A Stone Mill for Mill Hollow

09-09-2019

Pizza Night and the Mill!

Wow! We were so humbled by the incredible show of generosity that we witnessed this past week at Pizza Night. Our final pizza night of the year brought so many of our favorite people out, and we really felt the love. Thanks to all of your support, we raised nearly $4,000, enough to put the deposit down on our mill! Here’s a sketch-up of what it will look like:

Grain goes into the hopper at the top, is fed into the hole in the center of the stones, where it is ground into flour. So cool!

We’ve gotten a few questions about what the mill can do, and I’d like to take a minute to answer them here. We are purchasing a mill with 26″ diameter stones. The stones are made with Vermont-quarried granite, and can mill 60-80 pounds of grain an hour. We use about 1000 lbs of whole grain flour every week at the bakery, meaning that this mill will be in fairly consistent use. The miller is able to control how closely the stones are set together, which affects the coarseness of the grain: close-set stones mean fine grain, stones set further apart equal a coarser mill. This means we can make cracked grain as well flour. We currently use cracked rye in all of our naturally leavened bread and cracked oats in many of our multi-grain loaves. Because heritage whole grains are much easier to come by than heritage flours, we will be able to experiment with other flours, such as millet, buckwheat, oat and more! Thanks for supporting us on our journey, and we hope you’ll continue to follow along and share our project with others.

01-10-219

Wow!

Holy smokes! $13,300 and counting! We are floored by the generosity and enthusiasm we have received from our friends, family and community and are beyond excited to have met — and exceeded! — our fundraising goal. We can’t wait to start milling whole grain flours and baking them into bread and pastry for you and your family. Words can’t begin to express our gratitude, but we’ll start with thank you, thank you, thank you!

21-01-2020

A new floor and a bit of color!

Hello all!

We hope everyone had a warm and peaceful holiday season! Ours was full of the usual bakery hustle and bustle, but with the added excitement of some renovations! Our new mill will be housed in the back aisle of the bakery, and before it arrived, we needed to give the floor a much needed update. We moved out all of our equipment, cordoned off parts of the bakery that weren’t being worked on, and took an extended break to lay a new finish and allow it to cure. While all this was happening, we settled (by bakery employee vote!) on a color for our new mill — it’s called Traffic Purple! We are expecting it to arrive next month, and can’t wait to show you all pictures of it in its new home! In the meantime, here are some snaps from our recent renovations. Thank you again for your support, and happy new year!

14-05-2020

A long over-due update! Please read for VIPizza pass and Whole Grain of the Month info!

Hello all!

Our new mill has been delivered and installed and is running beautifully! Our team voted on a color for the metal framework, and we couldn’t be happier with this bright purple.

We have switched over to milling all of our rye and spelt flour in house, but we are still searching for a source of organic wheat berries that is able to supply us in quantity in the current climate. Small local mills and growers, as well as larger operations, are experiencing an increased demand for flour and grain due to the pandemic, and are operating either at or over capacity and are largely unable to take on new accounts at this time. We have been able to source small quantities of wheat berries, however, which has allowed us to provide fresh flour for sale in our farm stand and at farmer’s markets as well as at select local retail locations.

In other news, we have made the very tough decision to cancel pizza night for the 2020 season. We feel unable to play host to such an event in a way that would be socially responsible and are unwilling to potentially put our community at risk. We are, however, planning to offer delicious take-away pies, made by our hard-working team and baked in our wood-fired oven, available every Tuesday evening from 5:30pm to 8:00pm, June 3 – August 25, 2020. We will offer 3 pizzas each night: a plain cheese, a vegetarian special and a meat special, which will feature as much local, seasonal produce, along with locally produced meats and cheeses, as we are able to procure.These pizzas will be priced at $16, $20 and $20 respectively. For those of you who have joined us for pizza nights in the past, you’ll notice an increase in price. Allow us to explain:

The main function of pizza night has always been to serve as both a community gathering space, as well as provide a source of fundraising for local non-profit organizations. In order to make sure these organizations received as large of a percentage of the proceeds as possible, the bakery has always kept its overhead costs very low — sauce, cheese, crusts, and an all-volunteer staff, provided by the benefiting organization of the evening, along with 1 bakery employee. This year’s pizza nights will require significantly more of the bakery terms of financial outlay, in both ingredient cost, as well as staffing.

For those of you who contributed to the fundraising campaign by purchasing a VIPizza Pass, we are able to offer you the full value of your pass ($125) in credit toward take-away pizza this summer. Stay tuned for details regarding ordering, pick-up and redeeming your credit for this summer’s pizza night. We are endlessly grateful for your support.

For those of you who contributed to the fundraising campaign by signing up for our Whole Grain of the Month Club, your first pick-up will be May 28 with our 100% freshly milled Whole Spelt bread. It’s become one of our new favorites, and we hope you’ll love it too!

Whew! That was a long one. If you made it this far, thank you for sticking with it! It has been a wild few months at the bakery, and in the world at large, and we are all feeling incredibly grateful to still be baking bread and pastry. We hope this update finds you safe and well, and we send you our warmest thoughts and wishes.

Sincerely,

The Orchard Hill Breadworks Team

14-06-2020

Help Orchard Hillbreadworks Move 4WARD

Please check out Orchard Hill Breadwork’s story on TLC 4WARD — a new initiative empowering you to support the local businesses that you don’t want to live without.

Every Tuesday night in the summer, we welcome a few hundred individuals to Orchard Hill, who come for one thing: delicious, wood-fired pizza. The event has always been pretty straightforward — bring your own toppings, and we’ll give you a crust, sauce and cheese. You build your own pie, and we bake it for you in our outdoor oven and 100% of the profits go to numerous local non-profit organizations, who volunteer their time and energy to make the event a success. This year, we’re doing things a little differently.

While we can’t invite hundreds of people into our space to make their own pizzas, we will be offering delicious take-away pizzas, made by our hard-working team and baked in our wood-fired oven, available every Tuesday evening from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm, June 2 – August 25, 2020.

A big part of pizza nights has always been about giving back to the community that supports us throughout the year. Each night this summer will still support a local non-profit organization, but in this time, we would love for our take-away pizzas to lend a hand in other ways.

Here’s how you can help. Small dairy farms and artisan cheesemakers have been hit pretty hard by the pandemic, and we’d love to be able to support their work by featuring their products on our pizzas this year, without transferring this increased cost onto our customers, or cutting into what we’re able to donate.

We will offer three pizzas each night: a plain cheese, a vegetarian special and a meat special, which will feature as local, seasonal produce — and with your support, locally produced meats and artisan cheeses. These pizzas will be priced at $16, $20 and $20 respectively.

We are endlessly grateful for your support. It has been a wild few months at the bakery, and in the world at large, and we are all feeling incredibly grateful to continue baking bread, pastry and pizza.

Help Make this Happen!