NW Michigan Food and Farming Network Report to the Community 2015 Report to the Community | Page 24

Food and Farming network

Crooked Tree Breadworks’
Local’s Loaf
Baker harvests local
wheat for tasty bread
By Hal Willens
and Greg Carpenter
Local Food Alliance of
Northern Michigan and
Crooked Tree Breadworks
Greg Carpenter, of Crooked Tree
Breadworks in Petoskey, loves being
a baker. But he feels “the disconnect
between the dough in my hands and
the land around me.”
Through the Local Food Alliance
of Northern Michigan, he connected
with Jonathan Scheel, of Scheel
Family Farms only a mile from his
bakery. Winter wheat harvested
from his test plot has culminated in
the Breadworks’ Local’s Loaf, made
entirely from the freshly ground
wheat on Greg’s countertop stone
burr mill. The bread has the unique

Greg Carpenter

The Local’s Loaf is made from freshly ground wheat harvested from Scheel
Family Farms a mile from the bakery. (Photos: Greg Carpenter, Hal Willens)

character of the Little Traverse Bay
region, containing nothing but 100
percent Scheel Family Farms wheat,
well water, salt, and Breadworks
sourdough starter.
The journey to the Local’s Loaf
started for Greg as a summer motorcycle adventure to a gathering of
farmers, millers, and bakers called the
Kneading Conference in Maine. He
learned how activists there had made
the switch to a locally grown and
milled grain for their bakeries. Back
in Michigan, he researched heirloom
varieties through Michigan State and
other universities, zeroing in on a
Hard Red Winter Wheat variety appropriately named Expedition.
After a fall planting in 2013, Jon
and Greg worried through the harsh
winter and long spring, harvesting
the wheat with the Scheel Family
19

Farms small 1943 Farmall tractor.
When the freshly ground wheat
was made into br