Occident Flour Milling

The other day I wrote about the information that could be gleaned from old recipe booklets. Sometimes this information is lost when companies go out of business or change hands. Recipe booklets are sometimes a good reference source.

Here's a bit of trivia about Russell-Miller Milling and their grain storage and processing that was included in the Occident Flour Tested Recipes (1938, 24 pp) cookbook. This type of information was meant to inspire confidence in consumers.

A BRIEF STORY OF OCCIDENT

"In 1901 two small mills, built some years before, were operating in Valley City and Jamestown, N.D. They were in the heart of the hard wheat district of the northwest, the section conceded by all experts to produce some of the finest wheat grown anywhere in the world.

Growth of Capacity

From this small beginning, with a daily capacity of 225 barrels, the Russell-Miller Milling Co. now owns twelve flour mills with a combined daily capacity of over 16,000 barrels of flour and 600 tons of feed.

Storage of 17,000,000 Bushels

In order to provide an ample reserve storage of wheat to keep the quality of Occident Flour constantly uniform, the Russell-Miller Milling Co. has one hundred and forty elevators situated at advantageious points throughout selected wheat sections of North Dakota and Eastern Montana, three huge terminal elevators which have facilities for storing 12,000,000 bushels. Combining this immense terminal elevator capacity with the 4,000,000 bushel capacity of the country elevators and the elevators attached to country mills (capacity, 1,000,000 bushels), the company has equipment for storage of 17,000,000 bushels.

The Occident mills operate on one standard of uniformity. Every bushel of wheat is put through special equipment that not only washes each kernel--but actually scours it as well!"

In the early 1950s F. H. Peavey & Company, headquartered in Minneapolis, purchased Russell Miller Milling and its 140 country elevators, terminals, and flour mills. The company was renamed as the Peavey Company in 1962. The Peavey Company was acquired by ConAgra, Inc. in 1982. ConAgra is now the largest U.S. flour miller.

This small cookbook contains 46 recipes for yeast breads, quick breads, cakes and icings, cookies, pastries and desserts. It's illustrated with black and white photos with three extra pages of step-by-step illustrations and some smaller black and white photos describing an easy method of baking bread, how to make a cake quickly and easily, and pie baking in a nutshell.