(calm music) (calm music continues) - I've heard this comment a lot about, my mother's Italian or my grandmother's Italian, and it reminded me of her cooking.

Remle Colestock, R-E-M-L-E, that's Elmer's spelled backwards.

So, that's my dad's name, that's my grandfather's name, and my great-grandfather's name.

They're all Elmer's.

We've had a couple of trips to Italy in the last two years.

We sampled a lot of restaurants and a lot of pastas and I think simplicity would be the short answer to that one.

Almost every restaurant I ate at, every pasta that I tasted, it was the pasta, the sauce, and cheese on top.

It was just these three simple things, and if you just nail each component, it should be pretty simple for you.

The spaghetti is the only pasta that we order.

Everything else here is extruded or sheeted and handbuilt in our basement.

As far as local food, from the moment I started working in Jackson, I was also working with Slow Food in the Tetons, and I think it took me maybe one or two seasons to realize the opportunity that presented itself that was right there as I'm helping these farmers load and unload all of their product and how easy would it be for me to just like make those connections and bring 'em back to work?

I think I started sourcing Wyoming Heritage Grains the lazy way and I would just use my connections at Slow Food and have them order it.

- Slow Food in the Tetons is a chapter of Slow Food USA and we kind of work in three areas.

We work in local food commerce, we work in education, and in food access.

Remle came on the scene maybe 10 years ago or so.

He just came up to me and says, "Scott, I need some volunteer hours."

He's been the through line of staff members in our people's market for many years now because what he does on his one day off from Glorietta is come and help run our weekly farmer's market.

This whole thing we're doing, it relies on relationships.

And first and foremost, our relationships with the farmers and ranchers and so we make sure that we're working with every one of those folks to help meet them where they are.

One of our producers that we work with is from Powell, Wyoming, and her name is Sara Woods and she's with Wyoming Heritage Grains.

And when we learned what was happening up in Powell, we were amazed, and so as soon as we got that grain in our farm stand, we noticed people were really excited about learning how to bake with it and the health benefits of that grain and just learning about what is possible in the grain world here in Wyoming.

(crickets chirping) (calm music) - I'm Sara Wood.

I own and operate Wyoming Heritage Grains here in Powell, Wyoming.

I am fifth generation farmer here in the Bighorn Basin.

We have grown every commodity crop there is that has been successful in the Horn Basin from corn, beans, peas, barley, alfalfa.

I started digging into why people weren't able to tolerate, you know, the current wheats that we have in the grocery store, what are considered gluten sensitive.

So, I started really researching into what was in the flour, how it was processed, and what has been lost from the commodity market.

(harvester revving) We had a huge diverse grain selection in the 1800s, and they started phasing those out in the 1950s.

World War II ended and we had to feed all these people because they wanted high yields 'cause they wanted that loaf of bread milled, and until loaf of bread and out of the factory in two hours.

That completely changed how our food system works and so we've lost the diversity but then you have a whole other set of issues, so there's gluten intolerance and you can blame it on whatever the hybridization 'cause every time you're adding a trait it adds another gene.

So, it could be that the manipulation with growing those grains, or it could be different practices to make a more shelf stable product like enriching.

(calm music) - [Narrator] It doesn't matter if the bread was baked today or a month ago, the freshness is frozen in.

- And all the fresh oils, the fats, all the good stuff that makes a green healthy for you, you're completely wiping that out to make it shelf stable so then the government requires the companies to reenrich it and so there's a lot of people.

They might not be gluten sensitive, but they might be resistant to folic acid.

They're getting too much in their diet and we're not supposed to have that, so it could be a lot of different things.

(calm music) Just putting it all together what really makes a healthy plant is the soil health.

So, we have a no-till drill, which it just has little channels and just cuts real, real shallow and then covers the seed back up.

It's very minimally invasive.

We're not plowing, the soil wants something there, it wants to be covered all the time and that's basically what tilled soil is, it's an open wound, it wants to put a Band-Aid on it and try to protect itself.

You use a lot of cover crops, a lot of diversity, and we've found like we're not having to water as much.

Like it's keeping that moisture in especially with these heritage grains, it's a lot easier because the root mass on these will be, you know, triple or quadruple of the commodity stuff because that plant spinning all of its time to grow the seed head on it so you can get a bigger heavy harvest, but you're not leaving a big healthy root to continue on the soil health, you have to take care of what's below ground so it can take care of what's above ground.

One of the easiest comparisons is the heirloom tomatoes.

You have these old, old varieties that you can't compare the flavor.

They're just outta this world and that's just like the heritage grains.

That's what we're really trying to do as a whole package.

I want something healthy that will actually nourish you.

I made the switch to Heritage Greens, 2019.

We raised the White Sonora that year.

I ended up leaving my corporate job in February, 2020.

We all know it happened in 2020.

The pandemic hit, grocery stores shut down, and then I became a flour miller.

(mill buzzing) I had to learn everything on the fly.

There's so many different dimensions to it, so many different parameters of what makes a great wheat and even better flour.

We started with just one variety, the White Sonora.

In there we have gone into six different varieties that we've grown here.

They're so incredible of the diversity that they bring back to baking, different cooking.

You're not trying to start with a blank canvas, you already have all the pieces to that great artwork there, it's just a matter of making it yours.

I want something that can be consistent for home bakers as well as professional bakers.

(calm music) - My name is Hailee Davenport.

Favorite thing about pastries I would say the customization and the freedom that you have to experiment.

I found the Wyoming Heritage Grain flours for one, incredibly flavorful in comparison to like high production flours and I think the story is so much more interesting with those kind of flours.

We know like in the 1600s that the White Sonoran was brought over, we know in the 1800s, we've had Ukrainian flour that came the Red Fife.

We have the Graham Cracker on the menu right now, which we know is like usually cinnamon and brown sugar and all that.

Those are flavors that are already in that Red Fife.

I feel like the Italian elements of this place are really influenced by Italian regionality.

Wheat is super adaptive to the environments in which it grows, so we are getting a unique wheat that compared to like a vintage bottle of wine, we're only getting like this milk at this time.

There's already a deep love between people and the area.

If you can also highlight, we can produce these great things in this same area that you already know and love and why wouldn't you wanna try that?

We're happy to share the knowledge if people are interested, but also if people just enjoy the meal, that's amazing.

(calm music) - I think a plate of pasta is like a good way for people to just gather around the table.

I think it brings people together, it starts conversations.

The Wyoming Heritage Grains are like fresh and you can taste that.

You can even feel it.

I mean, when you're working with these flours, they feel new.

They feel like they just came from the earth.

It's very different than the textures that you get from door bought flours.

The other flours that we use in-house are all gonna be from Italy.

I think in Italy everything is small produced and right down the road, so being able to, again, mimic kind of what they're doing over there, we strive to get the freshest flours that we can, and it's a huge bonus that the Wyoming Heritage Grains taste amazing and that it's made here locally.

I think the coolest thing is just preserving what was so long ago, just like having these heritage grains that, if no one cared would've died out and gone away and that's a little sad, preserving the past and it's a beautiful thing.

- It's really nice working with Hailee and Josh.

They're becoming like true masters of their craft, right?

And just kind of seeing them bringing the passion and attitude to table every single day, that's what I really like about Glorietta.

Obviously, Wyoming Heritage Grains has had a pretty big impact.

I think the biggest thing was we started out small, right?

Getting three pound bags.

We're going like with 50, 150, 200 pounds.

The more we order, the more we use, the bigger pipeline we can have to Jackson, the easier it is gonna be for her to focus on those problems that she has.

(upbeat music) - I think every chef, baker, should have a relationship with a farmer.

To truly know where your ingredients are coming from, you need to go out and you need to shake a farmer or a rancher's hand and establish that bond that's been broken with the commodity markets.

People are hungry for that relationship, they're hungry for that story, is definitely strengthen communities, definitely strengthening the farming as well.

- Community food systems work is incredibly important for like social and economic and health reasons.

There's so many reasons why to support it, but I guess I'd encourage everyone to think about what's underneath all of that.

What is driving that?

One of the things may be a deep desire to be a part of something that's bigger than yourself.

And that may a community, that may be a connection to the actual physical food, your hands in the garden, your hands pulling up food.

It might be a connection to your kids, or your parents, or your grandparents through recipes or food culture or traditions.

Food can create connections and create unity in so many ways.

(calm music) (calm music continues) (calm music continues)