Flour, anyone?

The other day, I had the amazing experience to see how truly organic flour is produced in Sora.

In the area where I’m staying, organics are the major focus to a lot of locals. As mentioned before, the weather is quite fair most of the year, so growing your own produce comes easy.

So far, I have had the pleasure of eating dandelion leaves and “from the ground” potatoes; pick and eat wild herbs like sage and now: seeing first hand, the process of making organic flour.

I left this afternoon with G. Our first stop was to pick up and pay for the grain itself. During this process, the old Italian man selling us the grain pick this rose for me! Though, what is it with old Italian men and me – seriously?!

Anyways, once the trunk was loaded, we then headed off to the mill. Conveniently, it was located in Sora.

There, you would walk into a 12ft x 12ft warehouse. To your right was the mill. My first though was “that’s so small,” but when you sat and watched what it does, it’s a beast.

The whole process took about 40 minutes. Which wasn’t bad, considering they had to grind our two full potato-sack-like bags full of grain (the old fashion way of course!).

First, they would pour the grain into a hole in the ground where it was then brought up to be “filtered” through this: (below)

Once all clean, the grains would be sent to the grinder which consisted of a huge stone that spun horizontally back and forth. It was the similar stone to which they use to make olive oil.

The next machine over (that I forgot to take a photo of…oh well) filters the flour and separates the bran part from the nice whiteness!

In the end you are given a bag full of your flour and a bag full of bran. Amazing!

Touching the bag of flour, you could still feel the warmth from all the processing and grinding it went through.

I was so nice to see that people still do this, even though across the street you could buy it at the supermercato (see that Italian there!). I enjoy knowing that people still have time to do things like this.