Latest From Our Blog

Grist & Toll Farmer Feature Introducing Mai Nguyen, aka Farmer Mai, and two landrace wheats grown by her: Wit Wolkering and Chiddam Blanc de Mars A blog post featuring a California farmer and specially selected wheat varieties has been a long time coming. I’m really pleased that this first dedicated post involves collaboration with Mai […]

Stollen is one of my favorite holiday breads. There is a lot to love: fruit, nuts, almond paste, powdered sugar topping – Yum! A quick preferment of milk, yeast and flour gives the dough a nice depth of flavor, and the whole grain flours make everything taste richer, nuttier, and more complex. This is a […]

People Who Live in Spice Houses Linda Civitello for Grist & Toll Sweden’s pepparkakor (pepper cake) is pfefferkuchen in Germany, speculaas to the Dutch, gingerbread to the British, and pain d’épices (spice bread) in France. Notice a theme? All are northern European, at the opposite end of the world from the tropical Pacific islands where […]

How We Roll at Grist & Toll By Linda Civitello What History Has To Say About Nan’s Mother’s Buttermilk Crescent Rolls From the “It Just Wouldn’t Be Thanksgiving Without This” Department Crescent rolls had been around for centuries before the Pillsbury Doughboy, aka “Poppin’ Fresh,” made his spectacular debut: on Sunday, November 7, 1965, he […]

I am very pleased that author and food historian, Linda Civitello, will be contributing to the website from time to time. We have put our heads together, lining up topics and recipes drawn from history that resonate with how we want to bake and cook today. We are launching this collaborative series with the hottest […]

Please listen to this broadcast to hear Nan discuss wheat and the truly amazing difference of fresh flour. http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/good-food Also, enjoy listening to our friend Amy Halloran who joins the show before our spot.

Grist & Toll Classic Whole Grain Biscuits Yield = 6 one-inch high, 3-inch wide biscuits *See notes for turning this formula into shortcake at the end Ingredients: 2 cups (9 oz) Sonora or your favorite G&T whole grain flour 2 tbsp sugar 1 tbsp baking powder ¼ tsp baking soda 1 tsp kosher salt 5 […]

G&T Blog Post: Spelt Carrot Cake with Cardamom, Pistachios and Coconut I really love carrot cake, but many that I buy are a disappointment: too sweet, too dense, too rich. Perhaps I’ve only been in love with the idea of carrot cake, as the more I think about it, the more I realize I’ve never really […]

Union’s creamy polenta with mushrooms Sometimes, it’s easy to predict the dishes that will achieve cult status on restaurant menus.

G&T Recipe: Thanksgiving Swirl Pie Yield = two 9-inch pies I just couldn’t decide which pie to feature for Thanksgiving this year. The cheese pie recipe below was the very first pie I learned how to make, so it has a special place in my heart as a childhood favorite. It’s an old Pennsylvania Dutch recipe, utterly […]

I have been thinking a lot lately about what a loaf of bread should cost. Since opening Grist & Toll, I’ve been lucky enough to meet many budding artisan bread bakers. They all express the same passion: “I want to create something meaningful with my own two hands.” And they all share the same fear, […]

We have a broken system for growing and handling local wheat. In order to fix it, we’ll need to work together. The time has come to take a good, hard look at our flour and how it is currently being produced. If we want a better, local product we have choices to make.

This is a short and sweet post, just to share one of my favorite summer recipes remixed with Grist & Toll Flour.

We can get pretty fancy on the days that we have time for test baking and recipe development at the mill. On those luxurious days, we tend to focus on laminated dough and enriched breads, such as my current obsession with the perfect Grist & Toll brioche recipe.

The more I learn, the less I know. I could leave it right there, but I wouldn’t want you to think I mean that in a negative way, so I suppose I should elaborate a little.

I consider this topic to be even more monstrous and unwieldy than naturally leavened bread. And if you knew how many times a day I am asked to troubleshoot bread or dough of some sort, you’d know exactly what I mean by that! But let’s just dive in anyway.

I love shortbread cookies. It’s amazing how much more I love them now that I can make them with freshly milled flour. In the previous blog post, I mention how the flavors of fresh, whole grain flour really shine when there aren’t a lot of competing flavors and ingredients in the mix. This really rings […]

I find that when I am discussing what makes fresh flour so special, I can’t escape making multiple references to the time I spent working in the wine industry, which inevitably leads me to the sophistication of our current coffee culture. There are so many parallels. Just like grapes and wine, until we were exposed […]

My business partner, Marti, likes to say that Grist & Toll is the newest old idea in the world. And she’s right.