Original White Lily Flour Plant Closes: The Geography of Taste
The news hit me like a ton of grits.
Smuckers, the company that bought the White Lily flour company, is closing the White Lily plant in Knoxville, Tennessee, at the end of the month. After that, White Lily will only be made at two plants in the midwest. According to the company, the While Lily flour produced at the two new plants is indistinguishable from the old.
A.) I'm sure that's not true.
B.) The product itself is not what's at stake here.
To every Southern baker I know, White Lily is synonymous with the South. It represents the soul of Southern baking tradition. Move White Lily out of the South? That's insane. That would be like moving Kossar's Bialys from Manhattan's Lower East Side to Manhattan, Kansas, or moving Tabasco Sauce production from Avery Island, Louisiana, to Santa Fe, or Gallo Wine from California to Salt Lake City. There's physical and geographical terroir, which the Washington Post's Jane Black describes as "a French term that literally translates as terrain but has come to mean the way foods and wine express the soil, climate, culture, and tradition of a region," and then there's the emotionally resonant aspects of terroir, which are in fact even more important.
The company claims it's the same product. A couple of award-wining Southern bakers and one baker, best-selling author, and food expert, Shirley Corriher, author of Cookwise, beg to differ.
They tried the new White Lily and found it somewhat different, if not radically different.
Would it have killed Smucker's to keep the plant in Knoxville? If the company would have asked me, I would have told it to open a grand Southern bakery right next door, a kind of Southern baking museum, and have people like the Magnolia Grill's Karen Barker and Watershed Restaurant chef and partner Scott Peacock function as baking consultants and curators. Make the White Lily plant into a tourist attraction featuring a restaurant with the world's greatest biscuits.
But you know what, serious eaters? The J. M. Smucker Company didn't ask me, and I'm sure that even if it did, anything I would have said or done wouldn't have made any difference whatsoever. I can only hope that if and when Thomas' English Muffins' parent company buys Kossar's Bialys, they leave Kossar's right where it belongs, on Grand Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side, where it's been forever.
Serious eaters, I feel this way about bialys. What local foodstuff, product, or ingredient in your neck of the woods needs to be protected?
Related
They Are Changing My Favorite Flour — Help!
Goodbye Local Flour [A Little Knoxvillian]
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7 Comments:
I can't really think of anything that belongs so distinctly to my state that it should be produced here exclusively, but I do agree with you about White Lily. It's a brand that's synonymous with Southern baking. Your idea for a baking mecca in Knoxville is a great one...I'd go.
I've been following the J M Smucker Company's acquisitions since 2004. Most people would be surprised at the brands they've acquired. They recently bought the Knott's brand from ConAgra, as well as Folger's from P&G.
After reading your post, I did some research and found it interesting that they're building a new Smucker's plant in Kentucky, keeping production of their original brand in close proximity to its roots in Ohio. Seems a little ironic.Uprooting White Lily from the South is the domestic/regional version of outsourcing, a dirty word in my dictionary.
holdthemayo at 9:42AM on 06/23/08
I've been just heartsick about Knoxville losing the White Lily mill. As a Northerner who goes South once a year, I was always excited to bring back my White Lily flour. Why can't food products be declared of National historic value?
Your idea was fabulous. I'd go too. Maybe Scott Peacock could buy the mill to have flour made to his specs. I'd buy Peacock flour : )
aharste at 10:26AM on 06/23/08
I just read the recent Gourmet issue that focused on Southern food, and the first thing I thought about when I read the headline was "What will Scott Peacock use to make his biscuits, now?" He (and, as you noted, many others) use White Lily exclusively to make their amazing biscuits. What a bummer.
I can't think of any specific local foods that need protection, but I do still have palpitations when I think about the honey bees disappearing. =(
OneWallKitchen at 11:17AM on 06/23/08
White Lily isn't the only, or even the best Southern flour. I've been mail-ordering for years from Weisenberger Mills, a family-owned, century-old water mill in Midway, Kentucky - if there are better biscuits than those made with Weisenberger flour, I have yet to taste them. The grits aren't sad either.
www.weisenberger.com
condiment at 12:43PM on 06/23/08
I am from the North and have never heard of White Lily, however, reading the article made me sad, because it is an example of how food traditions are so easily destroyed by the actions of corporate interests. I really think that you are onto something, Aharste, with your idea of declaring foods of National historic value. Slow Food is a great organization, but we do need government protection as well.
sophia kitchencaravan at 3:27PM on 06/23/08
This would be akin to moving Jiffy from Chelsea, Mi where they have been milling the wheat and corn used in their mixes for over 120 years. Ironically, I was thinking about the conglomerates destroying regional foods today and this article just made me sadder....
Yes, protection of regional brands needs to be addressed.
breadchick at 4:19PM on 06/23/08
When they stopped distributing White Lily west of wherever, I resorted to stuffing 10 lbs or so in my carry-on whenever we visited Nashville, and bribing visiting Tennesseans to bring some with them. And now even that won't work!
Smucker's was always a trusted name around our house, but that just got blown to hell. My only reason to visit their website now is to see what other brands they own, so I can stop buying all of them. And I will.
willowen at 5:26PM on 06/23/08