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White Lily flour is changing

17 years ago

Oh no! Just when I discover a good thing, it changes. White Lily is shutting down their 100-year-old flour mill in Knoxville. Bakers aren't happy.

See link below.

Here is a link that might be useful: White Lily closing old mill

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Comments (13)

teresa_nc7
17 years ago
Is nothing sacred? What a sad, sad, day....(sniff)
arley_gw
17 years ago
Why do conglomerates think they can improve on something? Why do they have to meddle? A change in ownership is one thing, but messing with success makes absolutely no sense at all.

An analogy from the world of music: in the early 60's Leo Fender, guitar amp pioneer, developed a life-threatening infection. He thought he was gonna die, so he took care of all his worldly affairs, including selling the amplifier division to CBS. The CBS engineers looked at the schematics for the amps Leo was making and said, "We can do better than that. These circuits are horribly inefficient." Well, they 'optimized' the circuits, and you can guess the result. They totally screwed up the amplifiers' sound. They lost credibility and market share nearly overnight, and it took years for them to recover--mostly by changing in large part back to the original designs. To this day, however, if you have a vintage 'pre-CBS' Fender amp you can command a huge premium over brand new ones.

Shame on you, Smuckers! Leave it alone.
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Sadly, it's no longer the same product; the Knoxville plant closed and it's now made by Smucker's. On a double blind testing, experienced bakers could tell the difference. From the 6/18/2008 Atlanta Journal-Constitution: White Lily Flour leaves the South By Elizabeth Lee : Wednesday, June 18, 2008, 01:12 PM The Atlanta Journal-Constitution By the end of the month, White Lily Flour, for more than 100 years a staple for biscuits, cakes and pies, will no longer be made in the South. The flour has been made in the same Knoxville, Tenn., factory for 125 years, where itÂs milled to produce the lightest, whitest flour around, one ideally suited for Southern favorites like biscuits. Other flours have higher protein contents, which make them better for sturdier baked goods like breads. J.M. Smucker, which bought the White Lily brand in 2006 from C.H. Guenther & Sons, will continue making the flour at facilities in the Midwest. But many cooks are worried that the flour wonÂt be the same, according to a story in todayÂs New York Times. The newspaper got a few cooks to do a blind-baking test of flour milled in Knoxville, and the new version produced in the land of hard winter wheat. The results werenÂt scientific, but they were unanimous: Cooks said they could tell the difference, and that the new White Lily flour didnÂt produce the tender biscuits that the old one does.
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Something caught my eye in the link cloudy christine provided -- about "strong" flour -- which might need a little more explanation. Strong vs weak wheat is an interesting study and information we don't generally get when it comes to a bag of flour. But we may have noticed it if we purchased an inexpensive bag of flour somewhere along the line and it didn't perform as well as good old ___________ (fill in the blank) flour. When I teach bread classes I advise people NOT to purchase off-brands of flour from discount places like the Dollar General Store, Aldi, etc., because it can be an inferior flour product that can lack enough gluten for making good bread - or a weak flour in other words. Professional bakers use the terms strong and weak to indicate a wheat or flour's "baking strength", or whether it's suitable for specific baked goods. Hard and soft wheats are terms primarily of interest to the fine folks who mill the flour and it describes the texture of the endosperm and how it breaks down in milling - but we also attribute these names to the protein/gluten levels. If I forget whether I have soft wheat or hard wheat milled into flour, all I have to do is take a pinch of the flour and rub it between my fingers. Soft wheat is just that, soft, like a fine silky powder, while hard wheat is grittier. Soft wheat kernels are usually plumper and have a larger endosperm - and appear more transparant than hard wheat. The commercial uses for flour from soft wheat is often used for crackers, cookies, cakes, doughnuts, pancakes, waffles, muffins, soft noodles, ice cream cones, flaked breakfast cereals, granola, soup thickeners, gravy thickeners and wheat germ (according to one source). Strong wheats are generally in the hard wheat variety, small and wrinkled in appearance with a small endosperm, and the dominate protein in the gluten group are glutenins - so they are best used for yeast breads. Weak wheats have a deficiency of glutenins - but can also be milled from hard wheat varieties. So it's not just the amount of protein, but the type of protein in the flour. Weak flours can be milled from hard wheat varieties, and this happens around here to the wheat crop when we have too much rain during the growing season. This is why you don't see wheat being irrigated like you do corn. Too much moisture is a bad thing for producing high-gluten, high-protein wheat that makes great bread. To add to the confusion, there is also durum wheat - which has the highest amount of protein of all wheat varieties, but the dominant protein in the gluten group are gliadins - which is what you want for making pasta, and generally what durum wheat is used for. You can find a mix of strong and weak wheat in most fields. If there is an area shaded by trees, or a low-lying area where water tends to pool, the protein in the wheat in those areas will tend to be "weak" (lacking quality gluten levels) due to the growing conditions. FYI - White (bleached and unbleached) bread flour is milled from medium-strength wheats. Too much gluten in flour will make your bread tough and it takes a LOT longer to knead and develop the gluten. That's why adding a lot of vital wheat gluten to recipes isn't a good thing - unless you like rubbery bread. Another interesting point, all wheat used for making flour were soft wheat varieties until the mid- to late-1800's with the advent of hard wheat varieties. Especially Turkey Red Wheat, which became the source of many new varieties of hard wheat we grow today. Turkey Red was hand-picked and carried to Kansas in 1874 by Mennonites from Crimea, Russia. Turkey Red wheat once covered over 90 percent of wheat acreage in the Great Plains - now it's considered an heirloom wheat variety and I've only seen it entered at the Kansas State Fair as an heirloom variety. It's still available, if you know who to ask, but you probably won't like the bitter-tasting flour it produces due to the dark bran color. It has three genes that determine bran color, while most of today's varieties of red wheat only have 1 or 2 genes for bran color. Contrast that to white wheat that is the "albino" of wheat, which has none of the genes that determine bran color. -Grainlady
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kframe19
17 years ago
Oh man, this stinks.

It's hard as all get out to find White Lily even here in Virginia, and when I do I normally get between 5 and 10 bags.

A couple for me, a couple for Mom, and a couple for my Aunt.
grainlady_ks
17 years ago
How sad... Check for these comparable Southern all-purpose flour options for White Lily - Martha White, Gladiola, Red Band. Like White Lily, they run 7.5-9.5 percent protein and are best used for pie crusts, biscuits, quick breads and muffins.

-Grainlady
teresa_nc7
17 years ago
And there is nothing wrong with those brands, grainlady, -
but they're not White Lily. Guess I'll got back to Red Band if I find the White Lily has changed appreciably. I keep White Lily self-rising on hand for biscuits, quick breads, and some cornbread recipes. It really is the best.
kayskats
17 years ago
Oh, my!! Alas and Alack!
Does any one know what going to happen to White Lily Cornmeal and White Lily Cornbread Mix. I didnt find a single word in the story about the future of other products. I've been having family buy it in Atlanta and ship it ... Shipping costs as much as the product.
sally2_gw
17 years ago
And I finally found a place to buy it, too. I didn't at the time, cause it was bleached. Is all White Lily bleached? Anyway, now I'm wishing I went ahead and bought it, but it looks like they've already made the changes, or did I misunderstand the article?

Sally
grainlady_ks
17 years ago
sally2 - Some of White Lily flour is bleached and some unbleached. They have a High-Protein Unbleached Bread Flour (I've never tried it) and an Unbleached Self-rising Flour (milled from soft red winter wheat). I used to get a bag of the unbleached self-rising flour when we traveled to Tennessee (from our home in Kansas). It was never available here and was kind of a novelty to have. Guess I'll just stick to milling my own flour. I haven't purchased any commercial flour since the prices started going up and just make everything wholegrain.

The link below will show the different types of flour they have.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: White Lily Flour Products
awm03
Original Author
17 years ago
re Martha White flour:

I used to live in New Orleans and would buy Martha White flour & products because it was a cool regional brand. After reading the article on White Lily, I went to Martha White's web site to see if they still exist. Guess what...at the bottom of the Martha White web site it says "J. B. Smuckers." :(
sally2_gw
17 years ago
Thanks, Grainlady.

It's so hard for small companies to compete against mega-corps, it's just frustrating and oh so sad.

Sally
jessyf
17 years ago
Next step: 'Made in China' :-(
marys1000
17 years ago
Is there anywhere we can protest? This is very upsetting! Why doesn't KA make a low protein?
spacific
17 years ago
Mary,
Here's how to contact them.

The White Lily Foods Company
4740 Burbank Road
Memphis, TN 38118

The J.M. Smucker Co.
1 Strawberry Lane
Orrville, Ohio 44667-0280

I still believe many voices can have an impact. Especially if they're voting with their pocketbook.

By the way, The J. M. Smucker Company also has these brands:

Domestic
Adams
After The Fall
Borden EggNog
Crisco
Crosse & Blackwell
Dickinson's
Eagle Brand
Eagle Brand Dessert Kits
Hungry Jack
Jif
Kava
Laura Scudder's
Magnolia
Martha White
Mary Ellen
Milnot
Natural Brew
None Such
PET
Pillsbury
R.W. Knudsen Family
Santa Cruz Organic
Smucker's
White Lily

International
Bick's (Canada)
Double Fruit (Canada)
Golden Temple (Canada)
Red River (Canada)
Robin Hood (Canada)
Shirriff (Canada)

Here is a link that might be useful: Contact White Lily

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