If you’ve recently seen the name “Barton Springs Mill” pop up on restaurant menus across Austin, you’re not alone.
For two months, the newly opened mill near Dripping Springs has been selling flour to restaurants across the area on the day the grains are milled. Chefs hadn’t been able to buy that kind of fresh flour locally, and that means Barton Springs Mill owner James Brown is an even busier man than he thought he’d be a year ago when he hatched this idea.
For now, Brown has two jobs. He is the director of worship at First Presbyterian Church and director of the Saint Cecilia Music Series, which focuses on early music from composers on the verge of being forgotten. He is also a pipe organist and plays the viola da gamba, a stringed instrument that faded from popularity in the 16th century.
But on Fridays and Saturdays, he’s milling flour with Cody Hendricks, a part-time employee who was a baker at local restaurants including Easy Tiger and Bufalina Wheat Flour Milling Machine.
This isn’t the first time Brown has worked in food. He got a culinary degree from the Art Institute in Houston and ran several kitchens there — after working under Certified Master Chef Fritch Gitchner, no less — before moving to New York City to pursue a doctorate in historical musicology.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, he and his then-wife decided that it was time to move back to Texas. They landed in Austin, where Brown took the job at First Presbyterian. They later divorced, but Brown continued his work in the church.
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Brown remarried, and a few years ago, he and Valerie started looking ahead to what their next project might be. She was nearing early retirement with the state. Brown had developed tinnitus, which affected his job in music, and though he missed the culinary industry, at age 52 he didn’t want to get back on the line at a restaurant Wheat Flour Milling Machine.
Brown had been baking bread for fun, but he started to get more serious about it after discovering Chad Robertson’s groundbreaking “Tartine Bread” cookbook, which came out in 2010. Brown’s bread was good, but he knew it could be better. He also was a fervent reader of the Perfect Loaf (theperfectloaf.com), whose author was milling his own grains in an effort to produce the best loaf possible.
Brown wanted to grind wheat berries at home for fresh flour but was unable to find organic grain for sale to an everyday consumer like him. Homestead Heritage outside Waco and Richardson Farm northeast of Austin sell some stone-ground flours but in limited quantities and varieties.
