Flour mills
A flour mill is the factory where wheat is turned into flour. Heir to the mills of old, it embodies a little-known corner of French industrial heritage — and many are now living a second life.
History of milling in France
From water and wind mills to industrial flour mills: two thousand years of wheat, millstones and bread, up to the milling sector of today.
From wheat to flour: the stages of milling
Cleaning, conditioning, grinding, bolting: the precise path of the wheat grain to flour, stage by stage, in a modern mill.
Flour types: T45, T55, T65, T80, T110, T150
What French flour types mean (T45, T55, T65, T80, T110, T150), how they are measured, and how to choose them.
Mills turned into gîtes
Why and how former flour mills become holiday cottages: architectural assets, technical constraints and the concrete stages of a conversion project.
The Vendée, land of flour mills
The Vendée, one of France's great milling regions: over 2,000 mills in 1809, the Rairé windmill and the Maison de la Meunerie.
Brittany, land of tide mills
Brittany and its tide mills: the Morbihan counts around fifty of them, from the first 6th-century structure to the restored mills of the Rance and the Gulf of Morbihan.
Normandy, from Cotentin windmills to gîtes
The windmills of the Cotentin, the Fierville-les-Mines mill (1744) and conversion into gîtes: Normandy, a milling land between bocage and coast.
Alsace, from water mills to the Grands Moulins of Strasbourg
Alsace and its water mills: no wind, but the power of the Ill, and the Grands Moulins of Strasbourg, a flour mill since 1865.
Northern France, cradle of industrial milling
The Lille basin and the great industrial mills of northern France: the Grands Moulins de Paris at Marquette-lez-Lille, the Lille milling company and the port of Dunkirk.