At Grist Milling and Bakery, breads and pastries are attended to in coordination with the natural processes of Mother Nature. The facility, owned by Dan Venturella and Selden Daume, was recognized by the James Beard Foundation as a semifinalist for Outstanding Bakery. The bakery bakes about 100 to 200 loaves of bread daily along with a selection of pastries such as twice baked croissants and cardamom knots, and burger buns made with 100% organic grain and flour.
At the back of the Quonset hut, they share with Black Coffee Roasting Company, they bake their bread on a three-deck electric oven and mill hard red wheat grown by Arlin Fratzke in Stevensville. Fratzke had been growing hemp but decided to change course and instead, planted wheat. He contacted Venturella and Daume to see if they wanted to buy his wheat. “So we said ‘yes.’ We’ve actually used all of that 15-acre harvest, and now we’re waiting. I think he’s planting 50 acres this year so we will have plenty from him.”
“We have a mill that we bought from New American Mills. That was really one of the foundations of the bakery was that mill, and so when the mill arrived, it was an exciting moment for us, and it’s got two 26-inch stones that we mill all of our Montana wheat with,” Daume shared.
Venturella chose the mill because, “A lot of the other mills that we could find weren’t made in the United States. They were made in Austria and places like that. They’re pretty big mills and very, very expensive.” Shipping the mill across the ocean would also have added to the cost.
“When I met Dan, I was a head baker in a pretty large French bakery in town, and Dan was a pastry chef and also a baker as well. I ended up running the bake side and one of the big thoughts of the bakery was I wanted to get my hands in dough more,” Daume lamented about taking on a supervisory role. The time was right for them to start their own business.
At Grist Milling and Bakery, with only six people working at the facility, everyone pitches in to support every part of the business. “There’s always one of us here which is an important part of the bakery, and we can see how the days go. We do all the shifts which is really important, too, with delivering the bread, talking to our customers while out on delivery, and also mixing and baking, doing all the steps.”
The breads at Grist are risen with a sourdough starter. “Our sourdough that we use here, I think was a combination of one that Selden had and I had. I think we just threw it in together and fed it, but we just feed it everyday multiple times and just keep it going,” Venturella said.
50-pound bags of grain are grinded into a flour that Daume said when he feels the final product, “We’ll press it together, and for a lot of flours we want it to hold its shape in our hands and you can see indentations of your fingers in it. A nice powdery fineness is what we’re trying to achieve.”
“So all of our breads undergo a long fermentation. We’ll start mixing bread at about 7 a.m. and that bread won’t head to the stores until 9 a.m. the next day,” Venturella said. The breads ferment for 6 to 8 hours at ambient temperature to then cold ferment for another 15 to 17 hours more. The lengthy fermentation, “allows flavors to develop. It allows for things to get broken down, which make it more digestible, and it just tastes better that way. For labor, it’s way easier. The day stops at a certain point and the bread is resting and waiting for you the next day.”
The longer fermentation means “bread does not stale as fast,” Daume said. To store the bread, Venturella suggested storing the bread, “On your counter and cut side down is the best way to do it.” However, at the height of summer and in the very cold of winter, because of the dryness, “I just wrap mine (the bread) in a cloth bag or in the paper bag it comes in, and then once it goes stale it’s not done. You just toast it or you turn it into croutons,” and finally into breadcrumbs.
The twice baked croissants filled with chocolate or frangipane are one of the special items at Grist. Venturella explained, “Essentially what it is, is we bake a plain croissant today, and we’re letting it cool down, and we’ll slice it in half tonight. Tomorrow morning, we drench it in simple syrup, which is just sugar and water.” The croissants are filled and then baked again to be finished with powdered sugar.
Of the specialness of their product, “Our croissants tend to be very rich in butter and also we bake everything a little bit darker than everyone else, because that’s where the real flavors come out and we feel when you get that deep caramel color in our croissants.”
While care and attention are being put into the products baked by Grist, that same sentiment is shared amongst those who work there. Daume said, “We have a really direct relationship with our coworkers and our employees so we’re just a big family. We work together. We adventure together.”
Flora Holland who has worked at Grist for a year said, “It’s a very small tight knit group of people, easy to work with” and “I love the routine of it, just coming in each day and making it work. “
Jennifer Dellerba shared, “I love that we get local grain and we mill it here, and just the whole farm to table aspect of it Is so small. The whole circular-ness of it all.”
At Grist Milling and Bakery, it is the smallness of the operation that allows for creating a product that is mothered by the baker to naturally blossom into its own.
