Flames filled the structure in the photo a friend sent.

News of the fire at the Pendleton flour mill followed.

My response: shock and sadness to see this over 100-year-old landmark structure in flames. A thankful note — no injuries reported.

I recall my visit to the flour mill years ago. At that time, the mill accommodated retail customers. I was deep into my interest about wheat, grains in general, and bread baking. At the mill office, I met a staff person I considered the ultimate expert on wheat flour. The list of available flours included several different blends just for making bagels.

I learned about hard red winter wheat (good for breads), white spring wheat (grown in the Northwest) and durum wheat (grown in Montana and popular for making noodles and pasta).

Pallets held sacks with a variety of flours. After getting a shrink-wrapped covering, the bundles of flour were loaded into railroad cars — the train tracks visible in photos of the flaming mill.

At the mill, I chose flour blends to purchase. The trunk of my car sagged when I left. Later I heard that the mill stopped selling retail. Perhaps it was a time issue — customers mulling over sacks of grain like shoppers debating additions to their summer wardrobes.

My earlier interest in wheat and bread-baking developed when our children still lived at home. My goal: fix tasty, nutritious meals, and bake wholesome bread for the family, the aroma of loaves fresh from the oven pulling the family together at the kitchen table.

My first attempts at bread baking — the bread possessed the texture and taste of hockey pucks. Skilled bakers offered me baking tips. I didn’t get the hang of baking bread until a friend shared an instruction sheet put out by a yeast company of how to bake bread complete with ink-drawn illustrations and time-worn enough that the stove pictured was a wood-burning model.

I needed more practice. I wasn’t working outside the home. New goal: bake all the bread and grain products for our family of seven children for a year. That included many types of breads, muffins, cakes, calzones, noodles, etc. My bread never advanced to county fair, blue ribbon status. I shifted to attainable goals — no one eating our meals or my bread developed scurvy, rickets, etc.

Through the years, I paid more attention to flour products on trips on my VLB (very low budget) travel plan. In Finland, a family farmhouse still stands. A Swedish-speaking great-grandmother baked her rye bread in a wood-burning brick oven. The flat loaves, with a center hole about the size of a donut, were strung on wooden poles that nestled in ceiling-high wooden slots.

In a rural village in Italy, a mother and adult daughter served up the finest pizza from a wood-fired brick oven. A Hungarian homemaker gave me a lesson on spaetzle, the noodle dough shaved through what looked like an over-sized carrot grater.

This week, with the flour mill fire on my mind, I pulled out ingredients to concoct an original bread to honor the Pendleton flour mill.

Disclaimer: Should there be an unintentional error in the above, the author notes that the “original recipe dough” she vigorously kneaded turned out to be the size of an overinflated basketball. By the time the author finished kneading, she may have developed low oxygen levels impacting cognition.