Grain Gathering Returns: Microbakers, Revolutionaries, and the Slow Fight to Fix Bread

There’s a quiet revolution underway in bread. You may have seen us talking about it on this blog, or Instagram and in our Bread Talks. As revolutions go, this is a slow one: because it involves farmers growing grain varieties that commodity markets don’t want. And millers who are staking their livelihoods on stone-milled flour that most supermarkets don't even stock. And bakers working out of home kitchens, converted garages, and tiny storefronts. None of those things happen quickly.

This revolution has been building for years. And in a few weeks, a significant sample of the people driving it are gathering in Washington State. I’m excited to be among them.

The WSU BreadLab and why it matters

If you’re not familiar with the WSU BreadLab, let's fix that.

Based in the Skagit Valley, the BreadLab is part of Washington State University and it operates quite unusually for an academic agriculture institution. In their own words:

We work outside of the commodity system on small grains including wheat, barley, perennial wheat, buckwheat, spelt, and quinoa. One of our goals is to introduce the concept of affordability into our regional food systems—specifically to develop better tasting, healthier, affordable baked goods and keep the value where it is produced while not pricing people out of staple foods.

We create and breed these different grain varieties that are better for the soil and farming, way better tasting, and best of all, healthier for you. Then we share that knowledge with the rest of the world. We work with bakers, farmers, flour mills and basically anyone that wants to create healthier food through whole grains.

The BreadLab was founded by Dr. Stephen Jones and is now directed by Dr. Kevin Murphy. They are, in the truest sense, the scientific backbone of the grain revolution I’m talking about.

Grain Gathering

Grain Gathering is the BreadLab’s event — a convening of farmers, millers, bakers, researchers, chefs and grain advocates that last took place in 2018. After an eight-year gap, it’s back this July 19–21, and the lineup tells you everything about where this movement is right now.

Three days of pinch-yourself grain geekery: masterclasses with some of the most respected names in grain and bread. Field tours, demonstrations, a community party with Pacific Northwest chefs, and thought provoking panel discussions with diverse stakeholders — more on that in a moment.

The event sold out in 36 minutes, which tells its own story.

Cesare, GrAiNZ, and a debt repaid

Ready for a great full-circle moment?

Years ago, Australian-Italian baker Cesare "Ches" Salemi made the trip to one of those early Grain Gatherings in Skagit Valley. He’s the kind of person who fills a room: third-generation baker, enormous personality, founder of the legendary Dust Bakery in Sydney, and now, co-founder of My Forno. He went to that event, met Dr. Steve, saw what the BreadLab was building, and came home fundamentally changed.

So much so that a group of fellow believers expanded their own version of it: GrAiNZ, and Dust Bakery hosted the first one. The same philosophy, the same coalition of farmers, millers, bakers and eaters, rooted in Australia and New Zealand. The BreadLab had sent ripples to the other side of the world. Dr. Steve went to Australia to keynote the first GrAiNZ gathering in 2019. The knowledge flowed back the other way.

That’s what happens when you do work that matters.

Ches has since channeled all of that energy into My Forno, a collaboration between his family’s baking heritage and Real Forni, a third-generation Italian bakery oven manufacturer. Commercial-quality ovens, designed specifically for microbakers. 

I’ve been banging the drum for My Forno in the US for a while now. I was part of setting up the import route here, and I’m proud to say that My Forno is one of the sponsors of this year’s Grain Gathering. At the gathering, we will be baking with one right there in the field, alongside WSU researchers. For Ches, it’s a homecoming. For me, it feels like exactly the kind of story this community runs on.

The panel: Microbakers and the Regional Grain Economy.

My Forno is hosting a panel on Monday, chaired by Ches, and I have a seat on it. The title is  “Microbakers and the Regional Grain Economy” but the real question goes all the way back to a 2015 NYT article on Dr. Stephen Jones and the work of the Breadlab, "Bread is Broken". So how do we fix it?

We have come a long way since then, but there's still so much to do. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, industrial bread severed the relationship between people and the grain that feeds them. It broke the chain between farmer, miller, baker and eater, and replaced it with a system optimized for shelf life and margin. Over time that stifled demand, so the farmers and millers stop growing and milling. The flavor, the terroir, the story — all gone.

The panel is about the people doing the work of rebuilding those connections, one loaf at a time. Alongside me and Ches:

• Eric Sorenson of Clumsy Crow Bakery in Pullman, Washington, who works directly with the BreadLab and has been living the regional grain argument for years.
• Yarden Tamari of Fig Tree Sourdough in Wilmington, Illinois — a full-time microbaker working with regeneratively sourced, freshly milled flour, doing the practical work of making whole grain sourdough accessible to people who find it intimidating. Yarden has been part of the Sourdough Geeks community for years and watching her build Fig Tree has been both rewarding and inspiring.
• Lindsey Gorveatte of Lindsey Bakes Bread in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Two years in, a Sourdough Geeks Bakers Club member who turned a sourdough hobby into a working business that works for her. In a city with no existing infrastructure for this kind of bread,  she’s building the market at the same time she’s building the bakery. Everything about Lindsey — her story, her energy, her small ‘p’ professionalism is impressive.

Worth mentioning that both Yarden and Lindsey are My Forno owners, and have been raising small children not just throughout their journey, but as a fundamental part of it. 

My role on this panel is to talk about what Sourdough Geeks does in this ecosystem. How the content (information and educational resources) and the infrastructure (a community of over 1 million bakers) act as a conduit to better bread. Bakers across the globe paying attention to regional grain is a market signal. The North American Regional Grain Mills Directory — over 275 mills, free, organized by region — exists because finding a local mill shouldn’t require detective work.

Slow revolutions take marathon stamina. If the Grain Gathering audience are looking for hope and courage and inspiration to keep going, or to start perhaps, I hope they see it in our panel.

Why I’m telling you this

I’m not writing this to sell you a ticket; Grain Gathering '26 is sold out.

I’m writing it because this moment is a snapshot of where we now are. A decade ago supply was snuffed out for lack of demand. Today, demand is growing and the work centers on sustainably growing supply. This revolution remains a slow, serious, often underfunded effort to rebuild something that was taken apart over decades. The BreadLab has been making the data-backed argument for years. Bakers like Eric and Yarden and Lindsey are the living proof of concept. Events like this are where that proof gets shared, refined, and amplified.

A lot of what I’m going to be exploring and teaching through Sourdough Geeks over the coming months, including the Microbakery Accelerator, grows directly out of this world. The grain question is inseparable from the microbakery question. You can’t build a serious craft baking business while ignoring what’s in your bag of flour.

More on all of that soon. For now — July 19–21, Skagit Valley. Something good is happening there.

Full event details at breadlab.wsu.edu/grain-gathering-2026

_{Header image source: WSU Breadlab}