Wheat To Biscuits

I found the following "World Today" article listed on eBay, and I thought it was especially remarkable because Karen and I have talked about how interesting it would be if someone created a line of Waitsburgdesignated wheat products. Much as the best wines are often bottled under the specific name of the vineyard, we envision a similar use for this area's excellent wheat. A made-and-grown-in- Waitsburg concept for flour from different types of local wheat, for example. So when I saw this story, I thought it quite amazing that 100 years ago someone had a similar idea and set up a competition to see who could get from field to table in the shortest amount of time. It looks as if Waitsburg won!

Article posted in "World Today" - December 1908

The Making of To-Morrow How The World Of To-day Is Preparing For The World Of To-morrow By F.G. Moorhead

F rom waving gold nodding in the bright, western sun to light, delicious biscuits fairly melting in the mouth, in the incredibly short time of twenty-two minutes, is the record of Washington wheat-growers and flour-millers. The wheat was transported two miles in the process, and fifty reliable citizens testify to the time. The busy housewife telephoning her order or sending her errand boy to the family grocer for a sack of flour has little or no conception of the vast amount of work which the finished product, awaiting the alchemy of her culinary skill, represents. It is a fair conclusion, however, that she will consider it an utter impossibility to have cut down the growing grain, threshed the wheat, sacked it, conveyed it a couple of miles, ground it into flour and converted it into biscuits, and that these biscuits differed from the bridal kind in that they were eaten and relished, all in a space of time no longer than it takes her young hopeful to get to the store and back again, a few blocks away.

It has remained for the little town of Waitsburg, Washington, to convince the doubting housewife and to break the world's record for speed in this particular matter. The test was made without preparation as to the location or distance. The mill was operating on blue-stem wheat, and it was necessary to secure another variety of grain that the judges might be sure of the genuineness of the experiment. They did not propose that the incredulous housewife should have the laugh on them.

To find a threshing machine working on other than blue- stem wheat it was necessary to go two miles from the mill to the field of Mr. N.B. Atkinson, president of the Washington State Farmers' Educational and Cooperative Union. Mr. Atkinson's assistance in the experiment was quickly had. His machines were stopped, cleared of all grain, and the signal given. Official timekeepers were chosen in a Washington attorney, the local editor and a prominent merchant. The test was witnessed by Mayor R.M. Breeze and fifty interested spectators.

At 9:03 o'clock, with the bright Washington sun shining beneficently on the toilers, the grain was waving in the gentle breeze with no thought of the decapitation so imminent and the fame to be forthwith thrust upon it. At 9:04 the official timekeepers saw the first head clipped from the straw by the header. From then on, for twenty-two minutes, in street parlance, there was something doing in and around the little town of Waitsburg.

At 9:08 exactly, the grain had reached the thresher, disappearing in the capacious maw. Three minutes later, by the stopwatch, four sacks of wheat had been threshed, sacked and the sacks sewed up. It was then that the most serious part of the problem presented itself. The wheat was ready for the mill, but the mill was two miles distant. Ordinarily the transfer is made throughout the Northwest by means of the ever-present interurban car whizzing past ranch and farm, or by four, six or eight horse teams rolling along the dusty roads. But the time was precious this day, and here occurred the only change from the regular order of procedure. The sacked wheat was loaded into a thirty-horse power automobile, which set off townward at the rate of forty miles an hour. The experimenters content themselves with the fact that northwestern farmers are purchasing automobiles for their own pleasure and using traction engines more and more in the field, so that the day is not far distant when the automobile may be used as it was the day of the test.

Three minutes after the last sack had been sewed up on the field, the grain had been weighed and dropped into the receiving hopper of the flouring mill. The four sacks had been well filled; they weighed 535 pounds.

At 9:19 o'clock, the first flour appeared at the packer. Immediately a baker pounced on it and began stirring water and baking-powder with the flour. At 9:21, the biscuits were placed in a gasoline oven, already well heated. Two minutes later, two sacks of finished flour had been ground from the wheat, sacked and the sacks sewed, ready for the market and the housewife.

I t was exact ly 9: 26 o'clock that the biscuits, with just the proper brown tinting on the top, were taken from the oven and distributed among the spectators. Not a man present but vowed they were ideal, the best he had eaten since he had been a boy back home.

In addition to having been conveyed two miles to the mill, the grain traveled 640 feet in the process of being converted into flour. From the receiving hopper it was carried by elevators upward about twenty feet, where it was dropped to the "rougher" and then through the "milling separator." It was again lifted to the same height and run through three cleaning machines, where all foreign substances were removed. By a quick process, it was dampened ready for the rolls. It was slowly cut into small particles by five sets of flour rolls, each time being forced over bolting devices which separated the flour from the larger particles. The flour was then gathered and sent to the packing device where bags were awaiting it.

The mill in which the record breaking feat was made is the oldest in the State of Washington, dating back to 1865. It has always been operated by water-power and turns out day after day a sack