Latest / The Ric and Dan Show / "The question is not 'can we', it's 'how do we?'": Amber Lambke of Maine Grains

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"The question is not 'can we', it's 'how do we?'": Amber Lambke of Maine Grains · The Ric and Dan Show

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  (Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) He's Rick Tyler, and he's Dan Cashman, and I'm Amber Lamke, president and CEO of Main
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  Grains, and I'm on The Rick and Dan Show.
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  In Maine, we often hear, you can't get there from here.
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  These are the stories of the risk takers, the trailblazers, those who turn obstacles
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  into opportunities every day and found their way to get there from here.
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  And today, they're on The Rick and Dan Show.
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  Amber Lamke of Main Grains, we are so glad you're here, not only to meet you, but to
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  help us understand, because they flipped the food pyramid and grains aren't where they
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  were, and we're totally mystified as to what's going on.
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  Very confused.
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  Are we supposed to eat more?
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  Are we supposed to eat less?
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  It's going to be a wild time.
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  Speaking of wild times.
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  We're here for it.
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  There's a scene in Ghostbusters, 1984, where they look at the old firehouse and they decide,
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  oh, you know what?
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  We can turn this into our place.
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  Did you have that same feeling when you went in and you took out a jail and you built this
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  facility in Scalvegas?
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  Yes, actually.
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  I had a business plan that we were cooking to restore the infrastructure for milling
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  grains in Maine.
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  I went out to a course in Kansas.
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  I learned that in milling infrastructure, you want vertical height.
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  You want multiple stories because you can gravity feed grains through the machines on
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  the way down.
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  I knew this old jail was going to be coming up for sale, so I brought the instructor from
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  the Kansas wheat milling class out to Maine to see the building and he gave us some encouragement.
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  He said, you can treat the jail cells just like grain bins.
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  You could stuff them full of grain and we can cut holes in the floor and we can feed grain
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  that way.
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  Well, that's not what we ended up doing, but what we discovered was that we were dealing
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  with a very sturdy overbuilt building that could hold our equipment and heavy grain and
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  all of that.
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  So it's worked remarkably well for our startup.
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  Where did that thought process start?
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  Take us back a few years, several years, whatever the case may be.
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  I imagine it didn't start with the jail going to the grains.
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  I would imagine the grains came first.
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  The grain conversations really started in some volunteerism I was doing in Skowhegan to help
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  expand the audience for local food, grow our farmer's market, make sure people knew that
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  we had farmers selling goods in our area and grains were really missing from those
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  conversations back in 2007.
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  So we started a conversation and we called it the Kneading Conference, K-N-E-A-D, Kneading
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  Conference.
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  And we did it.
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  I see what you did there.
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  I like it.
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  We hosted it in Skowhegan and lo and behold, we met some grain farmers from Maine that
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  were already growing grain as a crop rotation with other crops.
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  So many Mainers know that you might want to overwinter your garden or your fields with
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  winter rye and it helps manage weeds or the potato farmers up in Northern Maine rotate
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  with oats.
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  And we learned that we couldn't eat those grains that were being grown in Maine because
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  we didn't have the infrastructure to clean them or to, in the case of oats, crack that
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  husky coating off of the oat in order to eat them.
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  And so therein started our quest to figure out how to do that so that we could eat the
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  grains being grown here in Maine.
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  And that was going to take the revival of some infrastructure and tools that could do
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  that.
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  And that revival needed a lot of conversation, like you just said.
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  Do you get tired of that conversation?
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  You must've been explaining the whole concept of let's bring this back everywhere you went.
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  I think the conversation changes with time, but those early conversations were fascinating
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  because we started with the question of can we grow grains in Maine?
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  And we quickly learned that, oh yeah, of course we can.
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  The question is not can we, it's how do we revive the processing of them for food?
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  We were a huge producer of wheat and other grains in the mid 1800s back when Mainers
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  were planting grains with the help of horses and by hand.
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  What happened to that?
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  Economies of scales changed.
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  So we had the railroad that started bringing in foodstuffs to towns like Skowhegan.
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  Our old jail building now renovated into a mill was at the end of the rail line.
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  The last operating grist mill in Skowhegan closed its doors in 1956 when the railroad
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  was pulled out in favor of the automobile.
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  So we were no longer able to bring some of those foodstuffs in.
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  But prior to that, we had grist mills in all of our little towns to be able to process
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  the crops both for animal feed and for human food.
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  What got you interested, so interested in grains because you're clearly very knowledgeable
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  about it, not only today and the process, but also the history of it.
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  It seems like it's a passion of yours.
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  Yeah, I would say I'm a good problem solver.
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  I like solving problems.
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  I'm a good problem creator.
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  We need you on our show.
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  Yeah.
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  I mean, I love grains, I love bread, and I think bread is a staple in most cultures in
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  all of its forms.
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  I say bread loosely, I don't always mean loaf, but grains play a role helping to take care
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  of animals and they play a role on the soil to help manage weeds and return carbon mass
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  to the soil, which holds water.
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  I'm fresh back from a conference that I spoke at in Iowa where there were discussions about
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  the role of grains and grasses in the prairie lands, right?
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  And so prairie grasses are a habitat for wildlife that are important in the whole ecosystem.
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  Prairie grasses can sometimes help hold onto water so that there is not runoff and you're
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  managing your natural resources.
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  So I care about grains because they're delicious, they make good bread, but they make a lot
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  of sense in the environment and in the farm culture to achieve what we want to achieve.
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  What I learned in those early conversations was that without grains in Maine being grown
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  here intentionally, then we don't have other resources we need for good farming.
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  We don't have organic straw for organic dairy barns and then that input cost becomes too
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  expensive for dairy farmers.
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  We don't have ways to manage nitrogen cycles in this soil.
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  So if you think about animal manures and things like that, grains take up nitrogen from the
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  soil.
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  If we're not growing grains, then we are needing to manage those byproducts in other ways.
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  And again, grains help manage perennial weeds by basically choking them out.
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  And if we're not growing grains to do that, then we're using chemicals to do that.
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  And that brings us to the discussion about nutritional value for what we could have in
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  our cupboards, in our pantries, if we had this still going as strong as it was back
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  in the day and now that you're bringing it back.
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  Yeah.
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  What's really fun to learn and what I do have a passion about is you look at any area of
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  the world and their food culture, those food traditions come from the land and the weather
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  and environmental conditions that are conducive to growing those things.
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  So if you look at Maine, we are a cool, moist climate here.
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  We grow oats really well.
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  Oats like the cold weather makes them a little sweeter.
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  We have a rich history of French Canadian cultures coming down from Canada, down as
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  far south as, you know, on their way to Louisiana.
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  And in Maine, buckwheat ploys, for example, are a big tradition here to be had sweet or
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  savory with every meal.
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  And buckwheat, it turns out, grows really well in Maine.
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  It's not a grain at all.
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  It's actually in the rhubarb family.
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  I'm sorry, what?
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  Buckwheat is in the rhubarb family.
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  It is not a grain at all.
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  You know the rhubarbs?
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  Judy and Sal down on Main Street?
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  My Grammy Grammy Tressie would always make buckwheat ploys for us growing up in Arista
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  County.
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  Rhubarb.
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  Yep.
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  And so ploys are just buckwheat and boiling water, nothing else, if made traditionally.
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  And buckwheat is a wonderful crop that bees love, pollinators love, and buckwheat pulls
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  up nutrients from deep in the soil, helping other crops that follow it do better.
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  You look at Arizona, there's a small mill we collaborate with down there and the climate
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  is hot and dry.
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  And so they're growing more desert wheats, durum wheats, the ones that are high in protein
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  and great for pasta and tortilla and things like that.
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  You look at England, for example, another kind of wet climate where soil conditions are
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  good for soft wheats, but not hard wheats.
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  So what are you going to make out of soft wheat?
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  You're going to make biscuits and crumpets and things that don't need a whole lot of
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  sort of gluttonous elasticity and breads and things.
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  So I think it's fun to figure out the food cultures that we know and love in different
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  regions and what are those grains that grow well there.
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  I think I just learned why scones are big over there.
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  Yes.
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  See, I've learned two things now.
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  I'm ready for the quiz, by the way.
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  Are you really?
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  Hard way through.
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  Well, you can't name the members of the rhubarb family yet.
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  So we have to explore that a little bit further.
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  What is your background?
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  I grew up in Brunswick, Maine.
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  My dad was a Navy man and my mom was a school teacher.
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  And my dad was stationed to the Brunswick Naval Air Station when I was nine.
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  So they really wanted to raise us in Maine.
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  So he got out of the Navy once he could and we stayed here.
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  So I feel like Maine is home, but I wasn't born here.
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  I know.
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  I know.
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  Where are you from?
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  I was born in Iceland.
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  There was a time back in 1974 when it seems like we're on repeat here today.
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  The Navy was stationed up in Keflavik, Iceland to help keep the peace in the waters off the
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  coast of Iceland.
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  History is repeating itself.
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  Yes, you're absolutely right.
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  And so there was a presence up there to help watch for submarines and also manage the conflicts
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  over cod fishing.
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  How old were you when you left Iceland?
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  I think a year.
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  I'm still a baby.
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  You are.
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  And I'm a twin.
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  So we were born up there and then moved around quite a bit to California, Virginia Beach
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  before ending up in Maine.
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  You finally found something that was about the same temperature as Iceland then.
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  Because I don't think California is pushing what Iceland is pushing.
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  Today, today we are rivaling Icelandic temperatures.
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  It's quite cold outside.
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  But you asked about my background.
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  I went to college for communication disorders, speech and language pathology.
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  So I got an undergraduate degree at Ithaca College and a master's degree in communication
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  disorders at University of New Hampshire.
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  I came back to Portland for my first job at Mark Hammond and Associates, a private practice
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  and did a fair bit of traveling around the state to visit teams to support people around
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  speech and language.
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  How long were you in that profession before you made this official pivot?
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  About 10 years.
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  And there came a point where I met my husband contra dancing in North Whitefield and he
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  was already in Skowhegan practicing as a family doc.
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  And so when I moved north to live in Skowhegan, my boss at the time said, I can give you work
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  up that way, which I did.
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  And continued to visit schools and group homes and things for my work while raising kids.
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  But there came a critical point where I was building this business plan for the mill while
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  still working part time.
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  And it was clear to me that I was going to have to focus on the mill to be able to get
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  this project off the ground.
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  I can't make the mental leap how you went from that to Grains.
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  Okay.
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  I feel like there's a story that you're not sharing yet.
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  I hope it has nothing to do with staying in the jail for a while and thinking about it.
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  And you said you've worked with kids, right?
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  Yeah, I had had experience with-
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  So explain it to us like we're fifth graders, please.
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  Okay.
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  So I moved to Skowhegan and Skowhegan is a struggling mill town that has lost a lot of
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  its industry over the years.
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  And shoe shops and wood products industry.
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  When I first moved to Skowhegan, we had a toothpick and tongue depressor mill that was
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  still operational.
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  We used to have Stride Rite Shoes and other shoemakers besides New Balance, which is still
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  there.
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  So it was a community that had suffered a lot of loss in terms of job loss and was experiencing
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  generational poverty.
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  The outflow of people moving out of Skowhegan was compromising the tax base.
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  It was my first experience going to a town meeting for decision making and learning when
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  we first moved there in 2001 that we were at risk of losing our critical services like
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  our fire department and whatnot because the tax base couldn't support it.
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  So the town mobilized with some leaders at the time to be recognized as a Main Street
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  community under the support from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
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  There are lots of Main Street communities around the state.
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  And when we were designated in 2005, that approach really asks of the community that
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  you bring your town government together with your businesses together with your citizens
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  to chart a course for your future.
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  And so I was asked as a citizen to come forward to see if I would volunteer.
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  The very first director of the Main Street program in Skowhegan asked if I'd help start
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  a farmer's market.
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  And I was able to share with her that we already had a farmer's market.
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  It was those three people that meet behind the Chamber of Commerce.
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  And so really dug in as a volunteer, rolled up my sleeves to help volunteer with the market
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  and figure out how do we grow this thing?
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  How do we invite more farmers to join the market and create more offerings and diversity
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  and make sure that the townspeople are supporting the local food that's created here?
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  So it was through volunteerism that I came to understand farming and agriculture as an
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  asset in central Maine and in Skowhegan.
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  We were seeing young farmers move to our area because Maine still had affordable farmland
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  and we have reasonable water resources in the face of climate change.
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  So couple that with the fact that where I live in Skowhegan, it's a rich hotbed of back-to-the-land
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  activity in the 60s and 70s.
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  So we had people who had come to the area to build their own houses, to plant gardens,
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  to build furniture, be artists.
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  And their kids' generation were taking an interest in farming and food and we wanted
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  to make room for that.
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  So yeah, I come to local food through volunteerism.
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  I come to grains through this understanding of how markets function.
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  And farmers markets in Maine need bakers often.
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  Bakers are core anchor members of farmers markets because they bring people in from
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  week to week.
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  And yet at that time, so this was 2005, six, seven, not many of Maine's bakers coming
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  to farmers markets were using any local grains.
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  You come to a farmers market with banana bread, bananas, sugar, white flour, what does that
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  have to do with local food in Maine?
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  Nothing.
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  And so it was really some of us were beginning to ask that question, like, how does that
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  meet the rules of a farmers market?
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  How do we overlook this?
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  And some good friends of ours in Skowhegan are the folks that run Maine Wood Heat in
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  a multi-generational business.
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  And they were beginning to build these wood-fired bread ovens for folks.
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  They are the North American distributor of a very special French made masonry core for
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  ovens.
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  And some of these bakers using wood-fired heat were beginning to say, I want local wheat.
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  Why can't I eat that wheat that my neighbor, my dairy farmer's trying to grow?
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  You know, what would it take to get good quality wheat grown in Maine?
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  And those were the beginnings of the Kneading Conference that I mentioned before.
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  That's why we started those conversations.
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  A moment ago, you talked about rolling up your sleeve for this volunteerism.
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  That same arm, how much twisting did it take to get you to become that volunteer to spearhead
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  all of this?
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  I wanted to give in some way.
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  I knew that I had some time and talent to share.
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  I actually turned to a mentor in the community at the time.
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  It was a gentleman running a motel and had lived in the community a long time.
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  And I said, I don't have a lot of time to give.
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  We were having young kids and I said, but I have some time, where's the best place to
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  plug in to help Skowhegan?
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  And he said, pick a topic that you care about and dig in because there is so much work to
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  do to move communities like this forward that pick something you care about and get to work
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  on it.
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  So food was a good place for me.
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  I care about eating well, I have a big garden, I do a lot of my own cooking and canning.
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  And I think food is one of those social issues of our time.
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  It touches everything, how we grow it, who gets it, what does it cost, what's the impact
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  on the environment, everything.
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  Had the sale of the jail fallen through, did you have a plan B for where to locate this
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  mill?
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  Yeah.
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  The business plans research started with going to see everything we could possibly see in
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  the Northeast.
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  Who is milling and how can we learn from what they're doing?
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  And that was to get a sense of the infrastructure.
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  And what we saw were farms where individuals, you know, a farmer in his 60s would have acquired
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  a few pieces of equipment and he was tinkering in his barn and he was starting to figure
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  out how to clean grains, but not in a food grade facility and not in any kind of capacity
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  that could feed a region.
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  We were seeing demonstration museum piece water mills in Rhode Island that again were
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  showing us what used to be done, but really not equipped to feed a population.
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  We went out to Vermont to see Jack Lazor at Butterworks Farm, who was a dairy farmer and
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  he was growing grains to start to work that into his rotations.
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  And again, he was frustrated by all the demand among local growers wanting to eat local grain,
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  but not being ready from an infrastructure standpoint.
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  So we saw operations that were fragile and not food grade.
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  And that is really what drove me out to Kansas for a short course on introduction to flour
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  milling.
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  There's only two places in the world to formally learn about milling, at least back then, which
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  was K-State University's International Grains Program, or you could go to Switzerland and
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  learn on large scale roller milling equipment.
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  So I took the course in Kansas and learned some pivotal things that made me think differently
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  about the jail that I knew was for sale back home and just what we were doing in general.
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  In Kansas, Maine didn't even show up on the U.S. maps as a grain producing state because
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  we were too tiny of an effort.
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  Organic grain production, which was the momentum we were starting here in Maine, partnered
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  with those dairy farmers I mentioned who needed straw.
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  Organic grain production was one-tenth of one percent of what this country's growing.
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  So not a significant concern to the International Grains Program.
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  We learned that were 239,000 bushels of wheat that were grown in Somerset County in the
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  mid-1800s.
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  That was enough to feed over 100,000 people, and we only have 50,000 people in the county
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  now.
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  So we knew that it happened there.
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  It could probably happen again, but in terms of the U.S. national landscape of grain growing
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  and how grain is traded in the world these days, we're outside the radar.
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  So it helped me come home and just focus on our assets and what we have going for us here
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  in Maine and think about traditional ways of milling that are more nutritious, i.e.
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  on stones, stone milling, and just get to work with the resources we had.
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  And so when I came home from that course and the demonstration flour mill there was a multi-story
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  building, I was able to come home and see this jail differently and get to work starting some
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  conversations with the county commissioners about buying it.
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  What was the conversation like with family when you came back and said, I have a vision.
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  You're going to love this.
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  You want a what?
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  You know, fortunately, my family believed in me and they supported me in taking risks.
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  I was taking these risks with a friend, Michael Scholes, who is a baker and was taking trips
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  up to Canada, actually, to buy flour from a small mill up there in order to get great
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  quality flour.
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  And so I had his support in feeling positive about moving this business plan forward.
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  Is he your Tenzing Norgay helping you up Mount Everest?
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  Yeah, we locked arms and we just, you know, we were in it for the long haul and it has
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  been a long haul.
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  I mean, I can look back now and look at some of the challenges that we've overcome and
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  I'm glad they're far behind us, but there are always new challenges.
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  It took two years to buy that building.
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  We were the first ones interested in the last one standing in a two year process.
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  It was still full of inmates when we were looking at the property.
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  Were they concerned that they would convey with a sale?
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  Were they banging on the bars like they do in the movies, like Shawshank?
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  Yes, in fact.
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  I was toured through that building a couple of times, escorted by deputies where, you
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  know, you had to lock the door behind you before you could unlock the next door in front
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  of you.
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  Was that intimidating at all?
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  Are there photos of this?
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  Because it seems like a very fascinating piece of this story.
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  Yeah.
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  We do have photos of what the building looked like when we first bought it.
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  And it was and is a foreboding building.
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  It was very monochromatic, gray and depressing, frankly.
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  The county was building a new building up the road, so they were trying to figure out
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  what was going to happen to this building in preparation for the big move, which happened
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  in 2009.
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  So they were hoping to sell the building and it got a lot of press nationwide because people
• 21:02
  interested in kind of a unique hotel idea or a unique restaurant idea thought maybe
• 21:08
  doing it in a jail would be fun.
• 21:10
  But developers would visit Skowhegan.
• 21:12
  They would run the demographics of the area and figure out that, boy, this idea probably
• 21:16
  won't fly in an area like this.
• 21:18
  COVID, did it hinder or did the appeal and the need to get grains that suddenly weren't
• 21:24
  available because of supply chain issues suddenly buoy what you're doing?
• 21:29
  2019 was a moment in time for us.
• 21:32
  If you recall, flour ran out on the grocery store shelves the same week that toilet paper
• 21:37
  ran out on the grocery store shelves and everybody freaked out.
• 21:41
  And we were fortunate at that time to already have an online platform to be able to sell
• 21:47
  grains online.
• 21:48
  And so people started finding us online and we just went underwater with orders for about
• 21:54
  three months or so.
• 21:56
  I think at its peak, we were about 3,000 orders deep and people were panicking, nervous, wanting
• 22:02
  to make sure that they could still eat from home.
• 22:05
  Everyone was cooking more at home, learning how to bake.
• 22:07
  And so we were fortunate.
• 22:09
  We were considered an essential business that didn't have to close and my kids were in high
• 22:13
  school at the time.
• 22:15
  So we were hiring anyone that would show up to our 8 a.m. morning meeting outside to learn
• 22:19
  how to pack orders and help get orders out the door.
• 22:22
  It was an exhausting period of time, but one that we look back on and are thankful for
• 22:26
  that we were A, able to help people feel comforted by having food, but B, it buoyed the company.
• 22:32
  It could have been worse at that period of time.
• 22:35
  It exposed lots of shoppers all over the country to where to get flour.
• 22:40
  We think of ourselves as a regional business.
• 22:42
  So while we're not necessarily trying to market ourselves as the flour source for people nationwide,
• 22:46
  we certainly want people in New England to know that we exist.
• 22:49
  And even people in Skowhegan who it took COVID for people to say, Oh wait, I have a flour
• 22:54
  mill in my town.
• 22:56
  I can bake bread.
• 22:58
  So it was a wild ride and lots of customer touch and customer service through that period
• 23:03
  of time, helping people be reassured.
• 23:06
  It ended up being that the misconception was that there was no shortage of grain during
• 23:10
  that period of time.
• 23:11
  It was the supply chain pinch point of getting bulk grain into a retail size bag to get to
• 23:17
  your house that couldn't keep up with the massive demand when supply chain logistics
• 23:23
  fell apart with COVID.
• 23:24
  We talk a lot on this podcast about challenges that business owners have to overcome in order
• 23:29
  to get where they are today.
• 23:30
  And you've mentioned a couple of those, but I think that one of the things that makes
• 23:33
  these stories also fascinating is that I think our natural human instinct is when we find
• 23:38
  a challenge, a lot of us say, Oh, I'm not going to be able to do it and move on to something
• 23:43
  else.
• 23:44
  It strikes me that you clearly didn't do that.
• 23:47
  What are some of the other challenges that you faced that maybe were a little bit more
• 23:50
  substantial that made you scratch your head and say, Am I really on the right path here?
• 23:55
  That's a great question and point.
• 23:57
  I would say this is where I felt like I have always been drawing lessons from a prior career,
• 24:03
  which is that even in communication disorders, the nature of the work was to take really
• 24:09
  complicated challenges with a developmental disability or an acquired problem and figure
• 24:14
  out how to break those problems down into all their component parts and set a course
• 24:20
  that means celebrating success in every tiny increment when you can make improvement or
• 24:25
  make progress forward and just take the very long view of it's only through all of these
• 24:30
  little baby steps that you're going to get somewhere.
• 24:32
  So this is just problem solving of a different kind.
• 24:35
  The other part of my prior profession was a deep understanding of perspective taking
• 24:40
  and where parties are coming to from their point of view in any kind of communication.
• 24:47
  But also in this situation, I understood that some of the challenges I was facing were related
• 24:53
  to prior failures that had nothing to do with me.
• 24:57
  So, you know, the hesitance to sell me the jail building at that time was related to
• 25:03
  other developers who had come to town and made promises with old school buildings and whatnot
• 25:07
  and they hadn't made good on them or the buildings had caved under snow pressure or there were
• 25:13
  disappointments.
• 25:14
  And when you're in a community like Skowhegan or any other rural area that has suffered
• 25:18
  loss, it's hard to restore hope unless you have something to build on.
• 25:25
  And so we needed those building blocks of hopefulness and courage and risk taking that
• 25:31
  just weren't there at the time.
• 25:33
  They needed some momentum to develop.
• 25:35
  So I look back on challenges, and there's still plenty of them today too, but I look
• 25:39
  back on challenges as being part of the critical ingredient to building positive support for
• 25:45
  the project.
• 25:45
  In the face of public challenge, people rallied behind the idea.
• 25:49
  They showed up at meetings, they advocated for the risk taking, they said, well, even
• 25:55
  if this does fail, we think we want to try.
• 25:58
  And so that worked in our favor.
• 26:00
  And sometimes a challenge presents itself that is a warning signal that you're not on the
• 26:06
  right path and that you do need to find some other way.
• 26:09
  I get a lot of those.
• 26:10
  Yeah.
• 26:11
  You do need to go around.
• 26:12
  On a daily.
• 26:12
  Absolutely.
• 26:13
  Is PFAS one of the challenges that's ahead of us or maybe on top of us now that we need
• 26:19
  to work together to find some real solid solutions?
• 26:22
  It sure is.
• 26:23
  And I would say Maine is waking up to the PFAS problem, perhaps ahead of some other
• 26:28
  states and other agricultural ecosystems.
• 26:31
  But yes, absolutely.
• 26:32
  It's been a canary in the coal mine for some farms in Maine to come forward and say, hey,
• 26:38
  I have a problem and it came from this and what are we going to do to solve it?
• 26:41
  So yes, absolutely.
• 26:42
  We have the great benefit of Dr. Ellen Mallory up at the University of Maine Orono who was
• 26:47
  helping to head up a grains program up here and she has turned her attention to PFAS and
• 26:52
  what we need to know about it in her career right now.
• 26:55
  So we will learn more and how we manage it is a large and complicated problem.
• 26:58
  Whether we're looking at solutions around sequestration or biological processes that
• 27:04
  help break PFAS down or whether we're looking at flip-flopping land to stop growing on PFAS
• 27:11
  contaminated lands and use other lands, I think that all lies ahead of us.
• 27:15
  I wonder if we have enough testing capability in place in order to stay ahead of it.
• 27:20
  I know our governor has made some investments and pledges to make sure that we do and it
• 27:25
  is not yet a requirement of a food production operation, for example, to test for PFAS,
• 27:31
  but certainly we'll be watching for that.
• 27:33
  As a foodie, something you said earlier has stuck in my head and I would not sleep tonight
• 27:37
  if I didn't ask you a follow-up question.
• 27:40
  Is it about the ploys?
• 27:41
  No, it's not about the ploys.
• 27:42
  It's about, you said you love bread, not necessarily loaf.
• 27:46
  So I need to know, what is your favorite kind of bread?
• 27:49
  What do you carbo-load on?
• 27:51
  Favorite kind of bread.
• 27:54
  I mean, I bake a bit too, so I like playing around with our grains and finding all the
• 27:59
  different ways to use them.
• 28:01
  Lately, I will say, I'll tell you, I turned 50 a little over a year ago and I did a hiking
• 28:07
  trip.
• 28:08
  Thank you.
• 28:08
  Did a hiking trip with my sister in Portugal and we learned that-
• 28:13
  That's how you decided to celebrate 50.
• 28:14
  Yeah, yeah.
• 28:15
  It was great.
• 28:16
  Dan and I would celebrate with some other grains, hops, for instance, is what we do.
• 28:21
  A nice piece of pie.
• 28:22
  Yes.
• 28:22
  But you decided to go hike in, of all places, Portugal.
• 28:25
  We went hiking in the mountains of Portugal and learned about their native bread there,
• 28:29
  which I have been figuring out how to perfect here at home ever since, but it is a flat
• 28:34
  bread cooked a lot like an English muffin, so griddle baked on both sides and the moisture
• 28:40
  in the dough actually comes from sweet potatoes in Portugal.
• 28:44
  So coming home, I've tried this recipe, I've recreated it with sweet potatoes, I've also
• 28:48
  recreated it with pureed pumpkin that you can source locally and it just makes a beautiful
• 28:53
  golden English muffin, basically.
• 28:55
  Perfect for an egg sandwich and rather than just adding water to the dough, you're actually
• 29:00
  adding more flavor, fiber and vegetables.
• 29:03
  Did you get that recipe out of them when you were there or did you have to take and figure
• 29:06
  it out on your own?
• 29:07
  I collected a few.
• 29:08
  I did get one over there and I collected a few when I got back to just put it together.
• 29:13
  Working with local flours like ours, you are adjusting for some of the variables, particularly
• 29:19
  moisture because we're leaving more bran in the flour in the stone milling process.
• 29:23
  We do do some sifting so that folks can use an all purpose, lighter textured flour, but
• 29:28
  you often need to add a little bit more moisture.
• 29:30
  So that's been fun.
• 29:32
  But I also like, you know, there are Swedish and Nordic traditions that use rye flour in
• 29:38
  really beautiful ways, either in crackers.
• 29:41
  Do you remember those from when you were one in Iceland?
• 29:45
  Iceland, believe it or not, I've had the good fortune of being able to go back now as an
• 29:49
  adult and discover Iceland as an adult and they're famous for baking rye breads underground
• 29:55
  using geothermal heat.
• 29:57
  Wow.
• 29:58
  Makes perfect sense.