A BAKER'S FIELD FAN SHARES THE BREAD LOVE IN NEW HOPE

Happy stories are welcome here. A customer recently contacted us to see how big a bag of flour we might sell her. She had been having a tricky time finding bread flour on grocery store shelves, but she had a big plan.  

She would bake bread for a few of her neighbors. Then, along with her toddler son, they’d distribute the bread on their morning walk using a “ding-dong-ditch” method in order to keep social distancing. They included a note explaining the system and asking for the neighbors to pay it forward and to nominate someone else in the neighborhood to receive a freshly baked loaf of bread.

She wrote to us that: “It is my hope that this will help brighten the days of my neighbors who are struggling with finances or loneliness.”

Her plan to bake-it-forward brightened our day, too.

Thanksgiving at the Bakery

I think most bakers anticipate the holiday season with both excitement and dread. Excitement because the holidays mean we make fun seasonal products and because the energy of the whole season is contagious. Dread because making seasonal products simply means making and doing more. Give bakers a hug during this time of year. We are usually working long hours!

But it is seasons like this that remind me of the reasons I love to bake professionally. Putting a pie on your Thanksgiving table gives me joy. It’s a treat to make the only naturally leavened stollen in town. I love imagining all of your gatherings with our holiday cookies present. So thank you, Baker’s FIeld customer, for choosing to add us to your holiday tables. 

Here’s what we’re mixing up for you this Thanksgiving: three varieties of 9-inch pies. First, a classic apple pie that is made all the more special because we cook down the apple peels and cores, and use the juice they create in the pie. Second, a cranberry pie. Yes, you read that right: a cranberry pie with no other fruit present. We think this pie is special. It’s both tart and sweet, and the texture is a delight. Last, our honey pie, made with Skinny Jake’s honey. Some of Skinny Jake’s hives sit on the roof of our building! The honey pie is custard-like, and that honey flavor shines.

As always, we’re also making our classic squash rolls. We roast real squash for these babies. The squash gets added to the dough, along with sourdough starter, maple syrup, and butter. They are soft, flavorful, and definitely should be present at your Thanksgiving.

You can order ALL of these items online. Or, feel free to stop by Kieran’s Kitchen here in Northeast to place an order in person. We’ll have pickup available for Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Email us at contact@bakersfieldflour.com with any questions!

--Baker Hannah

Summer is Pie Time: 6 tips from Steve for home pie bakers

6 tips from Steve for home pie bakers

1. Get the best ingredients you can find. This does not necessarily mean the most expensive or difficult to come by. Rather, consider if the ingredients for the pie you want to make are available. A blueberry pie in August is very different than one made in January using commercially frozen berries.

2. No matter whether you prefer lard or butter (or a combination), do cultivate strong opinions about the flavors of products on supermarket shelves. I prefer richer butters (high butter fat content—like 83%). For lard users, find leaf lard (it refers to a specific area of the pig where the fat originates from), as it makes the crust more tender, more flaky and extensible to roll out. Local butchers can be a great source (or a grocery store with a strong meat department).

3. When I make pie crust, I hold back 20% of the flour that is called for initially. Then I mix the flour, salt, sugar, and incorporate the fat (by hand with a pastry cutter or with a food processor). Then, I add the remaining flour. Finally, I add ice water slowly, until the dough is combined but not tacky to the touch. My Grandma Gwen would think I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind you to have really, really, cold fat.

4. Don’t accidentally dilute your fruit. When fruit is wet, it upsets the balance of sugar and salt, and leads to bland flavor. Thoroughly dry fruit in a clean kitchen towel. If using defrosted frozen fruit, allow it to drain for several hours, and also dry it as completely as possible.

5. One of the things I always recommend in baking is using scales instead of cups and teaspoons. Baking by weight allows for consistency, and baking by volume is far less accurate. Because numbers accuracy matters. :) 

6. Pie is personal. There is no one right way to make a pie. If you like a double crust, go for it, if you like a shiny crust, brush with egg wash or milk, if you like a Dutch crumb, add one. Well, there may not actually be a single way to make great pie, but using Baker’s Field Flour and Bread pastry flour, is a head-start toward an excellent pie (find it in your local co-ops).

Have questions? Ask them over on our Facebook page

Meet Bakers Patrick and Siri

I feel lucky to be a part of a good team here at Baker’s Field. I know people often say they like their co-workers or claim to be happy at work and don’t necessarily mean it wholeheartedly. But I really do mean it! The level of commitment, care, and enthusiasm at BFFB is real.

Today I thought I’d feature two of our bakers. To me, bakers are interesting humans. We wake up early (in our case, we start at 4:30am, late for a baker!). We spend all day doing physical work that is extremely repetitive. We often stand together at a table for the entire day -- folding dough, dividing dough, shaping dough. Repetitive, hard work requires teamwork, getting along, and a specific type of person.

So, who are the bakers of BFFB?

Meet Patrick and Siri. Patrick grew up outside Chicago. BFFB is Patrick’s first professional baking job. Actually, it’s his first kitchen job ever. Prior to BFFB, Patrick was an extremely dedicated home baker, and he’s turned into a skilled professional baker. Siri grew up in Iowa and has worked in various kitchens in various states. Siri is the talented mind behind Baker’s Field pies, and a lover of testing new products. Here’s more from both of them.

 Favorite thing about working at Baker’s Field:

Patrick: “The crazy days when everyone works together to get everything accomplished as a team.”

Siri: “I love working on a team of individuals who all share a passion for what we do. I also love working the oven, scoring and baking loaves.”

 
Least favorite thing about working at Baker’s Field:

Patrick: “Making mistakes on the oven (not scoring a loaf, over/under proofing, burning a loaf, leaving dampers open).”

Siri: “My least favorite part of being a professional baker is working in an industry that is greatly undervalued by most.”

Favorite bread?

Patrick: “Filone, especially the top part while it’s still warm, or alongside soup.”

Siri: “I love our filone, freshly baked/toasted, with lots of butter.”

How do you spend your time outside of work?

Patrick: “More baking, walking dogs, playing guitar, running.”

Siri: “I like to draw and practice my other crafts/skills, watch movies, dig in the garden, and bake/read about food science.”

Thanks, Siri and Patrick!

-- Baker Hannah

A Recipe: No-Knead Bread with BFFB Flour

At Baker's Field, we don't use commercial yeast. By "commercial yeast," I mean yeast you buy at the store, usually in little packets. Two of the most common types of commercial yeast are active dry yeast and instant yeast. Most bakeries and home bakers use commercial yeast -- it's predictable and easy to use. Bread made with commercial yeast works fast -- you can mix a dough, and bam, you’re eating bread a few hours later.

We opted out of this quick, easy to use product and instead chose to create naturally leavened bread, which means we make our own yeast using bacteria from the flour and the air. In other words, we use a sourdough starter in our dough.

We love the complications of working with naturally leavened dough -- there are a couple more steps and adjustments throughout the process. The flavor is elevated. It's all very natural. However, last month we had some bakers visiting Baker's Field. These bakers use commercial yeast and wanted to play around with making baguettes and ciabatta with commercial yeast. This got me thinking that likely many of our customers are using commercial yeast at home, and that perhaps those customers would like a recipe to use with our flour. Anyone out there screaming, yes, pleeaassee?!

Well, your calls have been answered! With you, our customers, in mind, I made the much talked about no-knead bread at home. I wanted to make the bread at home (versus the bakery) to get the full home baker experience. I used our sifted bread flour (obviously!), with the goal of adjusting the recipe to work with fresh flour. If you’re a dedicated reader, you already know that working with fresh flour is different than working with industrial flour.

So, here’s my tip for making no-knead bread at home with Baker’s Field Flour: add more water than the recipe calls for.

The no-knead recipe calls for 300 grams flour and 210 grams water. I added 300 grams water to my mix. The dough was indeed quite wet and hydrated, but I simply folded the dough after half an hour to add a little strength, and the finished product looked (and tasted) great. If you’re wary of working with a very wet dough, you could add 270 grams water instead.

You can find the no-knead recipe here. https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/06/better-no-knead-bread-recipe.html

As always, feel free to email me with questions: hannah@bakersfieldflour.com
-- Baker Hannah

Meet Our Local Partner: Skinny Jake's Fat Honey

We talk all the time about how we use local grain and fresh flour to make our bread. I hope that by now you know that our grain comes from the Upper Midwest. But just in case you don’t know, I’ll say it again: Baker’s Field grain is grown in Minnesota and North Dakota.

But I’m here today to tell you that here at Baker’s Field, we don’t just stop with the grain. Seriously, I was so excited when the bakery first opened to see how high-quality and locally-focused our ingredients are. Trust me when I say that this is a rarity. Today I want to talk about one of our local partners:

Jake Kulju of Skinny Jake’s Fat Honey.

We use Jake’s honey in our Goodwich sandwich bread. It is one of my favorite ingredients in the bakery. Jake delivers his honey in 5-gallon buckets. Jake’s floral honey is thick, amber liquid gold, and when we bakers scale the Goodwich, we get the treat of handling this gift of a product.

I love what Jake has to say about beekeeping: “My favorite thing about beekeeping is the space it creates for the poetry and practicality to meet and create something better than either one can create on its own. The best things in life are fueled by romance and steered by utility, and beekeeping is just like that. There is the beauty and poetry of the beehive, like a beating heart or a breathing lung that expands bees into the atmosphere and contracts nectar and pollen and honey into its center. There is also the necessity of good beekeeping practices to help them overwinter, defend themselves from mite and viral infestations, and sustainably harvest and process honey while leaving them enough to feed themselves and thrive. In that way I think beekeeping is truly a craft. It requires trust in the nebulous process of art, and dedication to the development of a practical and useful skill set.”

So, thank you, Jake, for your craft. Customers, now you know what you’re getting in our Goodwich sandwich bread! Also if you want to buy some Skinny Jake to use at home, check out his website, http://skinnyjakesfathoney.com/ for details about where you can buy his product. Pro tip: Jake’s favorite way to use his honey at home is for “baking and stirred into tea or coffee. I like to eat honey in ways that maintain its aromatic integrity, and these are the best ways to consume it for its flavor, in my opinion.”

Lastly, here’s the scoop: come summer, Jake will be keeping some of his hives on the roof above Baker’s Field. How’s that for local?

--Baker Hannah

Valentine’s Day Orders & Meet Our Local Partner: Serious Jam

I know that my co-workers are rolling their eyes at my love for Valentine’s Day. It was my idea a few winters ago to sell our cookies in heart shapes for Valentine's (not an original idea, I know!), and I still feel a whirl of excitement when we get to take out those heart-shaped cutters. It’s time, people!

 This year, Valentine’s Day is getting more and more fun. You can visit our online shop for the deets on our special Valentine’s items (orders must be placed by February 10th). We’re making chocolate cherry bread! Chocolate rye cookies! Lemon tea cake! Annndddd linzer cookies cut into hearts!!

 My love of hearts aside, the best part about the linzers is that this year, they will be filled with Serious Jam, made locally by Heidi Skoog. (Obviously, we’re using raspberry jam since it had to be red.) We’re so excited to be using Heidi’s product, so I thought I’d take a minute to introduce you.

 Heidi sources as much fruit as she can locally, focusing on organic and sustainable farms. This past year, around 85% of the fruit was local! Pretty impressive, I think.

 Heidi has been preserving food for as long as she can remember. She got hooked on jam when she and her husband picked way too many strawberries for two people. “I decided to make jam (strawberry, balsamic, black pepper) and gave it away to my friends. They loved it and kept pushing me to make more and come up with more flavors. So I did, and here we are!”

 I could tell that Heidi loves what she does when I asked her what her favorite jam is: “My favorite jam to make and eat is Violette Plum. I LOVE plums and it’s taken me a few years to find a plum farm, but I finally have one.  Last summer I had between 6-9 varieties of plums - from these tart little yellow ones, to this variety called 'Elephant Heart' which is the darkest of reds and so sweet. I toss them with sugar and let them sit for a few hours to release their juice, and slowly cook them into a lovely silky jam. I use a Violette Liqueur to finish because it adds just a bit of floral scent to the mix, and the end product is a perfect balance of sweet, tart, and floral. Spooned on to a buttered piece of toast or over ice cream and I’m a very happy girl.”

 Pure love right there, folks! Enjoy those linzers, and don’t forget to place an order for Valentine’s Day treats!

--Baker Hannah

Fresh Flour at Local Restaurants

Here at Baker’s Field Flour and Bread, we fire up our flour mill around 4am and then usually mill for the next 7 to 10 hours. On average, we mill around 900 pounds of flour a day. The baker scaling flour for the next day’s dough mix uses flour milled just hours before it’s scaled -- sometimes it’s even still warm from the mill! Our packaging team starts scooping and weighing flour late in the morning, again using flour milled that day. When we say fresh flour, we mean fresh flour.

As you (hopefully!) know, we sell flour directly to our customers through many of the local food co-ops and our online shop. For bulk flour orders, we are also happy to offer pick-up from the bakery. But today I’d like to focus on the restaurants who buy flour from us. We feel lucky to have these partners who value our local, fresh product -- we are also in awe of how skillfully they use our flour.

At Spoon and Stable in the North Loop in Minneapolis, Executive Chef Christopher Nye says he uses Baker’s Field flour because “It’s the freshest flour we can get our hands on….the fresher the flour, the better the flavor.” He also values local: “We are big on sourcing locally and since all of the grains you mill are from the Dakota's or Minnesota, that gives us great pride in knowing that we are support the local community.”

The restaurant uses our sifted Bolles flour in their pasta. Says Chris, “One of the biggest challenges in pasta making is texture. That is why you see so much pasta made with Durum wheat. Durum wheat has a very high percentage of protein, somewhere around 13%. Now finding organic durum (we only use organic grains) is very challenging. We discovered Bolles wheat and have now become very dependent on it as a source of proteins in our pasta doughs.”

In addition to pasta, Spoon and Stable also makes daily bread with Baker’s Field flour. They also use the middlings we remove from the wheat when we are sifting flour. Every day, we have anywhere from 50 to 150 pounds of middlings. Spoon & Stable uses these middlings as you would cornmeal to make their EPI bread, which is a baguette cut into a shape that resembles a wheat stalk.

The Bachelor Farmer in the North Loop is another regular customer. They bake with our whole grain flour in their naturally leavened house bread. You’ll find our sifted flour in their ham and cheese and chocolate croissants and blueberry scones. The Pastry Chef at The Bachelor Farmer, Emily Marks, says that the flour “pairs well with the flavors of the other ingredients and adds a more hearty background flavor to the pastries.”

Of course, many other restaurants in town order our flour. If you’re interested in a complete list, visit our website. We’d love if you continued to support these establishments that believe in supporting local. In the meantime, thank you for reading and loving fresh flour as much as we do!

--Baker Hannah

Hello, Again!

Well, the holidays are over, and we bakers are catching up on sleep and settling into winter. The holidays at a bakery are busy, and January is the perfect time to recover and enjoy quieter days. January is also an opportunity for some spring cleaning! We’ve already re-dressed the mill stones, which means we re-sharpened them so we can mill consistent flour (we do this about every four months because the groves in the mill wear over time). We’ve also done some deep cleaning and testing of new recipes. (We may have made donuts last week….!) We are ready for a new year.

One thing I’ve been thinking about this January is how much we value customer feedback. Please email us if you have a question about baking with our flour. Please email us if you’d like to see one of our products at your grocery store. Please email us if you have a question about ingredients. You get the idea.

Last week, a customer took the time to email us a compliment. We are happy to accept those as well. :) Seriously though, as a wholesale operation, we don’t get to talk to our customers as much as we’d like to, so we enjoy hearing about what we’re doing right.

Customer Paul wrote: “I just tried my first loaf of your bread, the Complete bread. It was everything a loaf of bread should be! I can’t praise this bread enough. I now have a new favorite bakery (and no town is complete without a great bakery)!”

How nice is that? As Head Baker Steve said, “We bake our bread with the hopes that it will bring joy.” So it’s nice to know that we at least brought joy to a customer.

Happy New Year, bread-lovers. In 2019, let’s resolve to eat more bread!

--Baker Hannah

Holiday Cookies

Hello from the bakery, where the holidays have hit in full force, and we are busy! Happily busy, I should add. Patrick started building boxes for holiday cookies last week; Wes mixed the first batch of Hazels; and Siri figured out how thick to roll the Speculaas. Today, Nate scaled cranberries, currents, and candied lemon and orange peel for our Stollen bread. The fruit gets soaked with 2 GINGERS Whiskey, which only adds to the joy of Stollen.

I am quite proud of our holiday cookies this year. The cookies boast flavor and each variety is unique. I asked Siri which is her favorite, and even though she struggled to name one, she landed on the Hazels. The Hazels are dense and chewy and made with hazelnut flour. Cherries and apricots are mixed into the dough, and I've never tasted anything quite like them. They are nutty and not too sweet.

My favorite are the Linzers -- a layered cookie with jam in the middle; the jam peaks out through a cut-out on top. Honestly, I think they are my favorite because they are pretty, and who doesn't love a pretty holiday cookie? It helps that they taste good too! They are beautifully tender with the flavors of butter, almond flour, lemon zest, and tart jam all shining through. (Also, they are a lot of work to make -- dealing with the tender dough and the cut-out on the top layer -- but I still love them, so they must truly be delicious!)

So, down to business. How can you find our cookies? (And other holiday items, including our German holiday bread Stollen.)

Place your order for cookies, bread, and flour by Wednesday, 12/19 and pick up your order at FOOD BUILDING on Saturday, 12/22 during our Last Call Holiday Market.

Questions? Let us know!

--Baker Hannah

Our Thanksgiving Market!

As the first snow of the year fell, we bakers paused for a moment to stare out the window in silence. We typically don’t stop working, so this quiet moment of stillness felt special. The first snow! As always, we were all dressed in tee-shirts, and were plenty warm because bakers never stop moving, there’s always something to do, and because the wood-fired oven is always churning out heat, 500 degrees all day. Winter at the bakery is cozy.

All of this is to say, the holiday season has arrived! We will be busy for the rest of the year, supplying you, our customers, with all your holiday needs. Thanksgiving is next week, and we've got you covered. Do you need pie? We'll be making pumpkin and apple. Do you need breakfast for Thanksgiving morning? Buy our caramel rolls. The list goes on....

Through our online shop, you can pre-order pie, cookies, caramel rolls, squash rolls, and bread. Items can be picked up at FOOD BUILDING on Wednesday, November 21st between noon and 5pm.

Although it’s hard to choose, my personal recommendation? The caramel rolls. These sweet, sticky treats will be ready to be baked on Thursday morning, so you can impress your family with fresh, warm caramel rolls. My second recommendation? Squash rolls. These little rolls are slightly sweet and plenty soft. They are a huge step up from plain buns and will elevate your Thanksgiving meal.

See you on Wednesday!

A Recipe: Scones

Although we are primarily a bread-making bakery, we do occasionally make sweet treats for events and the holidays. One of our favorites is scones. Whenever a scone-making occasion comes up, we tend to make a few (or a lot!) extra for bakers’ morning snacks…..

What makes our scones special is that they are made with 50% bread flour and 50% whole grain flour. The whole grain flour adds a pop of flavor that will make you never want another all “white” flour scone again. Just the basic recipe has so much flavor that you almost don’t need to mix in any chocolate or nuts. Almost….

I’m sharing our recipe below. Happy baking! (Remember, you can purchase our flour at these locations.)

INGREDIENTS:

Pastry Flour 480g Whole Grain Flour 480g Baking Powder 58g Salt 10g Sugar 170g Butter, cubed/cold 284g Heavy Cream 2 cups Half & Half 2 cups Additions (chocolate, dried fruit) 210g

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Combine dries and mix. Cut cubed, cold butter into the dries, creating small pea sized clumps. Add heavy cream and half & half, mixing until just combined. Do not over mix! You want clumps of butter in the dough.

2. Flatten dough to 1.5 inches thick and divide using a scone cutter or a knife.

3. Brush tops with heavy cream and sprinkle with sugar before baking.

4. Bake at 400 degrees for 12-15 minutes.

5. Enjoy!

A Note on Freshly Milled Flour

We’ve already discussed why we bakers here at Baker’s Field mill our own flour. As eaters, we love the nutrition and flavor. As bakers, we relish the control and craft. All excellent reasons for you, the home baker, to add our bakery-milled flour to your kitchen pantry. However, our flour does behave differently than the industrial flour you may be using now. We are here to help you adjust and discover the miracle of fresh flour!

1. The general rule is that fresh flour tends to need more hydration than industrial flour. So if you’re baking bread, keep this in mind. Be ready to use more water.

2. Fresh flour has a lower tolerance for mixing; you will not need to mix or fold dough made with our flour as aggressively as you may be used to.

3. Lastly, each variety of grain is different. So if one month you buy Prosper, it may perform differently than the variety you buy the following month (say, Ingmar). Making these adjustments requires some practice and calculating; this is part of the fun!  (Check out our online flour shop, which notes the differences between the varieties we sell.)

4. In general, bread made with fresh flour will not get as much volume as bread baked with industrial flour. Know this before you begin so you won’t be surprised.

5. You can always email us your specific flour questions. We love hearing from you and are happy to answer questions. Email: contact@bakersfieldflour.com

You may find the differences between our flour types to be confusing. I’m going to break them down for you:

BREAD FLOUR: Our high-extraction bread flour is sifted to remove some of the bran and highlight the germ and the endosperm. This is different than the “white” industrial flour you may be used to buying, which contains no germ. We prefer to keep the germ and some of the bran in the flour for both flavor and nutrition. A hard red spring wheat grain, the defining characteristic of bread flour is creamier bread.

Best Use: bread and pizza

WHOLE GRAIN FLOUR: Commonly known as whole wheat flour, this variety of hard red spring wheat flour contains the entire grain -- the bran, germ, and the endosperm. This is a highly nutrient rich flour. We love making bread that uses all the parts of the grain -- the flavor is earthy and grassy and just special!

Best Use: bread, pasta, and grain-forward sweet treats

PASTRY FLOUR: We sift organic soft white winter wheat for this flour, removing some of the bran. This flour can be used like all-purpose flour. It is lower in protein (and therefore gluten) than our bread flour, and therefore is not meant to be used for bread.

Best Use: cookies, pies, muffins, cakes

Announcement: Pop-Up on September 30th!

We’re throwing a party! Well, sort of…. Baker’s Field is actually hosting another pop-up bakery event at the Food Building on September 30th at 10am. Our version of a party! The bakers will offer some fun sweet treats we don’t usually make, including pie, and we’ll also have lots of bread and flour for sale, of course.

In preparation for our pop-up, we’ve been thinking a lot about pie. Siri is leading the efforts on this one and has tested a few recipes (more than once) and serenaded us with some delicious pies that the bakers always happily devour. Notably, a peach and rhubarb pie with hints of clove… so heavenly.

Pie can be tricky, so I asked some of our bakers for their secrets to success:

Siri: First: Measure out all the crust ingredients except the water, and freeze for twenty minutes before mixing. Second: Let the dough relax in the refrigerator after you roll it out and before trimming it to the pie tin. This will help prevent shrinking. Third: Have fun with fluting! Use your fingers or other tools to make your pie crust unique.

Wes: Most recipes will tell you to keep some of the butter in pea-sized pieces for the ultimate flakey crust. This is good advice, but I also massage some of the butter into the flour.

Steve: Hold back about one third of the flour when scaling the dough. Mix the ingredients as you typically do, but before the crust comes together, add in the rest of the flour. This will prevent the gluten structure from becoming too strong and will also create a flakey crust.

Eager to make a pie with the last of summer’s fruit? Check out our recipe and use our all-purpose flour. See you at the pop-up!

Tips for Home Bread Bakers

If I’m at a gathering with many people I don’t know and the news that I’m a baker spreads, someone is sure to tell me that they bake bread at home. I love these stories; please don’t stop sharing them! But I’m writing today specifically about the questions people ask me. The questions are usually all over the place, and I don’t always have all the answers. It’s often hard to help when you don’t know all the specifics.

BUT! I’m here today to give all you dedicated (or occasional!) home bakers some tips.

1. Temperature, temperature, temperature! Learn what water temp you need to use to achieve the ideal dough temp. Learn to adjust to the weather (room temperature will affect your dough). This will help your bread be more consistent.

2. Play with the amount of water in your dough. This is the variable that can change the crumb and texture of your bread.

3. If you’re using a starter, feed it regularly. Here at the bakery, we feed ours every 12 hours. Every 24 hours will work too (this is probably more realistic). Keeping your starter in the fridge for a few weeks is okay too. Just take the starter out of the fridge a couple days before you want to bake and feed it a couple times before baking.

4. Come take a shaping class at Baker’s Field to perfect the look of your loaf! This may seem like shameless advertising, but most home bakers struggle to teach themselves how to shape bread. We can help!

Questions? Let me know! I’ll do my best to help. - Baker Hannah

Why mill our own flour?

When I first talked to owner/head baker Steve about working at Baker’s Field, he said, “Okay, I can tell you love baking and that you have experience, but what about milling? Does that excite you?” Because I was in interview mode, I responded with an enthusiastic YES to this question. But in reality, I wasn’t exactly sure what was so exciting about milling flour.

Baker Nate loves milling because the mill itself, as a piece of equipment, is a product of fine craftsmanship and poses “fun” problems that sometimes need repairing or adjusting. Nate is correct that our mill is a thing of beauty: built by professional baker Andrew Heyn of New American Stone Mills in Vermont, our mill boasts artistry and practicality. It is typically pretty simple to use, yet the work that went into creating the mill is intricate, thoughtful, and skillful.

Beyond the beauty of the machine itself, in my two years of working at Baker’s Field, I’ve come to fully understand why freshly milled flour is so exciting, and why we opted to add this extra step of baking. It’s simple: fresh, stone-milled flour from local, organically grown grain tastes like nothing you’ve eaten before. From Bolles to Ingmar to Prosper to Forefront, each grain has its own flavor profile. The taste and textures of the bread made with this flour are complex and nuanced. Tasting notes often include the words nutty, grassy, earthy.

How the mill works:

The grain flows from the hopper on to the granite stone, creating even particles of all three components in the grain -- endosperm, germ, and bran. The whole grain flour shoots out of the front of the mill. Our high extraction flour, which is also called sifted flour, bread flour, or simply “white” flour, goes through our sifter, but still maintains elements of the germ and bran. This makes both our whole grain and bread flour rich in fiber, and therefore much more digestible, nutritious, and flavorful.

As an eater, I’m hooked by the complexities and depth of the flavor of the grain. As a baker, I’m challenged and fueled by the demands of freshly milled flour. Fresh flour is different than industrial flour. It absorbs more water and requires less mixing. We have to work harder to get volume in our baked loaves. We are constantly adjusting to grain that creates different types of dough. This is part of the fun of working with local, non-industrial grain.

- Baker Hannah

A day in the life of a baker

When people learn that I’m a baker, they have a lot of questions. But the most frequent question? “What time do you wake up?”

Our staff of eight bakers fire up the oven and mill at 4:30am every day of the week.  Right away in the morning, one baker boils the day’s bagels; another begins the day’s dough mixes, starting with the rye. A third baker loads our seeded and table loaves into the oven. On the bench, the fourth baker divides the filone. We have a routine; it’s the same every day.

This daily routine may seem boring to some. But actually, the repetitiveness is part of the fun. The bakers are a well-oiled machine, moving around (on a good day, at least!) like a team playing a group sport. Just like a sports team, “practicing” each day is key to our success.

We end the day with the next day’s seeded and table loaves shaped and in the retarder overnight for a slow fermentation. The filone dough also retards -- to be shaped and baked the following morning. Our daily cinnamon rolls slowly rise in the proofer. We clean the benches, mixers, sinks, and floors (the glamorous side of baking). On our way out the door, we usually grab the day’s extra bread for our dinners. A very informal poll of the bakers found that we each eat about two loaves of bread a week!

- Baker Hannah

Eat (and bake) more bread

Cinnamon Rolls are now available atSeward, Eastside and Lakewinds Co-ops!

They are rich, tangy, and sweet with a cinnamon chaser. Pick up a four-pack of these delicious rolls to go with your morning coffee or as an afternoon snack. 

As we all move into summer mode, it's time to fire up the outdoor (or indoor) oven and get baking! We have flour options that are perfect for bread, pasta, cakes and cookies.  Visit our  or our retail partners where we have three sifted and whole grain wheat types, whole grain rye, and pastry flour available.

Our fresh flour, even when sifted, retains most of the whole grain intact.  Whole grains have lipids, vitamins and minerals present.  That means flavor, nutrition and fiber.  Taste the difference, and get baking!

If you need help selecting a flour or have a bread question, please email us: contact@bakersfieldflour.com

Babka: Just in time for Mother's Day!

Baker's Field is upping our sweets game.  Introducing Chocolate Babka and Cinnamon Rolls in retail 4-packs!

Chocolate Babka:

What could possibly make our brioche dough better?  How about a rich chocolate swirl and a touch of cinnamon!  

In Polish, "Babka" literally means grandmother, so we're launching this delicious, naturally leavened treat just in time for Mother's Day.

Next up: Cinnamon Rolls

Launching the week of May 15, possibly the best cinnamon rolls I have ever had in my entire life - but please don't tell my mom I said that.  (Just kidding, she agrees with me completely.)

We are making these available in retail 4-packs and to begin they will be available at Seward Co-op and Eastside Co-op.