One bite of Four and Twenty Blackbirds’ plum buckwheat streusel pie shook my pie opinions to their core. Before that bite, I never really cared about plum pie, but this was no ordinary plum pie: the grassy, earthy buckwheat perfectly cut through the caramelized ooze of plum juice. It felt like a pie I could eat for breakfast—which is exactly what I did.
Pie crusts are typically made with white flour, sugar, salt, and some kind of fat. People will fight relentlessly about the fat source (just try and convince a shortening devotee to switch to butter), but basically nobody has a favorite flour. Now, flour is getting its turn in the spotlight, as bakeries across the country partner with local grain mills to create desserts that put flour at center stage.
At New York’s Great Northern Food Hall, locally grown heirloom grains form flaky rye croissants and hefty loaves of corn sourdough bread. Down in D.C., newcomer whole-grain bakery Seylou is busy milling local heritage grains on-site. And in Los Angeles, Seed Bakery is milling grains from several independent Northern California farmers in-house to make buckwheat pear pancakes, kamut flour brioches, and maple syrup rye Danishes. “Using whole grain flour gives us a window to create amazing, tasty pastries not based on sugar solely,” says baker Hedy Bela.
Bela is one of many bakers drawn to the health benefits of alternative flours like buckwheat, spelt, and rye. This interest is fueling a burgeoning market for local grain, creating new partnerships between farmers, millers, and bakers. The buckwheat and rye streusel toppings found at Brooklyn-based Four and Twenty Blackbirds are the handiwork of assistant kitchen manager Kristina Razon, who developed her local grain knowledge when pursuing a Master of Science in Sustainable Food Systems from Green Mountain College.
Razon first began testing alternative flour crust recipes when doing research for her capstone project A Guide to Northeast Grains, and found that buckwheat and rye worked especially well in streusel toppings. Razon’s experiments were inspired not only by her passion for ancient grains, but also by a desire to celebrate the local grain community. Four and Twenty Blackbirds sources their flour from Farmer Ground Flour, a micro-mill Razon connected with while writing A Guide to Northeast Grains. “Using local flours is taking care of your community, the local economy, and the environment,” Razon says.
The American milling industry is consolidated and controlled by a few corporate mills that work with faceless farmers, but Farmer Ground Flour is a farmer-owned, farmer-grown operation. They farm 1,200 acres of certified organic heritage grains, then use pink granite millstones to create the ultra fresh flour that makes that addictive buckwheat streusel.
Here are five more regional grain mills supporting sustainable food systems, preserving American agricultural diversity, and introducing some seriously delicious flour flavors.
Hayden Flour Mills (Arizona) Hayden Flour Mills has been hand-cultivating heritage grains on the same land for over 100 years. The family-run mill has an uniquely eclectic online shop, which offers heritage flour crackers and Tibetan purple barley flour pancake mix in addition to more standard flours.
Bluebird Grain Farms (Washington) This plow-to-package grain farm operates under an exclusively organic system, planting cover crops like buckwheat and clover to increase soil fertility. They are especially notable for growing rare niche grains, from heritage dark Northern rye to their trademarked Einka farro.
Anson Mills (South Carolina) Anson Mills is revitalizing niche species of heirloom Antebellum sweet mill corn in the American South – and prompting a new generation of chefs to fall in love with grits. Cornmeal is key here, but lesser-known colonial crops like sea island red peas are also sold wholesale.
Grist and Toll (California) Urban flour mills are rare, but Grist and Toll is producing whole-grain milled local flour and teaching bread baking workshops less than ten miles from the heart of downtown Los Angeles. The mill is a vocal champion of the California Grain Campaign, a movement to have all of the state’s farmers market vendors using 20% locally-grown, whole-grain flour in their products by 2020.
Maine Grains (Maine) Maine Grains has turned a defunct county jail into a hub for Maine’s sustainable food community. The gristmill sources grain from local farmers to create some of the region’s best stone-ground flours, proving the rye flour for Tandem Bakery’s addictive frangipane tarts and quinoa fruit crisps.