May 17, 2023

As his flour prices doubled last summer, Breadico owner David Napolitano made a strategic decision: He built his own flour mill.

“Why am I buying flour from companies in Minnesota and Connecticut that are buying wheat from South Dakota farmers?” he asked. “Why not connect with our farmers and start buying wheat within our community and milling the wheat ourselves and selling it?”

He added a large granite stone mill to his warehouse production facility in Tea and is having another delivered in the coming months.

“We’re milling organically grown wheat from South Dakota, North Dakota and Minnesota,” Napolitano said. “They’re large, granite stones and it’s crushed the old-fashioned way.”

Flour received from a commercial mill is a very small portion of the extracted grain, the white part of the flour, “and what you get is a fine, white flour,” he explained. “We’re crushing the entire wheat berry, so our flour is more brown. It’s the whole-grain flour, essentially.”

It’s now being used in several Breadico breads and being packaged and sold under the name Millhouse.

“I found the tight community of organic farmers really unique and willing to work with you on such a personal and small scale,” Napolitano said. “I thought that was neat, and now having young kids who are eating my products — our breads — I want to be able to bring the best we can, which is grain that’s grown organically. The price is higher, but I’ve noticed the quality is there.”

Napolitano encourages customers to give the breads a new try, especially if they’ve noticed variation over the last year as the staff has learned to work with the flour. The Millhouse flour is being used in the brioche, granary and raisin bread and is close to being integrated into the multigrain.

“The whiter loaves, like sourdough and classic white and ciabatta are about 70 percent commercial flour, for the sake of the color, because that’s one of the challenges,” Napolitano said. “The wheat we get this season is going to be dramatically different from whatever we get next season, because it’s based on weather and the growing season. That’s new to us as bakers, having to adjust to the actual wheat we’re using. We’re having to shift our mentality mixing dough and working with it, because not only is sourdough different every day but now the flour is different.”

From the Breadico perspective, though, “our product is constantly changing and evolving,” he said.

A five-pound bag of Millhouse flour is available in the store for $14 and Napolitano plans to expand in retail, likely in stores he already sells bread. He’ll also be introducing new varieties of flour, all organically grown.

“The fact of the matter is we’re basically using product that’s grown in the dirt of our community and bringing it to the table as healthy and truthfully as possible,” he said. “So it’s as close to old and healthy Old World bread as you can get.”