The Oregonian

By Special to The Oregonian 

For the past five years, bakers, millers, farmers and oven crafters have converged on Skowhegan, Maine, (somewhat near the other Portland) for its annual Kneading Conference and Artisan Bread Fair. Enterprising residents there are reviving regional wheat cultivation and are once again, more than a century later, starting to grind flour (at a gristmill in an erstwhile jail) in this mill town. Vermont-based King Arthur Flour, which gets most of its premium wheat from Kansas, has nonetheless signed on as the conference’s lead sponsor.It’s a sign of the re-decentralization of grain cultivation catching on nationwide. Such commodities used to be blind spots of the locavore movement, which mostly accepted that, just as with imported coffee and chocolate, only the amber waves of the Midwest plains could yield bread wheat with the right high-protein, low-moisture profile.