Graison Gill sees the power of flour; he knows the breads and pastries he makes in his New Orleans, Louisiana, bakery are only as good as the flour he stirs into them.
Owner of Bellegarde Bakery, Gill was named a finalist for the James Beard Outstanding Baker Award in 2020. He fell in love with baking as a young man and has been doing it professionally for 13 years. While attending pastry school in San Francisco, California, and learning how to make a wide array of baked goods, Gill began to recognize that while flour was the foundation of all the recipes he was learning, he was limited by only using plain white flour. He felt the ingredient was shortchanging his confectioneries and decided to look into grinding his own flour, made from wheat grown for flavor. Gill wanted to partner with growers to source their wheat and grind it himself. He called all the agriculture colleges he could find to ask for help in his endeavor and they all dismissed him, except Oklahoma State University.
“I’ve been milling Oklahoma wheat in New Orleans for about nine years now, and when the pandemic started my bakery was making about 10,000 loaves of bread per week and we were milling about 5,000 pounds of flour per week,” Gill said. “We were shipping some of the flour to buyers, but most of it was used in the bakery. The lockdowns caused a big downturn in business. I was left with my big flour mills and not knowing what to do.”
Oklahoman Brady Sidwell, who was already acquainted with Gill, suggested the baker bring his mills to Enid, Oklahoma, to be closer to where the wheat is grown and start up a new mill with Sidwell. Sidwell, a farmer and agricultural entrepreneur, was set up perfectly to partner with Gill and connect their business with local growers, several agricultural organizations and Autry Technology Center where the flour mill is located.
“It’s been a great decision because what we’re able to do now is mill fresh flour in the heart of where the wheat is grown,” Gill said.
The mill, called Chisholm Trail Milling, is co-owned by Gill and Sidwell and began processing flour in August 2021. The flour they mill is unique because it is identity-preserved flour, meaning it can be traced back to the farmer who grew it, the variety and the date milled. Additionally, most of the growers are in the surrounding area of Garfield County, Oklahoma, where Enid is located.
“In a good year, there’s about $1 million worth of wheat grown in Oklahoma, and less than $1,000 of that is kept in state to be made into identity-preserved flour,” Gill said. “Much of it goes to Mozambique, Europe, Portland or Seattle to be milled and then sent back to Oklahoma in the form of flour to be bought in supermarkets. To me, that’s always been a bit of a perjury because you have such an incredible wheat industry here in Oklahoma and the founding principle when Brady and I opened up this business, was to keep value where it’s produced.”
Several organizations that have been indispensable to Chisholm Trail Milling have been OSU’s Wheat Improvement Team, which has helped them decide what wheat varieties to mill for ultimate flavor and versatility; the Oklahoma Wheat Commission and the Oklahoma Wheat Growers Association. Sidwell said the Oklahoma Wheat Growers Association served as a non-profit sponsor for them to receive a Rural Business Development Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which helps small businesses acquire equipment.
A fully baked business
Sidwell said Chisholm Trail Milling uses several types of wheat, including white whole grain, red whole grain, rye flour and durum. The wheat varieties selected for the mill are wheats that can be used for a wide variety of baking, so the market is broad. Some examples of varieties milled include: Gallagher hard red winter wheat, Big Country hard white winter wheat, Wrens Abruzzi rye flour, Sonora pastry flour and Blue Beard heirloom durum wheat.
“Durum is not traditionally grown in Oklahoma, but farmers are planting this winter wheat to supply the demand from the mill,” Sidwell said. “We have contracts directly with farmers, so we built our own supply chain. The delivery point is my grain elevator in Kremlin, Oklahoma, Enterprise Grain Company. We bring the wheat in one-ton containers to the flour mill and produce the flour, sifting off about 5 to 6% of the bran. The flour then goes directly to the bag and is ready to ship.”
Sidwell said the mill ships to order and sends out deliveries every week to Oklahoma City and Tulsa. He said they are trying to make local ingredients scalable by supplying to restaurants and retailers. Currently, customers can buy 2.5- or 40-pound bags of flour.
Gill said the pureness of the flour produced at Chisholm Trail Milling is part of what makes it such an incredible baking ingredient. He said none of the flours are refined, blended or bleached. This is in contrast to all-purpose flour, which is sifted to remove much of the nourishing and palatable elements of wheat berries, making it lower in protein.
“It’s like raising Wagyu beef, and then cutting off all the fat,” Gill said. “You put all this work into producing an incredible product, and then you throw out what makes it so flavorful and nutritious.”
Sidwell and Gill have developed a business that not only produces top-of-the-line flour for bakers, but also connects consumers to where their food comes from and preserves the value of the crop to where it is grown and harvested.
“The most unique experience for us at Chisholm Trail Milling has been being able to work directly with farmers to select the best varieties we can find and mill it and make some incredible breads, cookies and pastries with that flour,” Gill said. “As a chef and baker, there are two important things going on for me—No. 1, the flavor of whole wheat flour that is freshly milled is unbelievable. It can’t compare to white flour. No. 2, on an ecological level, it’s really important that we are able to keep the value of things the way nature intended them to be. Our grandparent’s generation ate whole grain breads and we’ve lost that for a few different reasons and we’re trying to repatriate some of the integrity, flavor, process and agriculture back to the ingredients.”
Flour can be purchased at several Oklahoma retailers or through the Chisholm Trail Milling website, www.chisholmtrailmilling.com.
Lacey Vilhauer can be reached at 620-227-1871 or [email protected].
