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| The Research Association of British Flour Millers was founded in 1923 to carry out scientific research that would benefit the UK flour milling industry. The Association was based at the Cereals Research Station on Old London Road, St Albans; in the Millers’ Mutual Association Collection at the Mills Archive we hold plans for the 1925 construction of the station, along with those made for an extension of the premises in 1958. Initially, the Association was also connected to a small ‘demonstration’ flour mill, New Barnes Mill, Sopwell, St Albans, but the mill was sold in 1936 and, thereafter, research was tested in the members’ own mills. |
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| Bag of National Flour from Bell Mills, Driffield – EIGH-15-02 |
| Prior to the Second World War, the Association was primarily concerned with problems involved in the enrichment of white flour, but during the War, white bread became unavailable and the wholemeal ‘National Loaf’ was the only form of bread which could legally be sold. The Association, now under government control, concentrated its efforts on the problems raised by the milling, storage and vitamin content of ‘National Flour,’ along with the tricky question of how much barley, maize or potato could be included whilst still producing a result that looked like bread (however unappetising). |
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| Experiment into methods of stacking corn, Portobello, Edinburgh, 1953. |
| After the War, the public were eager to enjoy white bread again. This resulted in a controversy over the health benefits of brown vs white bread; the Association presented the case for white flour, enriched with vitamins and iron, as an equally healthy alternative to wholemeal. In 1967, the Association merged with its equivalent in the baking industry, forming the Flour Milling and Baking Research Association (FMBRA). The baking research association had been established in 1949 at Chorleywood Lodge, Hertfordshire, and this was extended to accommodate the new, larger, combined association. It was here that the Chorleywood Bread Process was developed in the 1960s, a new method of high-speed dough production which transformed the baking industry. The original laboratories in St Albans were closed and eventually demolished in 1988 to make way for housing. |
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| Images from the ‘British Baker’ journal, transferred to the Mills Archive from the Campden BRI library in 2024. |
| In 1995, the FMBRA merged with the Campden Food and Drink Research Association. The organisation, now called Campden BRI, is based at Chipping Campden on the site of an old mill, and carries out a wide variety of research for the food and drink industry. On a visit last year, I was privileged to participate in a tour around the various laboratories, and to see the many types of (extremely expensive) scientific equipment that are used to carry out tests on food. It was amazing to discover just how much research goes into precisely determining the most desirable qualities – size, flavour, thickness, crumbliness, etc. – of the products that we all buy week by week at the supermarket. |
| Readers’ comments |
| Bob Eden has sent us these photos of a beautiful model made by Dan Swindell. Bob has been researching the site of the Raven Inn at Glazebury, Cheshire, and has concluded that a corn mill originally stood here. The model shows what this mill, called ‘Lyttyl Mylle’ in a 1542 lease, may have looked like. |
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