A 2019 Reflection.

A 2019 Reflection.

Written by Graison Gill

January 2020

Why do we do what we do? Because too many people do what we don’t:

It’s critical for people to understand that the main ingredient in bread—as well as in pasta, pizza, and pastry—is flour. Every other ingredient is secondary: to flavor, texture, aroma, and nutrition. So, for bakers (or pizza and pasta makers) not to focus on their flour—where it comes from, how it’s grown, when it was milled—would be like a wine maker creating wine without no knowledge of her grapes. Or a chef cooking meat with no understanding if it is chicken, beef, or pork. Too many bakers and chefs have lost touch with flour as something imbued with flavor, texture, and character. As something imbued—like every other ingredient—with terroir. This is why we mill our own flour.

At Bellegarde we don’t buy products, we source ingredients. Inherent in our lives—and hence in our bakery—is this intention of intimacy. We want to know about something because it allows us to know more about ourselves: as we do something, it completes us. We shape bread, it shapes us; we mill flour, it changes us. I have always been mesmerized by this dual alchemy of breadbaking, how reciprocal the relationship between baker and ingredients are. It taught me more about myself than anything I’d ever done before.

The best baker is a coxswain, piloting flavor from shore to shore. And, by steering the ship, the best baker preserves flavor. They don’t create it. Because inherently good baking and good cooking are not about good equipment or good technique—they’re about good ingredients. Good baking is not about reacting to ingredients: it is about responding to them: use the tools you’re given and work with their threading. This is milling. This is baking. This is love.

At Bellegarde we will never hold ingredients hostage by reacting to them. And we will never sacrifice flavor for convenience. Because the minute you sacrifice ingredients, you sacrifice the whole integrity. And in cheating you threaten the ballast of the boat. Working with freshly milled flour takes more creativity, poise, and mastery than working with white flour—it’s easy to capsize the boat with freshly milled flour. But working with freshly stone milled flour is exciting! And fulfilling in ways—in aromas, in textures, in flavors, in colors—that white flour never is.

Most critically, in baking with freshly stone milled flour I have learned how to be vulnerable: vulnerable with my ingredients, vulnerable with my craft. Because, as I have learned, if you don’t permit passion and craft to permeate you as much as you permeate it, then the reward of flavor will always pale. And it is in this sphere of honesty—between chef and ingredients, flour and baker, farmer and seed—that the best food is born.

Why do we do what we do? Because any other way would be perjury. Perjury against the land, against the grain, against the rain. Just think about it: why wouldn’t you buy pecans, sugar, corn, wheat, oil, salt, and eggs from the people who make them? This is what makes Bellegarde who it is. And this is why we do what we do. Because I know of no other way to do what we do. And because, for me, the question has never been why do we do what we do. It’s always been, why would you do it differently?