Red Hen Digs Deep to Go Local

Date: 11.06.2009 | Category: Producer Beat

by FarmPlate

Red Hen Baking Company, now located at the historic Camp Meade in Middlesex, VT, has been making celebrated organic, hearth-baked artisan loaves for the past decade.

“We’ve been organic from Day One,” says Red Hen Baking owner Randy George. “And local ingredients have always factored into our products. Their use has increased as availability has.”

But when it comes to producing a good, chewy loaf, it’s a nearly insurmountable challenge for New England bakers to go local. The best wheat for bread–hard red winter wheat–grows on the Great Plains and is then trucked to flour mills along the Mississippi, ten times the distance prescribed by most localvores.

But Randy George doesn’t let geography get in the way of producing a truly local Red Hen loaf. He’d heard that the Champlain Valley had been a top wheat producer in the 1850s. Not coincidentally, the premier wheat breeder at the time was one Cyrus Guernsey Pringle, a Charlotte, VT, resident.

Tom Kenyon of Aurora Farms, also in Charlotte, intends to bring wheat back to the Champlain Valley and has been collaborating with George to produce a red hard winter wheat. After two years of growing nothing but cattle feed, they found success this September when Champlain Valley Mills in Westport, NY, milled 3,000 pounds of flour from Aurora Farms wheat.

“Being accustomed to baking with the finest organic wheat Kansas has to offer, I was hopeful that we could use a percentage of this Vermont wheat in some of our breads,” said George.

“Imagine my surprise when I combined this flour with water, yeast and salt in the mixing bowl and found that it made a familiar-feeling dough!  The resulting bread, although not perfect, was surprisingly good. A week later we were making bread that is beyond my wildest dreams of what we could do with an indigenous Vermont bread. The addition of some whole wheat from our long-time supplier and friend Ben Gleason of Bridport adds to the Vermont pedigree and gives this bread a depth of flavor.”

The new bread was christened “Cyrus Pringle.” It, along with the entire line of Red Hen breads and pastries, can be found at the Red Hen Retail Bakery and Café on Route 2 in Middlesex, VT. Red Hen breads are also available at fine eateries throughout northern Vermont, as well as in co-ops, specialty markets and some Shaw’s Supermarkets.

Red Hen Baking Company employs 24 full- and part-time employees who work collectively 364 days a year. They bake and deliver Red Hen artisan bread seven days a week to ensure freshness.

Click here to learn more about Cyrus Pringle.

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