Hello and welcome to the Flour Barn Homestead! We are two sisters, Lily and Ellen, who opened a bakery about 4 years ago. Our bakery, The Flour Barn, has truly been a dream come true. We started selling cinnamon rolls out of a barn on our family farm. Since then we have vastly added to our menu, started a coffee trailer, and hired 3 employees. We say we followed a dream, but we could have never dreamed up what the bakery has become.
The Beauty of Micro Bakeries
We have considered ourselves a micro bakery because we are only open one day a week. In the very beginning, we fit the definition of micro in every sense of the word. We cheered when receiving 11 orders and couldn’t believe that people were driving out to our little bakery each week. Now we sell a lot more products, but still only remain open one day a week. This allows us to spend the week prepping all our items and ensuring quality over quantity.
Microbakeries are a beautiful concept that allows those with a love and passion for baking to produce quality products. In turn, this allows the community to benefit by having a place to buy quality baked goods with wholesome ingredients. It gives the community access to concepts like natural preservatives and sourdough that are difficult to find at the typical grocery store. Owning a micro bakery that works on our schedule has also allowed us to pursue our other favorite job…
Becoming Moms
When we started The Flour Barn Bakery, Ellen had just had her first baby. Since then she now has 4 children and I have two. While creating recipes for our new bakery, we also often were thinking of ways to make wholesome food for our growing families. This is why we started to focus on milling our whole wheat flour for home baking and learning to make sourdough bread. We love finding ways to bake delicious things that are secretly good for our families.
Sharing our Knowledge
We have learned so much over the past few years. At the bakery, we have the opportunity to experiment with bulk baking, complicated new recipes, and innovative processes. This has allowed us to find recipes that are not only delicious but reliable and simple to duplicate. At home, we have found ways to utilize sourdough and freshly ground wheat in our favorite recipes. It is these discoveries that have changed our lives, that we wish to share with you all.