The following is an extended version of the article that appears in our October 2024 issue.
Sub Rosa Bakery’s Evrim Dogu milling local wheat for flour (Photo by Justin Chesney)
There’s flour in the air. Like a fine mist, it settles on every surface — the floor, the windowsill and on Evrim Dogu, who, after 12 years as the co-owner of Sub Rosa Bakery, is used to it. Dogu is milling wheat, not in the shed behind his Church Hill bakery like he used to, but at Triple Crossing Beer in Fulton, where a 48-inch stone mill occupies a single room at the brewery.
Since Sub Rosa’s earliest days, baking with stone-milled flour has been central to the vision held by Evrim and his sister and co-owner, Evin Dogu. While the vast majority of professional bakers rely on commodity flour for their breads and pastries, Dogu sees a value in grains grown from farmers he knows by name.
Initially, Dogu planned to outsource grains to capture what he calls an “Old World aesthetic,” but, he explains, “I didn’t know it was possible for this simple thing to taste that good. When that’s the basis for a bakery — it’s the No. 1 ingredient you’re using every day — that does shift your perception.” After that revelation, Dogu became committed to baking bread from 100% stone-ground flour.
Along with Sub Rosa, a growing number of artisanal food and beverage businesses are sourcing regionally grown and heirloom grain varieties. Connecting with grain farmers, however, can be a fraught process with many obstacles. “The burden is on each farmer,” Dogu says. “They have to be able to harvest, clean, store and then bag and ship the grain to us.”
Milling for eight hours a day, three days a week, Dogu typically produces 1,300 pounds of flour from about 1,600 to 1,700 pounds of grain. That flour is used in every loaf of Sub Rosa bread, sold wholesale to Pizza Bones and made into pizza and pastries, used to splendid effect in an heirloom corn funnel cake at Metzger Bar & Butchery, and employed as the base for the delicate chew of Conejo’s flour tortillas.
These days, though, Dogu’s efforts are more about supporting the farmers. “I can count the number of farmers we work with on one hand,” he says. “If we don’t have the farmers, then we’re just getting grain from elsewhere, and then what’s the point of being a Virginia bakery, doing Virginia craft, if we have no connection to the land around us?”
Grapewood Farm supplies Richmond food businesses with grain. (Photo courtesy Grapewood Farm)
Enter the Common Grain Alliance. Established in 2018, the nonprofit has made a mission of connecting farmers and grain users in the mid-Atlantic grain economy. Originally just 13 people (including Dogu), the network now comprises 128 members spanning farmers, millers, bakers and, increasingly, brewers, maltsters and distillers, for whom wheat and other grains are just as fundamental. The organization hosts educational and networking events and, through a grant-funded partnership with FreshFarm, sells locally grown grains at farmers markets in the Washington, D.C., area.
“We’re trying to figure out, how do you communicate to a consumer the environmental, social and personal health benefits of shopping local grain?” says CGA Executive Director Madelyn Smith. While small grains can be more expensive and require a bit of knowledge to work with compared to the bags of all-purpose flour at the grocery store, they’re more nutrient dense, free of preservatives and an important component of a localized economy.
Grapewood Farm, located in Virginia’s Northern Neck in Montross, has been supplying small grains to professional and home bakers since 2000. Owned and operated by Fred, Cathy and David Sachs, Grapewood sells its grains online to customers including Sub Rosa and Richmond pasta purveyor Oro. They also express a need for more infrastructural support.
“If we don’t have the farmers ... then what’s the point of being a Virginia bakery ... if we have no connection to the land around us?”
—Evrim Dogu, co-owner, Sub Rosa Bakery
“The practical solutions that are in front of us require that we form cooperative systems and work together,” David Sachs says. “There’s a very steep learning curve that is only made manageable when you work with others and you have other people to mentor and help you.”
Shelley Sackier of Reservoir Distillery and the Virginia Heritage Grain Project (Photo by Justin Chesney)
Awareness around small grains, however, is increasing and crossing industries. Director of distillery education at Richmond’s Reservoir Distillery, Shelley Sackier manages the Virginia Heritage Grain Project, which analyzes heirloom grains used in spirit-making. For small beverage producers, Sackier says, these grains can help their products stand out in a saturated market by revealing layers of terroir — the flavor of the land on which the grains are grown.
Whether it’s in a glass of whiskey or a loaf of sourdough bread, that distinct sense of place appeals to small grain users who are responding to consumer interest in novel flavors and seasonality. “Bakers really respond to working with regional flour that expresses different flavors,” Sachs says.
Through her Virginia Spirits Board-funded research program, Sackier hopes to identify the lost flavors of history and to determine whether they’re worth resurrecting, from a distiller’s perspective. For Sackier, success will mean improving biodiversity and helping small farmers such as the Sachses stay afloat thanks to a new, grain-hungry consumer base.
Brian Mandeville, head brewer at Fine Creek Brewing Co. in Powhatan, relishes the opportunity to work directly with small grain farmers, including nearby Greater Richmond Grains and Deep Roots Milling in Roseland. He also sources local malted grains from Murphy & Rude, a malt house in Charlottesville that processes raw small grains directly from Virginia farms.
Fine Creek’s small three-barrel system allows the brewery to enjoy a direct relationship both with its customers (most of its beer is enjoyed in the on-site tasting room) and its suppliers, which, in turn, allows Mandeville to produce the kinds of beer that excite him most.
“My ethos to beer-making is that beer can be this conduit that reconnects people to the forests and fields all around us. And as a brewer, I have a responsibility to translate that story and make those connections,” he says. “By being small, it’s a lot easier to do that.”
Mandeville wants to see a renewed emphasis on beer as an agricultural product, but that’s a far cry from the commodity grains and giant malt houses that characterize how beer is produced in America right now. Even “local” beer is often made with grains from across the country or the globe.
One solution, according to Murphy & Rude owner Jeff Bloem, is to de-commoditize these grains by paying more for them. “At Murphy & Rude, we’re taking what has become, unfortunately, pretty valueless commodities, and we are, first and foremost, purchasing them at a premium.” Doing so, Bloem says, adds value back into the supply chain, helping local farmers run profitable operations and potentially providing a solution to some of the challenges that plague the industry.
Sachs says for small grain farmers to survive, it’s a matter of protecting the land and strengthening the community.
“If Grapewood is going to still be here in 10 years, then we must value and prioritize our soil,” Sachs says. “We know that healthy soil makes healthy plants and, in turn, healthy communities. We fell in love with the land and then fell in love with milling flour, but now it’s falling in love with the people. It’s the people component that makes local grains so significant.”
The Common Grain Alliance will host the 2024 Mid-Atlantic Grain Fair on Oct. 12 at Peirce Mill in Washington, D.C.
