140 YEARS OLD AND STILL GOING STRONG
30 July 2007 00:00
We are thrilled to say that Wright's are 140 years old this year, having established ourselves here at Ponders End Mills in 1867. Over the years we have been working 24 hours a day, milling to produce a wide variety of quality flours and mixes. It's our bread and cake mixes that you probably know the best, these include mixes for Ciabatta, Cheese & Onion, Mixed Grain, Parmesan & Sundried Tomato, Premium White, and Sunflower to name a few. Our cake mixes are available in Ginger, Carrot, Toffee, Madeira and Chocolate Fudge. All work wonderfully in your oven at home or bread making machine. We supply these to many supermarkets along with our own successful mail order service here at the mill.
We also produce a wide variety of trade products, which include white, brown and wholemeal flours, malted flours, flour for pizza, soda bread, naan bread and pitta bread. As well as flour for doughnuts, noodles, focaccia and we produce five types of chapatti flour all from this historic site.
Whilst we are working on our next free recipe book, due to be with you just after Christmas, we though we would share our anniversary with you along with news that our Home Baking Club, which you have helped to create, is also 10 years old now.
We have enjoyed much publicity in our 140th year. We are delighted that both Oliver Rowe, The Urban Chef and Stuart Gillies of The Great British Menu have selected us as their chosen flour miller.
Oliver Rowe will source only food supplies within the area covered by the London Underground for his new Konstam restaurant, at the Prince Albert near King's Cross, London. As London's only mill we were the "Wright" choice.
Jenny Bond, on the Great British Menu programme said "Stuart naturally wants the very finest flour he can find. As it happens, he didn't have to venture far as Wright's mill is in Enfield". Stuart Gillies was creating the golden pastry for his pea and leek tarts with glazed asparagus and herb salad, his signature starter against Chef, Atul Kochhar. Stuart runs Gordon Ramsay's Boxwood Café and has made many television appearances.
Of course, many of you in the London area will recall the feature on ITV's London Tonight programme. For those of you who missed it - the link is available for viewing on our new web site (for more information please see below) just click on "film" and you can enjoy a rare view of the inside and outside of our mill and the various interviews.
Apart from the occasional film crew visiting our historic site, we recently had a visit by local farmers. We at Wright's try wherever possible to use local wheat, as we are conscious of our carbon footprint. We have even been awarded with an enterprise award for our use of English wheats. The Farmers were amazed at the premium quality of the end product and most impressed with the quality control throughout our mill. After the tour they fully appreciated the great pains we go to in selecting only the very best grain for our flours.
When our founder, George Wright first came to Ponders End Mill some 140 years ago, he established a simple business principle - products which were to bear his name would be made with only the finest ingredients. Four generations later, this principle is still being followed by his great, great grandson David Wright.
We think George would be pleased with the development here at the mill, but wonder what he would make of some of our speciality bread mixes such as Garlic & Rosemary Focaccia? He would surely enjoy the cake mixes we produce - don't we all? The type of top quality baker's flour he once produced is still milled for bakeries throughout the UK and used as the base flour in our Premium White and other popular bread mixes.
We have completed the development of two new Wright's products namely Oat & Linseed and Malt & Seedy bread mixes. The healthy new duo are ideal for use by hand or in a bread making machine. As soon as we obtain a stockist for these very new products, we will keep you informed via our monthly newsletter and news page on our web site - it's all "Wright" good, healthy news for you fresh bread lovers!
Unfortunately, ASDA will no longer be stocking our products after August 2007. If you are an Asda shopper and unhappy about our products no longer being available in your local store, you may like to draw this to the attention of Asda's customer services department.
We are obviously very saddened by the decision as we were very proud, as a small company, providing a quality product with good service for some 10 years to such a large organisation.
As Enfield's oldest business, Claire and I recently attended The Palace Gardens Festival in Enfield Town with celebrity chef, Richard Cawley. We all enjoyed talking to local people about our popular products and our lovely old mill here at Ponders End - Richard enjoyed shouting out how old we were during his demonstration!
Wright's attend many county shows throughout the year. These are published on our web site and regularly featured in our monthly newsletter, sent via e-mail.
All good wishes, Deb the Bread