Brooklyn granary & mill

Brooklyn Granary & Mill is made possible by the background, expertise, and grain economy relationships of its owner, Patrick Shaw-Kitch. For the last 18 years, Patrick has worked in top bakeries and restaurants, including James Beard-nominated Columbia City Bakery and Bien Cuit, growing his knowledge and experience in baking, cooking, and milling. Most recently, Patrick served as Head Baker at the two Michelin starred Blue Hill at Stone Barns and leader of the Bakery Lab at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. In his nearly five years at Blue Hill and Stone Barns, he operated a stone mill, baked products using exclusively stone milled, whole-grain flour using grain grown in the Northeast, and worked directly with local grain farms, universities, and seed breeders to test and use their products to bake bread and pastries. 

Through these respected roles and experiences, Patrick has spent many years honing skills and learning lessons about milling the best whole grain flour and baking with it: the flour needs to be as fine as possible; the bran needs to be as small as possible to make the best bread; large bran slashes the gluten and fights the bread-making process; flour that is super fine with minuscule bran chunks can make whole wheat bread as voluminous as mainstream white flour loaves; grains and flour must be kept cool during the milling process because heat starts to oxidize the oil in the wheat and kills some of the flavor and destroys some of the nutrition; and the temperature of the flour when it’s milled affects its ability to bake well. Most millers don’t mill with whole grain in mind, they mill to refine, and, in turn, mill a lower quality whole grain flour. Having a miller and business that prioritizes the grain and milling techniques with whole grain flavor and baking in mind sets BGM apart. The core of this foundation, BGM’s two stone mills that will rotate in operation in order to keep them as cool as possible, will produce a wide selection of flours that will be tested and custom milled.