One Mighty Mill in Hyde Park on a mission to fix how flour is made
HYDE PARK – In a humble space in Hyde Park, a local company is on a mission to fix how flour is made.
"Americans eat 130 pounds of flour a year its not even close to anything else," said Jon Olinto, one of the co-founders of One Mighty Mill.
How flour is made
Flour is in our favorite breads, bagels, pasta and pizza. But did you ever think about how it gets there?
Stone mills were once used to grind wheat into flour, but over the last 100 years they have mostly been replaced by an industrialized system.
"It happened because in America we want faster, we want cheaper and we want shelf stability," Olinto said.
But, that modernized system strips the wheat of all the good stuff.
"What America has been left with for the last hundred years is bread and bread products that are processed food," Olinto said. "The sad part is there is no alternative for us in America because this one system makes one type of flour which is in all of our food."
Making flour with stone mills
That's why Olinto is going back to the old school techniques.
"Stone mills take that seed and they crush it whole and they keep all that nutrient density," he said.
Olinto and co-owner Tony Rosenfeld built their first stone mill in Lynn in 2018 which doubles as a test bakery for their products.
"The idea was to place it in a city where we thought it could make a difference. Every Lynn resident gets a 15 percent discount when they come to One Mighty Mill which we are really passionate about. The idea being that a bagel and cream cheese here that is stone milled and organic is still cheaper than the donut shop on the corner."
How to turn wheat into flour
Since then, One Mighty Mill has expanded to Hyde Park where they built three stone mills that turn wheat into flour. They only partner with local, organic farmers that don't use pesticides.
"Glyphosate on the farm level is used on most crops that aren't organic and glyphosate is a known carcinogen," Olinto said. "We do all direct sourcing direct to the farm. We know their farming practices and it's all organic."
From Hyde Park the flour is bagged up and brought to a bakery in Brockton that churns out bagels that are packaged up and sold in local grocery stores. Their products dont last as long, but they are more nutritious.
"It's closer to a head of lettuce than a bag of chips," said Olinto.
One Mighty Mill now has stone mills in New York and California too. The hope is to eventually make their food accessible to everyone.
"We believe it's making a difference and it's something we take a lot of pride spending our life trying to fix," said Olinto.
