and 1899, wheat exports rose from 46 to 138
million bushels. Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas produced enormous
quantities of hard wheat, while California and Washington grew large
amounts of white wheat. The growth of the southwest and Pacific coast
wheat regions reduced the milling industry that was replaced by truck
farms and orchards in those areas. Kansas City, Dallas, Seattle and San
Francisco developed as flour milling centers along with new grain
markets. Buffalo, New York, on the Great Lakes took the lead in from
Minneapolis as the largest flour milling center after 1920. Wheat
production continued to rise until just after World War 1. Then the
Great Depression, World War 2, both wheat production and flour
consumption fell drastically. One of the ways that milling companies
responded to the decline in the demand for flour was with advertising
which became increasingly important after 1900. Washburn Crosby's "Gold
Metal" flour and Pillsbury's "Best" became well know trade names, and
even small mills around the country sold their brand of flour in
addition to their own.
After the American Civil War millers
increasingly sold bran and middlings for animal feed. New uses for wheat
flour products was developed such as starch, waxes, paints, and making
monosodium glutamate. Breakfast cereals came into existence, with Henry
d. Perkey, John Harvey Kellogg, and Charles W. Post developed popular
cereals, shredded wheat, wheat and corn flakes, and grape nuts. General
Mills (formerly Washburn Crosby Company) introduced "Wheaties" in the
1920's. Speciality flours like all purpose flour, and mills manufactured
cake and pastry flour, pancake flours that included leavening
ingredients after 1900. General Mills introduced "Bisquick" in 1930, and
then ready to use boxed flour mixes came out. In 1914, the National
Research Council recommended that flour for military use be vitamin
enriched. Then after the war, millers commonly added thiamine,
riboflavin, niacin, and iron to household flour. The impact of enriched
flour may never be fully known because it has been combined with
chemically bleached white flour. I suggest that everyone get a copy of
William Dufty's book, "Sugar Blues Exposing Sugar, the killer in your
diet - offering you a life-saving, sugar-free way to health." It is
a classic work on the subject of sugar, process foods, white flour,
mayonnaise tobacco, its refining and consumption, and its ultimate
physiological and psychological effects on the human body and mind.
The modern system of flour milling takes out 12 natural nutrients
out of wheat and adds back in three "artificial ingredients." They
bleach flour with either chlorine or nitrogen oxide gases. Chlorine gas
is a carcinogenic agent and causes cancer, and nitrogen oxide gas has
caused fits in laboratory animals.
In Ellen and Vrest Orton's
book, "Cooking with Whole Grains," states that stone ground flour
ins not only more nutritious but it is infinitely more flavorful. "Must
of our national illness is caused by crazes for food that is (1) white,
(2) refined, (3) keepable. All these crazes are exemplified in white
flour. The best food chemist are the earth and the sun, which produce
the whole wheat that the steel rollers of the white flour millers
spoil,. White flour makes white faces........food is stuff to be eaten
fresh, not to be "kept" as if it were an heirloom......Wholemeal flour
naturally does not "keep" because the germ in it is alive. Germless
white flour "keeps" because it is dead, because it is as dead as
Portland cement powder,, all its original goodness having been sifted
out of it. Let them "keep" their flour who have no care to keep their
health." This is after all a millstone grinding mill, and there is no
need to make enriched bleached flour!
I should add this footnote
to the program: Sometime during the late 1950's and 1960's they began to
experiment with new method of reducing wheat into flour. First they
tried running a stream of wheat over a piece of stainless steel and then
subjecting it to high pressure bursts of air. Later they tried using
laser to pulverize the wheat but they eventually discovered that the
traditional methods of grinding wheat using millstones and roller mills
works the best.
There are only a few mills that are still run by
water power, many of these are of the museum type operations that are
capable of grinding flour and meal for demonstrations, claiming to be
authentic and educational. The some millstone mills have survived the
roller mill revolution mainly grinding organically grown stone ground
flours and meals. It causes one to ask, why did more small mills survive
the post industrial era? The idea of quitting without a fight is not
part of the American character. Possibly the answer is that the
customers of these small mills were the ones who gave up.The history of
the milling industry is full of stories where hardheaded businessmen
tried to ignore the proverbial "bottom line." A great number of factors
accumulate when business fall victim to things that are not logically
linked to the profit motive. Even the huge milling companies of
Minneapolis today are so diversified that many of the giants produce
very little flour in that city today. Many small mills have slowed their
disappearance by turning to the feed business, however, today that
business has also died because of farmers no longer farming. Many people
who admire mills and are concerned with heath still want their flour and
meal from stone ground flour mills, but in todays world, there are less
and less people who bake. The small country mills are sometimes put of
business by health regulations, or the loss of being capable of running
on water power. The small mill in may places are considered a nuisance
to the building of community development in a modern world where the
people are dependent upon strip and shopping malls instead of local
industries. Mills are no longer considered assets to a local communiy.
Even many mill museums have lost part of their original character and
appeal because they are now surrounded by urban development.
Recently the Park Ranger and I drove to Ellicott City, Maryland, and we
toured the Wilkins-Rogers' Washington Flour Mill in part the old
Ellicott Mill complex. They used to be located in the old Pioneer Flour
Mill in Georgetown before redevelopment forced them to move to another
location, that of the Ellicott City Continental Milling. They are famous
for their Indian Head Corn Meal which is produced on two run of
millstones that were brought from their old plant between Potomac and
33rd Streets in Georgetown, Washington, D.C, where they were powered by
the overflow water from the C & O Canal. They look more like a
Minneapolis mill that the Ellicott Mill that occupied the spot in 1772.
The mill is at least the fifth mill to stand on the site. The present
mill was rebuilt in 1941 after a fire destroyed the previous mill. They
are a large commercial flour mill that produces 125 thousand pounds of
flour every 24 hours. The gentleman was me how much flour do I grind at
Peirce Mill. I told him on a good day I might grind possibly 400 pounds
of grain. This is also the amount that management decided that the mill
could grind daily and maintain a minimum wear and tare on the mill's
machinery. He told me, "You don't grind flour at Peirce Mill, you grind
out words." I guess, he was right, we do grind out more words than grain
in any given day here at the mill. Thank you.
By Theodore R. Hazen.
Source: https://www.angelfire.com/folk/
molinologist/america.html