A Little More About Heritage Grains

Heritage Grains Bread Co. started in 2018 in a tiny downtown apartment kitchen. What began with people asking Mitchell for bread eventually grew into a business of our own.

We started selling at the Paseo Farmers Market before moving to OSU-OKC. When that market closed, we found our way to the Public Farmers Market. Each move brought new people, new experiences, and a chance to keep growing. We were figuring things out as we went, learning what worked and building something we were proud of.

At the time, sourdough was at the center of almost everything we made. We loved the process, but heritage grains were always what interested us most. That has never really changed.

Of course, we were also raising our three boys and doing all the things that come with family life. Building a business is one thing, but building it while raising a family means sometimes plans have to change. Our family has always come first, and Heritage Grains has had to grow around real life.

Then COVID hit, and things got hard. We eventually had to sell our Rofco oven and most of our equipment. It wasn't what we wanted, but we had to do what we needed to do for our family. We kept baking bread on a much smaller scale, but things were different.

In 2022, we made our way back to the market. We were still very much a sourdough bakery, working with what we had and finding our footing again. We were glad to be back doing something we loved, even if we were starting over in some ways.

Then, in 2023, my mom passed away.

Before she passed, she had bought us a bread oven for Christmas. It was on backorder, and by the time it came back in stock, she was gone. The bank wouldn't release the funds for us to purchase it.

We had sold our Rofco during COVID, so this oven would have given us a chance to build back up. It would have meant more room to grow and the ability to produce bread in ways we couldn't with a regular home oven. My mom had found a way to help us take that next step, and we never got the chance to do it.

Losing her was hard enough. Losing that opportunity, too, was something else we had to come to terms with.

After Mom passed, Mitchell and I moved and took other jobs. We had our family to think about, bills to pay, and a lot to figure out. Heritage Grains took a back seat for a while. We weren't done with it, but sometimes you have to put things on hold and take care of what's in front of you.

Mitchell returned to restaurant work, where he gained more experience with butchering and restaurant management. He's also continued doing private dinners, which has been a great way for him to keep working with food in a more personal setting. We'd love to keep building on that and eventually offer catering, too.

I spent a year working in a grocery store before becoming a pastry chef. I've had the chance to work on desserts for wine dinners and tea parties and to produce pastries for a bakery case. It's given me a whole new set of skills and a different perspective on baking. I'm still learning, and I have plenty more I want to try.

We've both grown a lot since those early days. We're not the same bakers we were in 2018, or even in 2023. We have more experience now, different skills, and a better idea of what we'd like Heritage Grains to become.

We're still working from our home kitchen with a regular oven and the limitations that come with it. We don't have all the equipment or space we'd like, and there are things we'll have to work toward. But we're here, we're baking, and we're figuring out the next chapter as we go.

So what does that next chapter look like?

Heritage grains have always been at the heart of what we do, and I want to keep it that way. Sourdough will always have a place here, too. We aren't walking away from it, and we will never use commercial yeast in our sourdough breads. But I don't want the entire bakery to be defined by sourdough alone.

I still want to bake our loaves, English muffins, and bagels. I also want to bring croissants back and make room for muffins, quick breads with a little flair, quiches, tarts, galettes, cookies, and brownies. I want to explore what heritage grains can do beyond a loaf of bread and see how we can use them in different kinds of baking. Good ingredients will always matter to us, and I want that care to carry through everything we make.

We have other hopes for the future, too. We'd love to have better equipment and more room to work, and we'd like to grow beyond what our home kitchen allows. Mitchell's private dinners are something we want to continue developing, and eventually, we'd love to offer catering. None of this happens overnight, especially when you're building a business around family life, but it's something we're working toward.

I also want to share more of the process along the way. I want you to see what we're baking, what we're trying, and what we're learning. There's more to Heritage Grains than the bread we sell, and I'd like to share more of the people and work behind it.

That's part of why I want to write here. I want this to be a place where we can talk about food, baking, and the things we're curious about. I'll have plenty more to say about heritage grains, sourdough, and why ingredients matter, but those conversations can come as we go. We don't have to cover everything at once.

For now, we're taking things one bake at a time, making the most of what we have, and working toward the things we'd still love to do.

We've come a long way from that little apartment kitchen. Life has taken us in directions we didn't expect, and there's still a lot ahead of us. Through all of it, we've never stopped loving food or wanting to share what we make with others.

I'm glad you're here, and I hope you'll stick around to see where we go from here.