There’s only one place I get my whole wheat flour: the Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach. I love waltzing into the charming Village Books & Gifts shop and selecting a comforting bag of flour in its cozy little burlap sack.
But like all things, it’s what’s inside that counts! This flour is special because it’s milled right there at the MHV, in their beautiful windmill!
Printed onto the sack, it says “Proprietor A.S. Friesen, Est. 1877”. He was the original miller in Steinbach. His windmill would have sat on Friesen Street in Steinbach, pretty near Friesen Machine Works. I think between Main Street and First Street.
I love purchasing locally-sourced and whole and stone-ground things. And if it’s connected to a story, so much the better!
If you visit the museum on a special day like Pioneer Days or Fall on the Farm, you most likely will be able to take a tour and see the windmill in action, how it powers the stones that grind the grain into a fine, delicious flour.
In this museum blog post, they explain that they mill about 3000 pounds of flour between May and October every year, half of which goes into their delicious bread at the Livery Barn Restaurant, and the other half is sold at their museum gift shop!
I was delighted to see that now when you buy this flour, it comes with a simple schnetje recipe!
To keep my flour good, I put it into these containers, which once held soup from Main Bread & Butter. Now they hold my MHV flour!
And into the freezer it goes, for maximum freshness. This flour has no preservatives or additives, so I figure freezing it is a good idea, because I’m a bit of an infrequent baker.
On this occasion, I used it to make these muffins!
So when you see the sails turning on the MHV windmill, you can know that they’re making flour!