House-Made Bread: Today & Every Day

When we say everything on our menus is “scratch-made,” we mean it – right down to our bread (as well as English muffins, hamburger buns, and more). From our weekday breakfast, weekend brunch, and lunch & dinner menus, you’ll find a wide variety of breads that we make, shape, and bake fresh every day. For us, every day is National Homemade Bread Day.

For our bread – as well as our desserts, scratch-made pastas, and more – we use flour from the North Dakota Mill. Founded exactly 100 years ago in 1922, the North Dakota Mill has a five-step milling process to get from wheat in the field to flour for our restaurants.

Step One

Wheat grown on their North Dakota fields is harvested and goes to the mill.

Step Two

The mill cleans and processes over 115,000 bushels of top-quality wheat per day. The eight milling units produce and ship 50,000 CWT of milled products and wheat middlings daily.

Step Three

The terminal elevator blends, cleans, and transfers wheat to the eight milling units and provides farmers, country elevators, and government agencies with storage for the wheat. For reference, the terminal elevator can store up to 4.3 million bushels of wheat.

Step Four

The products from the terminal elevator are packed in bags, totes, and super-sacks for shipment.

Step Five

70% of the flour and semolina from the mill is shipped out on bulk railcars and trucks. The remaining 30% of the finished product is packaged into 5, 10, 25, 50, and even 100-pound bags for shipment on boxcars and trucks. Founding Farmers and our sibling restaurants receive approximately 7,000 50-pound bags of various types of flour from North Dakota Mill.

Once the flour is received, we begin mixing, shaping, and baking all of our bread products. From our decadent apple walnut bread to our ciabatta and sandwich buns, we make it all from scratch, using flours that can be traced all the way back to the sprawling fields of the Midwest.

We’re very proud of our North Dakota Mill flour, as well as how we use it in our bakeries. Originally located at Founding Farmers Fishers & Bakers DC on the Georgetown Waterfront, hence the word “Bakers,” our main bakery now lives at our Culinary Barn production facility and produces all of the bread for our DMV restaurants.