You might have heard...we launched a new product in January. It was a long time coming. In fact, it took us six years to develop this product! Why did it take us so long?
The short answer is three babies in five years. The cutest little project interrupters! (*See a picture of our newest addition below.)
The long answer is—it hadn’t been done before. Cheap dried pasta is ubiquitous of course. And even artisan pasta is becoming more common as small scale pasta makers are cropping up across the US. But dried pasta made from stone milled heritage durum (pasta wheat) is unheard of. They don’t even make it in Italy! Of course, this just made the project even more attractive to me and my dad.
I want to take you behind the scenes of product development here at Hayden Flour Mills. Did you know that most new industrial food products are developed by food scientists? They are literally engineered to contain the perfect ratios of fat, salt and sugar to make them addicting. And designed with the perfect packaging to lead you to an impulse buy.
At Hayden Flour Mills our process is much less engineered. We make new products based on what we would like to eat—food with flavorful ingredients, grown ethically. We test new products among or friends and family. However, we do sell to large grocery store chains like Whole Foods and Sprouts so we can’t be complete idealists when it comes to a new product. We have to consider the logistics of shelf life and pricing and size.
Here are some of the challenges we had to address to bring this product to market.
We had to design a whole new milling process. Our mill is based outside of Phoenix Arizona and the majority of our grains are grown right outside our door. One of the grains that grows best here is durum or pasta wheat. It loves our dry climate! But it’s a very hard wheat, making it difficult to stone mill. So, when we designed our most recent stone milling system, we added a few special steps just for milling this particular pasta wheat variety. And that’s all I can say since I’m sworn to secrecy on this one.
We had to re-invent how our packaging process. Because the pasta is made from freshly milled flour and includes the germ and oils, our pasta can go rancid. This sounds like the makings of a marketing nightmare. Dried spaghetti is what you should stock your doomsday bunker with right?
The general rule is that pasta never goes bad. But in this case, the same thing that makes our pasta so delicious (oils and wheat germ included) is what makes it go bad as the air oxidizes the oils. Our solution— removing the oxygen in the packaging process so that the oils wouldn’t oxidize. And voila! Our specialty pasta could hang with the other suspiciously-long best-by-dates on your grocery store shelf. (I still don’t recommend hoarding our pasta for the end times!)
We had to keep the price just right. Heritage wheat is expensive. There is no way around this. Again, a big barrier when a package of pasta can be had for as low as $2. We knew our pasta would be pricier but in order to keep it in the range of possibility, we decided to blend our heritage durum with an organic modern durum variety.
We had to perfect the art of extruding and drying. Artisan pasta has two distinguishing factors from industrial pasta. Drying time and extruding process. Artisan pasta is dried slowly and extruded under high pressure through bronze dies. Each of these steps took
We had to pick the perfect pasta shapes. Picking a pasta shape is like picking a favorite ice cream flavor. One of each please! But we could only pick 4. There are giant catalogs full of pasta shapes. My dad and I went in circles on what to choose. I argued for the uncommon shapes with hard to pronounce names. And my dad advocated for the familiar shapes. In the end, the compromise was traditional shapes with a twist. Shells, but a bit fancier than normal. Macaroni, but a big thick grown-up version. And wheels that look more like flowers.
The flowers are my favorite. I love cooking them very al denté so they have crunchy spokes.
We had to grow enough heritage durum wheat. Our pasta is made from a heritage durum variety that was nearly extinct 8 years ago until a farmer in rural Arizona grew out a handful of seed. Read the incredible story of how this seed was recovered in Saveur Magazine here.
We had to design a beautiful pasta box. Two words: Gold Foil. I went back and forth on whether to spend a little bit more on the packaging and go with my intuition for a little extra sparkle. And in the end, I decided to follow my heart and I went for the extra joy. A few little gold foil details on an otherwise minimal box. Gold- the color of a ripe field of durum in full noonday sun.
One of my favorite details is this illustration on the back. To show the germ. A wheat kernel with a heart of gold. Drawn by Lori Bailey.
So far, this cute little wheat friend doesn’t have a name. Comment below if you have any ideas!
Reading
I enjoyed food blogger Phylis Grant’s memoir with recipes—Everything is Under Control. A quick read with an easy poetic style. I resonated with the sections on motherhood. And learned that I would never make it working in a NYC high end restaurant.
Eating
Pizza! My husband convinced me we needed a Ooni pizza oven back when they had a Black Friday sale. I’m glad he did because it makes the best pizzas. And we’ve been enjoying outdoor pizza dinners while the Phoenix weather is so great.
Turmeric Blueberry Muffins made with Red Fife flour. I can’t wait to share this recipe when the book comes out. I ate about two-dozen of them just to be sure they were a winning recipe. You’re welcome.
Listening
I’m always learning something new from Whetstone Magazine’s Point of Origin Podcast. They recently had a great episode on wheat!
*Baby Maximilian joined us in January.
This newsletter does not contain any affiliate links (this is a link where I would receive a small kick-back from your purchase) or sponsored content of any kind. I figure if you want to support my work, you can always buy my flour or buy my book when it comes out. Thanks for reading!