More than just ingredients

Some loaves aren’t just a loaf of bread. Some loaves hold long histories and many stories in their crust and crumb.

This one began with ingredients that each carry their own deep story—and we want to tell those stories honestly.

The wild rice at the heart of this bread comes from the Red Lake Nation in northern Minnesota. It is hand-harvested by the community that has tended and stewarded this grain across generations. Wild rice—manoomin—is not simply an ingredient to them. It is cultural heritage, a living relationship between people and land. We are grateful to them for making it available to us, and we don’t take that for granted. In the loaf, it brings an earthy nuttiness and a subtle chew that no other grain can quite replicate.

The polenta is Bloody Butcher, a heritage corn with roots stretching back centuries through Indigenous American foodways—grown and stone-milled at Janie’s Mill in Ashkum, Illinois, using regenerative practices that return something to the soil with every harvest rather than taking from it. In the crumb, it contributes a gentle sweetness and a tender, almost silky texture, along with its striking deep red hue.

The ramps were sustainably harvested just thirteen miles south of the bakery by the folks at Heartland Family Farm, from land we can almost see from here. Wilted and lightly charred before folding in, they bring a flavor that sits somewhere between wild garlic and green onion—bright, a little smoky, and unmistakably of this specific moment in spring.

Slow food asks us to consider not just what we’re eating, but where it came from, who tended it, and what it cost the earth to produce it. Terroir is often a word reserved for wine—but every one of these ingredients carries the distinct character of its place: the cold, clear lakes of northern Minnesota, the prairie soil of east central Illinois, the wooded creek bottoms of our own backyard—Southern Indiana.

This loaf is our attempt to listen to those places, and to the people who know them best.