Steve Fulton fondly remembers the bread of his childhood. “The taste was amazing. It was deeply aromatic and had this distinctive nutty flavor. You can’t find bread like that anymore,” he laments.
The bread he remembers was baked by his mother from flour processed by his great-uncle. It was the flour that made his bread different. Or rather, it was the flour mill that made it different: a special kind of mill, one that was poised to change a Washington industry that has remained unchallenged for more than a century. Dressed in a simple polo shirt and slacks, the semi-retired State Farm agent from Arlington says with a smile, “That’s why I’m bringing back my great-uncle’s mill, the Unifine.”
The availability of local, organic, and sustainable food in this city is staggering. Every restaurant, grocer, and farmer is constantly trying to find a way to grow it closer and greener in a never-ending battle of foodie one-upmanship. They won’t stop, either—not until they are literally growing kale in your mouth, or at least planting it so close to your table that it reverses global warming. But in this local fervor, one basic, Washington-relevant ingredient seems oddly, incredibly, left out: flour.
