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About Appeal tribune. (Silverton, Or.) 1999-current | View Entire Issue (April 22, 2020)
SILVERTONAPPEAL.COM ❚ WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2020 ❚ 3A Baking Bakers find flour, and comfort Continued from Page 1A "This time of year the crops are grow- ing and they need to be sprayed," Carl- son said, "but it’s been so windy it’s hard to get out and get it done." The concern growers do feel has more to do with how the pandemic will impact commodity pricing globally. "In the past year we’ve had China tar- iffs, that’s kept the price of wheat below what it should be, and then the pan- demic," said Carlson,"beef, pork, wheat — the prices are plummeting and that’s terribly hard on farmers and ranchers." The demand for and price of flour in grocery stores, "it really doesn’t reflect the price we’re getting." Amanda Hoey, CEO of the Oregon Wheat Commission, said while the types of wheat in high demand don't represent the majority of that grown in Oregon, "any sale of wheat will ulti- mately have an impact on the market for wheat overall." Like many others, Oregon's wheat in- dustry faces uncertainty directly tied to the way the global economy recovers from the pandemic. The bulk of Ore- gon's wheat harvest will happen in the summer months, and it's too soon to tell what the impact of the COVID-19 pan- demic will look like when harvest time comes. "There’s nothing we can delay," said Hoey, "mother nature continues the seasons, so if we’re not out tending our fields now we won’t have enough later on." Millers working overtime Oregon's unemployment rate is soar- ing but the Bob's Red Mill production fa- cility in Milwaukie is hiring. Jobs are posted for millers, machine operators and graveyard shift order selectors. Representatives from the employee- owned company declined to comment on how many jobs the business has add- ed in response to increased demand, but Bob's familiar line of flours and baking mixes are in short supply at area gro- cers, sold out for weeks even on the company's own website. A message on the site explains "we have recently experienced an unprece- dented surge in demand. As a result, some of our popular products may be temporarily unavailable. " Matthew Cox, vice president of mar- keting, said the number of online orders have doubled in the past month. Visits to the company's Sourdough Learning Center page — and related sourdough Ed Schoaps bought a 50 pound bag of flour from a restaurant supplier to continue his baking habit amidst grocery store flour shortages. ED SCHOAPS recipes — shot up by more than 200% in March. The customer service department is fielding calls from people asking for help making ingredient substitutions, and what to do with sourdough discard. "One of the most-asked questions we’ve gotten," said Cox, is whether nu- tritional yeast will make bread rise. "Un- fortunately, the answer is no!" "A lot of people have been baking at home since the pandemic, whether to relieve stress, for entertainment, or out of purely practical need. Some are re- kindling an old love for home baking, and others are just now discovering it as a skill and pastime." Not shortage, a slammed supply chain At Camas Country Mill in Junction City, owners Tom and Sue Hunton are feeling the flour frenzy. The company, which buys directly from Willamette Valley growers and largely supplies their stone-milled whole grain flours to artisan bakeries throughout the state, has seen online orders increase by 10 to 15 fold. "Four months ago we got 30 orders a week, and if there were 10 over a week- end it was a big deal; now it’s 50 to 60 per day." "Quarantined bakers in 50 states," said Hunton, unable to buy flour at the grocery store, have been shopping on- line from small mills and "80% are brand new customers." They've even received calls from gro- cery stores looking for retail packages of flour, hoping to fill the shelves while larger suppliers ramp up production. Though the business had to close their onsite bakery, they've been able to divert staff to the mill, add weekend milling shifts and maintain supply without interruption, which Hunton be- lieves demonstrates "the value of short supply chains." "Everybody would say our business model was inefficient because our equipment was idle sometimes," Hun- ton said, but faced with increased de- mand “we can throttle it up and back a lot more easily. "We’ve got the grain, it’s sitting here waiting to be milled." The reason consumers can't find flour in the supermarket, he said, has more to do with packaging and distribu- tion. "We’re not dealing with third party logistics with half our product across the country in storage." Some of the bakeries Camas Country Mill supplies, including Portland's Grand Central Baking, Tabor Bread and Seastar Bakery, have begun bagging and selling Camas flour directly to con- sumers. Seastar sold through nearly 600 pounds of flour in two days last week. In the mid-Valley, Turner Baking Company and Cascade Baking haven't begun selling flour directly, but owners said they've also had no trouble finding commercial bags. Flour is missing only from the groce- ry stores, where bread remains abun- dant. This reflects the rapid pivot in the massive commodity supply chain. Res- taurants are buying vastly less flour and consumers, shopping for retail pack- ages, vastly more. Hunton believes this might have something do specifically with shop- pers' pandemic panicked minds. "Their kids are home, they’re home" and having it means having options, he said: "We’ll bake muffins, we’ll make playdough, we’ll order some flour." In a moment rich with uncertainty, flour represents both nourishment and cre- ative possibility. I NG R SP IS Amy Teegarden bakes bread each week in her South Salem kitchen, a yeasted bread and a spicy olive bread baked in a Dutch oven. She reinvigorated a long-neglected starter, for the same reason, she said, “as everybody else trying sourdough for the first time. I couldn’t find yeast at the store.” Teegarden is now concerned about flour in her pandemic pantry. "I've got most of a 5-pound bag left. I’m hoping it will last a month if I’m careful with it, but at the rate I typically bake it won't last longer than that." "With yeast you can at least do a sourdough culture, but flour, there’s no substitute." Despite the shortage, Teegarden said, "I actually think it’s great that so many people are baking, it’s wonderful now that so many have a chance to try it.” Avid sourdough baker Ed Schoaps said he's experimenting more, posting photos to Facebook of breads and a re- cent pie made with a sourdough crust. "I was really kind of panicking about a week ago when I went to all my favor- ite grocery stores looking for my favorite King Arthur Flour." Schoaps secured a 50-pound bag of Shepherd's Grain bread flour, milled by a Washington-based cooperative, by going to a restaurant supplier. A daunt- ing quantity to some, for bakers accus- tomed to making loaves requiring a pound or more each, 50 pounds feels like security. Chris McCreedy also opted for the commercial sized bag of flour. An IT pro- fessional, McCreedy has been exclu- sively working from home for the past month. Before coronavirus, she typical- ly made something from her sourdough starter weekly, but the long rising time means making sourdough doesn't work on weekdays. Now, being home, "I feed it when I’m making my coffee, sometime in the af- ternoon it’s ready to mix up, and bread is ready to be baked around dinnertime." Her next bake? A Pinterest-flagged recipe for sourdough doughnuts. "There's something about bread. It’s comfort food. It’s easy, you know what you’re getting. There’s nothing like kneading dough to let your mind just wander and relax." 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