Pacific Northwestern Regional Cookery: Wheat and Bread

The settlers missed bread more than any other food and pleaded for merchants to increase the supply of flour. Although by 1846 wheat had become a major crop in the Pacific Northwest, the large influx of immigrants, plus the orders coming from those participating in the California gold rush of 1849, meant supply could not keep up with demand. For homeowners, planting wheat and building a gristmill were as important as constructing a house. Rebecca Ebey, who came to the Northwest in 1853, recorded in her diary that “a grist mill there [Coveland on Whidbey Island, Washington] will be a great advantage … and our farmers have some wheat coming on, and will be able before another year to make their own bread in place of having to bring it from California and pay twenty dollars per hundred for it.”