How wheat it is: Great Harvest Bakery and Café adds a special twist to the bread-making process

Making dough is usually the first step in the bread-baking process.

They raise the bar at Great Harvest Bakery and Café in Ames by grinding wheat into their flour.

“We get bags of wheat delivered, and we take it in and mill it,” owner Kim Sharp said.

Their personalized flour mill is located in a small room off the kitchen. Affectionately named Milton, the room is decorated with googly eyes and a smile, making it a favorite for the many groups of schoolchildren who visit on field trips.

Great Harvest’s wheat is specially grown near the Canadian border in northwestern Montana.

“It’s the only place in the United States where it’s grown,” Sharp said. “It’s non-GMO and it meets the highest specs for quality wheat.”

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Great Harvest adapts recipes, offers gluten-free options

It’s not just the freshly ground wheat flour that sets Great Harvest’s products apart, head sweets baker Syndie Swalla said.

The dough is hand-crafted and pure, free of harmful ingredients.

“What makes our stuff special is that we don’t use preservatives and we make things fresh. We use recipes — we don’t just open a box and pour,” Swalla said. “Everything you get here is just like you would bake at home.”

The whole wheat flour is used in many of Great Harvest’s breads, orchestrated by longtime bread baker Nick Puski. Many of the bakery's sweetest products, such as its brownies, also use whole wheat flour.

A lifeline for the bread-hungry, gluten-free crowd

The bakery also offers plenty of gluten-free options.

“We’ve been going toward offering gluten-free things. We have about 10 cookies now that we make gluten-free,” Swalla said.

Some cookies, such as the monster cookies and the oatmeal raisin cookies, use ground oats rather than flour and are always gluten-free.

Great Harvest also crafts custom orders, including creating gluten-free versions of other breads and sweets.

“When the customer says, ‘Can you do this?’ we’re always willing to give it a try,” Swalla said.

The Harvest Bar, which features ingredients like pumpkin seeds, millet, and sunflower seeds, and the cashew crunch bars, are a couple of Swalla's favorite sweet products.

Although Great Harvest is a franchise, individual locations have the flexibility to adapt recipes and try new ones.

“I get to play around with recipes and make different stuff,” Swalla said.

The Ames staff thrives on its ability to craft unique creations.

“Great Harvest is a ‘freedom franchise,’” Sharp said. “That word freedom is an important part of the business.”

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Great Harvest owner Kim Sharp ventured into food service at 76

A longtime Ames businessman and owner of Triplett Companies, Sharp has been involved in real estate, insurance and construction for decades. Sharp, who was in his mid-70s at the time, decided he'd had enough of the blue-collar work and opened a café and bakery a little more than five years ago.

“I’m 82 years old now, and I’ve been on my knees most of my life, pouring concrete,” he said.

He renovated the Great Harvest space into a bright, open seating area with an enormous kitchen and bakery. The historic location at 502 Burnett Avenue was the garage for the Mathison Ford dealership.

Workers spent two months grinding the old garage floor, which exposed a beautiful array of river rocks used in the original construction.

Baking brings all sorts of people together, which is what Sharp enjoys most about owning a bakery.

“One of the reasons I love this place is because I can sit and talk to people,” Sharp said. “I taught at the university for 35 years and have a Ph.D. in economics and statistics.”

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Interacting with people and providing them with fresh, hand-made food keeps Sharp engaged.

The café's large sandwich selection boasts items such as the spicy apple bacon, turkey chile cheddar melt and hickory melt. Great Harvest offers warm breakfast sandwiches as well, anchored by hearty eggs and meat and gooey, melted cheese, in addition to savory, fresh-baked biscuits.

A rotating menu of house-made soups also appeals to customers' taste buds. Sharp leans on a fresh, healthy menu to inspire his customers.

“For me, the satisfaction is being able to give somebody a sandwich that I know is unbelievably healthy. It’s full of meat and cheese," Sharp said. "We cut our meat really thin so it’s more tender and flavorful.”

Ronna Faaborg covers business and the arts for the Ames Tribune. Reach her at rlawless@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Ames Tribune: An Ames bakery grinds wheat into its flour. Here's how they do it: