In September he closed his bakery and café a mile down the road in order to focus on a new phase of his business: He has founded the Wild Hive Farm Community Grain Project to foster his mission of sustaining these local organic grains, with their “beautiful flavor and texture.” He’s developing his micro-mill as an educational center to open to the public for special events, like meals at the mill, guest chef appearances and exciting interactive tours for schoolchildren. He lectures, acts as a consultant and serves on panels at conferences.
Allan Chapin, the owner of Café Le Perche in Hudson, wanted to recreate the flavorful, crusty baguettes that he had enjoyed in Normandy, where they have received the prestigious appellation d’origine contrôlée. He brought over a French baker who carried lots of flour with him, which Lewis analyzed for Chapin. He then created a custom blend for the bakery and Café, milling it weekly: a fine fluffy blend of 60 percent light smooth white wheat pastry flour and 40 percent hard red wheat flour, the proportions adjusted regularly with variations in the weather.
The Woodstock Garden Café uses Wild Hive flours for its breads, and a custom blend goes to Mario Batali’s Manhattan Eataly. Many New York City restaurants feature Wild Hive products on their menus.
Besides grinding his soft wheat pastry and robust hard red spring wheat flours, Lewis offers a hard red clear 00 flour for lighter whole-wheat loaves and baked goods, a soft whole-wheat all purpose flour and a special blend of hard and soft wheat with a lower protein and gluten content (similar to the flour in France and Italy). He has a nutty, high-mineral, low-gluten spelt flour, a cinnamon-scented whole-rye flour and a lighter variation, and oat and corn flours. He also offers whole grains like wheat berries (hard red spring or soft white winter), spelt berries, Scottish oat chops, whole-rye chops and rye berries, rye bran and a ten-grain mixture that adds triticale, millet, flaxseed and vetch to all of the above, good as a hot cereal or added to baked goods.
Beans like black beans and pinto are on hand, too, plus cornmeal that’s a favorite of local chefs, available as a finely milled cornmeal or a coarsely ground polenta meal, with a “boost of flavor,” per Lewis.
At the Village Tearoom Restaurant & Bakeshop in New Paltz, Agnes Devereux is using Wild Hive cornmeal to coat a wild cod with shaved Brussels sprouts with bacon and a golden-raisin-and-lemon-caper relish. “We love it primarily because it’s delicious; it’s also organic and local, and that really matters to us,” she told me. The cornmeal is in also in the Tearoom’s corn muffins and an Italian lemon polenta cookie (available in the spring). In the past Devereux has simmered the polenta for an hour in Ronnybrook Farm whole milk and topped it with Sprout Creek Farm Batch 35 cheese. Also in New Paltz, at Il Gallo Giallo Wine Bar you’ll find Wild Hive polenta often featured as a special, perhaps topped with Barolo-braised beef, or braised pork ribs, maybe in-season chanterelles or grilled shrimp.
At Crave in Poughkeepsie they do polenta three ways: soft with Parmesan, with braised short ribs or with wild mushrooms, soft-boiled eggs and house-cured pancetta. The Hop in Beacon offers it with a fried egg, smoky tomato marmalade, braised greens and almonds, or as a mascarpone-enriched bed for lamb and kale sausage and kale/almond pesto.
Inspired by my visit to the mill, I pulled some of its delightfully coarse polenta out of my fridge, simmered it, tossed it with a pat of butter and Pecorino Romano and had it with fresh fennel that I braised with onion, garlic and hints of smoky slab bacon and tomato. Lewis told me that I could soak the coarse polenta ahead of time to give it a jump-start on cooking; that way it can simmer with an occasional stir, rather than the constant stirring that you usually need to do with polenta. It worked beautifully. You can also put it in a big pan or heavy pot with water and roast it in the oven, stirring it occasionally, he said.
I’m a big fan of cornmeal, using it in cornbread and polenta, where I sometimes mix the coarse and fine-grained varieties, or to dust fish before sautéing. It’s wonderful to have such a fresh and flavorful local product, and I was thrilled when it began to appear in local markets.
Wild Hive Farm grains are sold with a best-by date so that they can be consumed at their freshest. They only have about a two-month shelf life, Lewis told me, which you can extend a bit by storing them in the refrigerator, or for up to a year in the freezer.
Wild Hive’s micro-mill is located at 2645 Salt Point Turnpike in Clinton Corners but is not yet open to the public. Future special events are being scheduled. Contact the mill at [email protected] or (845) 266-0660. Find Wild Hive products at: Mother Earth’s Storehouse, 249 Main Street, Saugerties, (845) 246-9614; Woodstock Meats, 57 Mill Hill Road, Woodstock, (845) 679-7917; Sunfrost Farms, 217 Tinker Street, Woodstock, (845) 679-6690; Adams Fairacre Farms, 1560 Ulster Avenue, Lake Katrine, (845) 336-6300; 765 Dutchess Turnpike, Poughkeepsie, (845) 454-4330; New Paltz Health and Nutrition Center, 15 New Paltz Plaza, (845) 256-0256; Taliaferro Farms, 187 Plains Road, New Paltz, (845) 256-1592, taliaferrofarms.com; Red Hook Natural Foods, 7478 South Broadway, Red Hook, (845) 758-9230; Rhinebeck Health Foods, 24 Garden Street, Rhinebeck, (845) 876-2555, www.rhinebeckhealthfoods.com; Beacon Natural Market, 348 Main Street, Beacon, (845) 838-1288, www.beaconnaturalmarket.com; Nature’s Pantry, 1545 Route 52, Suite 20, Fishkill, (845) 765-2023, www.naturespantryny.com. Read more about local cuisine and learn about new restaurants on Ulster Publishing’s dinehudsonvalley.com or hudsonvalleyalmanacweekly.com.
