Local Flour in Ashland

Leave it to my friend Melissa to find local flour! Ellwood Thompson's and Ukrop's are selling their products in town under the name Patrick Henry, which is milled by Ashland Milling Company. I have used their cornmeal, both for polenta and to dust breads and pizza dough, and like it a lot. So, if you'd like to take a field trip and save some money on bulk flour, check out Melissa's notes from her recent trip to the Ashland Milling Company:

So - the Byrd Mill is on the left side of Route 1 going north in Ashland. If you cross the Anna River you've gone too far. It's tricky to find - it's labelled 'Ashland Milling Company' rather than 'Byrd Mill', and to get to the office you have to turn in at the previous drive way, take the middle of three forks and drive over a scale. Then you drive back on to route 1 and in the other driveway to the loading bays to pick up your flour.

It's not clear what, if anything, is organic. BUT they have a functioning mill, and the whole wheat and corn is from Hanover County. I think the bread flour is from Pennsylvania wheat but is processed here. They sell all manner of other things, like coffee and chocolate and baking mixes, and supply mostly bakeries and whatnot. You can order online here but I think the weight would make postage prohibitively expensive - you can get flour in bags from 2 lbs to 50 lbs. I bought 50 lbs of bread flour, 5 lbs wholewheat (I'll probably just get the local wholewheat next time and add gluten for bread) and 2 lbs cornflour since I don't use it so much - and I spent less than $25. That is, less than 50 cents a pound.