HYDE PARK – In an unassuming 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, which isn’t even close to anything else,” says Jon Olinto, one of the co-founders of One Mighty Mill.
How flour is made
Flour is in our favorite breads, bagels, pasta and pizzas. But have you ever thought about how it gets there?
Stone mills were once used to grind wheat into flour, but over the past 100 years they have been largely replaced by an industrialized system.
“It happened because in America we want faster, cheaper and shelf life,” Olinto said.
But that modernized system strips the wheat of everything good.
“What America has been left with over the last hundred years is bread and bread products that are processed foods,” Olinto said. “The sad thing is that there is no alternative for us in America because this one system makes one type of flour that is in all our food.”
Making flour with stone mills
That is why Olinto goes back to the old-fashioned techniques.
“Stone mills take that seed and crush it whole and maintain the full nutrient density,” he said.
Olinto and co-owner Tony Rosenfeld built their first stone mill in Lynn in 2018, which also serves as a test bakery for their products.
“The idea was to put it in a city where we thought it could make a difference. Every resident of Lynn gets a 15 percent discount when they come to One Mighty Mill, which we are very passionate about. The idea is that a bagel and cream cheese here is stone-ground and organic, 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 work with local, organic farmers who do not use pesticides.
“Farm level glyphosate is used in most crops that are not organic and glyphosate is a known carcinogen,” Olinto said. “We do everything straight to the farm. We know their farming practices and it’s all organic.”
From Hyde Park, the flour is bagged and taken to a bakery in Brockton, where bagels are made that are packaged and sold in local grocery stores. Their products don’t last as long, but they are more nutritious.
“It looks more like a head of lettuce than a bag of chips,” Olinto said.
One Mighty Mill now also has stone mills in New York and California. The hope is to eventually make their food accessible to everyone.
“We believe it makes a difference and it’s something we take great pride in spending our lives trying to solve,” Olinto said.
