Designer Flour Sifter

Life was rugged and such innovations, improvements of very basic sifters of the distant past, quickly became a necessity as word of the existence of our Designer Sifter ‘spread like wildfire’ throughout the Wild West and beyond to places less traveled and explored. Luckily, consider yourself amongst the chosen few who will know what it was like in the old fashioned days when soft, fine, and pure flour hand-churned by our famous, fine flour sifters was a part of almost every meal from those who worked down in the gold mines to mail carriers traveling on horseback at a time when a dime a day was considered a descent salary. Now that you’re comfortable, allow me to guide you on this adventure as we travel back in time…

Way back in 1819, nearly 200 years ago, Jacob Bromwell, inventor, was the only pioneer of his day known to vastly improve upon the design of the Designer Sifter, the one-of-a-kind flour sifter of its day. Our Designer Sifter has been known to serve such uses as providing whole-wheat flour to such baked goods from fresh breads, moist cookies, and melt-in-your-mouth pancakes to iron, thiamin, and niacin as well as fiber. Back in the old days when our country was young and the west was still being pioneered by such folks as Lewis & Clark, Jacob Bromwell somehow knew his flour sifter would not only be useful for the cowboy hunting buffalo along such trails as the Oregon Trail, but those folks brewing up a batch of snicker doodles in the small bakeries dotting the countryside.

To really appreciate our Designer Sifter is to have an understanding of its history. So, for all you history buffs out there, here goes…

Grist mills, long known for making flour, were constructed in the early 1600's to grind corn and wheat to make flour for the early English settlers of coastal areas. To English speaking people of the 1600's and 1700's a corn mill means a mill that grinds corn and makes flour. Corn is the English word for grain. More specifically, a grist mill is a mill that grinds wheat, rye, oats, and or barley into flour and meal. The common American word "corn" was substituted for the Native American word, maize. However, English and Puritan settlers would have called it maize and not used the word corn. In America, the English use of the word, corn, did not change until the War of 1812, when the people of the United States wanted to separate themselves from England.

Wheat was grown in New England mostly along coastal areas. The rocky soil and climate of New England never became a large, wheat growing center. Wheat was a more important crop in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia. Early milling centers of America were New York (first by the Dutch and then later because of Rochester and the Erie Canal), Wilmington (along the Brandywine River), Baltimore (along the Patapsco River), Georgetown (along the C & O Canal), and Richmond (on the James River and the Kanawha Canal). Then after the Civil War, the wheat growing areas sifted to the Midwest. The Mennonites brought hard wheat from the Ukraine and the milling methods changed; places like Minneapolis (the largest ever in the world) became milling centers.

Many early water wheels were enclosed inside of the building or under roof for protection from winter's snow and ice. The above photo is of the Lee Mill, Stratford Hall, Virginia. The Fitz Water Wheel Company claimed that this was their best and most accurate mill restoration. A roof is over the water wheel in the classic illustration Winter at the Old Grist Mill, a Currier & Ives print.

New Englanders traditionally preferred rye over wheat and a common New England dish was 'Rye' & 'Injin,' meaning corn bread with rye flour instead of wheat flour. The problem unknown at the time was the hallucinations fungus (LSD) commonly found in rye, and not effected by the milling, sifting and baking process. The New England food, Johnny Cakes, was called journey cakes. Over time, the phrase, journey cake, was changed to Johnny cake. Buckwheat is not a grain, grass or member of the wheat family is actually an herb. It was brought to New Amsterdam in 1626 by Dutch and German settlers. Buckwheat spread down from New York, into Pennsylvania, western Maryland, West Virginia and into Michigan. In the North and New England the type of corn used for milling is yellow field corn, while in the South white field corn is used. When corn is milled into corn meal the bran is sifted out to make bolted corn meal. Coarser corn meal contains the bran and is called unbolted corn meal. In the South, the middlings is used as a cereal and is called grits.

Soft wheat or English wheat was grown and milled. Wheat was sifted into white flour. In sifting, the bran and middlings (cereal) is removed. The middlings also was called ships stuff or red dog, used for ships biscuit. Red dog was named after a New England Native American who was named Red Dog. He made a deal with a New England miller in trade for all of the middlings the miller could supply his tribe. Bran was tossed into streams considered worthless. Whole wheat has the bran sifted out and came into existence in the mid-1800's with the popularity of Sylvester Graham's Graham Flour. Around the time the Pilgrims were building Plymouth Plantation, a patent was issued in Great Britain for the making of woven wire cloth. A century later, a Scotsman named John Milne invented a sifting reel that rotated instead of being shaken. So after about 1730, most mills of any size operated their flour sifting machinery by water power rather than being hand sifted…and that’s the basic story how our very own Jacob Bromwell’s Designer Sifter was born.