Sliced Breads all Ferment Overnight

We've recently made an update to the way we bake our Whole Grain Health pullman loaf, moving to a full overnight fermentation which improves the crumb's texture. This change means that every single one of our sliced breads goes through over 24 hours of fermentation — using simple, organic ingredients transformed through the unhurried magic of fermentation.

We use our liquid levain for most of our breads, but for the Whole Grain Health we use a stiff whole wheat sourdough starter produced in smaller batches. Managing multiple sourdoughs is a challenge but is key to the diverse profiles of our fermented breads.

In a world that moves fast, we proudly go slow. It’s one of the reasons people say that they feel better when they eat our bread.

Make Your Own Stuffing!

Each year, we repurpose surplus bread from our organic production facility in Kingston, NY into stuffing croutons that you can find at our cafes and NYC greenmarket locations. We’re passionate about preventing food waste, and this is one initiative among many to reduce our footprint.

Making your own stuffing croutons is easy and a great way to fight food waste in your own kitchen!

Here’s how to do it:

1. Collect bread odds and ends in a bag in your freezer instead of tossing or composting them when they’ve become stale. (You can mix and match breads like we do, just avoid super flavorful loaves like a rye!)

2. Collect bread odds and ends in a bag in your freezer instead of tossing or composting them when they’ve become stale. (You can mix and match breads like we do, just avoid super flavorful loaves like a rye!)

3. Place on a sheet pan, and bake for about 45 minutes at 350, or until the croutons are dried out. Make sure to open the oven every 5-10 minutes throughout the baking process to allow moisture out of the oven so the bread doesn’t reabsorb any liquid.

4. Use in your favorite stuffing recipe!

Break Bread, Make Peace!

Meet One of Our Mills: La Milanaise

We recently featured our self-described “micro-mill” partner, Farmer Ground Flour, today we introduce La Milanaise, our largest organic milling partner. La Milanaise plays a special role in our supply chain, not only because they produce the greatest volume of organic grains we use in our bakeries, but also because our stories of growth and organic commitments mirror each other so well. Based in Quebec (a four hour drive from our Kingston bakery) La Milanaise has spent the past 35 years building a sustainable milling business supporting North American farmers who serve as stewards of the land.

La Milanaise didn’t start as a mill – they began instead as a 400 acre organic farm, and just like us, were committed to organic principles before there was an official certification. Founders Robert and Lily began farming organic grains in 1977, selling their wheat into natural co-ops. Five years later, they built a small mill on their farm to process their organic grains, helping build a movement that soon outpaced what their family farm could produce.

Partnering with like-minded farmers and the Canadian government, La Milanaise helped set the standard for the organic certification, and have become a leading miller of organic grains in North America.

We began working with them over 20 years ago. Our partnership runs deep: we work over a year in advance to project our organic grain needs, which La Milanaise uses to give organic growers certainty about both the volumes and pricing they can expect for their crop. This provides reliability in a market known for its extreme volatility for grower, miller, baker, and ultimately the end customer.

La Milanaise has stayed true to their organic farming roots, going above and beyond to provide agronomic support to their farming partners. They proudly focus on helping growers through the multi-year transition from conventional to organic farming, which is a particularly challenging period for farms as they navigate changes in inputs, crop yields and growing practices all before reaping the economic benefits of the organic certification.

We share a passion for finding the very best equipment from around the world to produce the highest quality product at scale. With their equipment, La Milanaise has perfected milling across different technologies, including stone mills, cylinders, and pulverizers producing consistent, high-quality, nutrient dense flours that feature in our breads and pastries.

Our partnership with La Milanaise keeps the trifecta of farmer-miller-baker deeply aligned, strengthening our regional organic grain economy. We’re proud of our partners, big and small, working to build the movement for organic grain production for the benefit of people and planet.

Meet One of Our Mills: Farmer Ground Flour

Each Bread Alone loaf starts well before the bakery, in the hands of the organic and often regenerative farmers that grow our grain, and the millers that process that grain into high-quality, nutrient dense flours. We partner with millers big and small, who represent different steps in the journey to build regional organic grain economies in North America. We believe this work is fundamental to the health of our soil and resilience of our food system.

Today we introduce Farmer Ground Flour (FGF), a miller in the Finger Lakes region of New York, with a mission to help revitalize the state’s grain economy. 

In the early nineteenth century, the Hudson Valley was the breadbasket of New York City; the Genesee Valley of western New York was the center of wheat production in the Northeast. FGF rose from that history—from their desire to once again grow grain for the local flour mill. FGF supplies a portion of our flour – mainly whole wheat flour – in addition to smaller quantities of rye, einkorn and pastry flour over the years. 

FGF was founded in 2009 by millers Greg Russo and Neal Johnston, and organic farmer Thor Oechsner. They mill flour from the organic grain that their farm partners grow locally. With a custom set of granite millstones, their milling process produces incredibly fresh and vibrant flour, which we use to bake robust bread full of character.

FGF is on a mission to build a sustainable grain economy in our state. To this end, they have set up their business to farm, mill, teach and listen—bringing folks across the value chain together, from farmer to miller to baker. FGF is committed to supporting the adoption of regenerative agriculture, which many of their farmers already practice, and works with growers to certify through the Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC). ROC recognizes additional earth-friendly practices above and beyond the USDA organic certification requirements.

Compared to many businesses in the commercial milling world, FGF is considered a “micro-mill.” Milling is a highly consolidated industry and the largest corporate mills produce more in one week than FGF can produce in one year. They take pride in knowing their farmers, seeing the grain in the field as it grows, and producing excellent stoneground flour batch by batch.

We believe that it’s important for businesses like Bread Alone to source across a diverse ecosystem of millers and farmers, so that our buying power supports organic millers at every stage of their business growth. This helps build a resilient grain economy, and allows us to purchase flour from mills that aren’t at the size and scale to support our full sourcing needs. We’re proud to partner with mission-driven entrepreneurs like FGF in the beginning decades of their journey.

Goodbye Sesame... Hello Hemp Heart!

We’re excited to share that our Whole Grain Health bread is now made with hemp hearts (instead of sesame seeds)! 

Hemp hearts, the soft inner part of hemp seeds, compliment our grain-packed and subtly sweet Whole Grain Health bread with a pleasant nuttiness. They are incredibly nutrient-dense–packed with plant-based protein and healthy omega 3s and 6s–and have many evidence-based benefits from heart to digestive health. Last but certainly not least, hemp is a sustainable crop that helps replenish the health of the soil in which it grows. A win-win-win.

The backstory: Earlier this year sesame seeds became an allergen. Instead of putting them in everything (as many bakeries have done), we challenged ourselves to do better. After much research and testing, we made the swap to hemp hearts.

Break Bread, Make Peace!

Meet Our Farm Partner: Oechsner Farms

From Seed to Bread

The grain used to bake our breads has an important link to the health of both people and planet. Organic and regenerative agriculture positively impacts the resilience of the land, the health of the farmworkers that raise these crops, as well as the ultimate healthfulness of the slice of bread in your hand.

Meet Thor

Meet Thor Oechsner, a grower who helped found the organic stonemill Farmer Ground Flour (FGF) in Trumansburg, NY. We purchase some of our organic whole wheat through FGF, along with organic rye and buckwheat, that we blend into our breads.

Oechsner Farms

Thor owns and runs Oechsner Farms, where he and his team grow a variety of organic grains milled by FGF. Thor dreamed of being a farmer since childhood, when he visited his uncle’s dairy farm in rural Pennsylvania. In 1991 he bought the beginnings of Oechsner Farms. Now, the team farms grain organically over 1200 acres in central New York - mostly to be eaten by people (as opposed to animal feed, or byproducts like ethanol).

Tending the Soil

At Oechsner, they believe soil is their primary crop. That means focusing on building the health of their soil through crop rotations. By introducing different crops to a field, the soil can take a break from the specific nutrient needs of any one type of plant. Certain crops even serve as soil rehabilitators, like legumes. The biodiversity of rotation also reduces pest pressures that a monocrop creates over time. Organic growers like Thor prioritize soil and ecosystem health so they don’t have to use synthetic inputs like commercial fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides or genetically modified seed.

Going Above & Beyond

Currently, Thor is pursuing the Regenerative Organic Certification, which credits farmers who go above and beyond the USDA Organic certification. Regenerative agriculture is a growing practice where farmers aim to mimic nature as much as possible to create systems that are replenishing rather than extractive. Some of the work Thor and team do to care for their land includes longer, more diverse crop rotations, limited tillage and cover cropping which helps build resiliency and soil health.

Good Bread Starts at the Farm

We’re proud at Bread Alone to support farmers like Thor, who are stewards of the land and work every day to do the right thing for their people, communities and the planet. Next time you take a bite of our organic toast, you can remember that it’s not just tasty, it’s doing its best for planet earth, too.

Climate Neutral Certified

Climate Neutral Certified.

Bread Alone is proud to be Climate Neutral Certified since 2020, a certification that helps hold us accountable for lightening our load on planet earth. For four years, we’ve committed to: 1. measuring our carbon footprint, 2. working to reduce our emissions, and 3. offsetting the rest of our footprint. 

Solar Powered.

Our Kingston bakery solar array covers a portion of the facility’s energy needs, and our carbon neutral bakery in Boiceville is supported fully by a 366kW solar array. Both of these exemplify our efforts to reduce our carbon emissions, and underscore our on-going commitment to sourcing renewable energy, which we believe is a key lever for mitigating climate change.

Offsetting in our Region.

This year we’re excited to share that we’ve invested our carbon offsets in a project in our own community: The Fulton County Landfill Gas to Energy (LFGTE) plant. Fulton County Landfill accepts waste from all across NY state. As waste decays, especially food waste which composes about 24% of all waste-to-landfill, it creates methane which is a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. With this project, the methane gas emitted at the landfill is captured, converted into clean energy, and made available to the grid, which powers local homes and businesses.

Continued Commitment.

Bread Alone is committed to continuing to develop sustainable production practices, source more renewable energy, and support our community in protecting and rebuilding our planet.

Break Bread Make Peace!

Our Wood-Fired Brick Ovens

Our wood-fired brick ovens are the heart of the Boiceville bakery and the soul of Bread Alone. So central are these ovens to who we are that they were first built on the land with the original bakery built and raised around them.

These brick ovens were hand-built by Andre Lefort, a multi-generational Parisian oven mason. Andre’s ovens can still be found in the basements of some special bakeries around Paris.

These wood-fired ovens share a symbiotic relationship with our modern electric Heuft oven. The electric heat exchanger from the Heuft oven powers the steam system for these wood-fired ovens to bake breads. Honoring the past, while building for the future. This relationship is core to Boiceville being a 100% renewable energy bakery and café.

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If you find yourself in Boiceville, try our Levain, Miche, or Farm breads, all baked in our wood-fired ovens and inspired by our original recipes from 1983 using regional grains and long, slow fermentation.