Hourani Sourdough Bread
This simple recipe makes a spectacular 100% whole-wheat loaf using sourdough starter and Honoré flour. Elizabeth DeRuff originally found Honoré’s sourdough bread recipe through a Mother Jones article ...
A Toast to St. Honore
Unless well-versed in patron saints, many people may not know that there is a patron saint of bread bakers, communion wafer makers and flour merchants named Honoratus of Amiens, or St. Honoré, who lived in seventh-century France. Honoré Farm and Mill, the nonprofit led by founder and “agricultural chaplain“ Elizabeth DeRuff, is named after this man—known to be both generous and always wielding a baker’s peel—and has a mission to remodel the local food and farm system as we know it.
With a growing team, Honoré is dedicated to connecting and strengthening the relationship between people, food and the land through honoring agricultural traditions, regenerative farming practices, the cultivation of heritage grains, and hands-on education.
“I think that the more people are connected to the land and understand how food is grown, the more appreciation people will have for their food, its effect on the earth, our own bodies and our communities,” says DeRuff.
Sustainable from Seed to Loaf
Honoré Farm and Mill grows and sources heirloom wheat varieties such as Red Fife, Sonora and Seashore Rye, and propagates rare Hourani, Karun and Jaljuli. Every step along the way for Honoré follows thoughtful regenerative practices including crop rotation, cover crops, compost fortification and zero chemical fertilizers or toxic pesticides. Both the farms where the wheat is grown—Full Belly Farm in Capay Valley and Tara Firma Farms in Petaluma—are certified organic, which enhances and supports the process. Adding to the nutritive nature, Honoré also utilizes a stone mill to turn these grains into a flour that is more nutritious, hearty and digestible than standard commercial flour.
Sonora wheat, for example, is a soft white grain with a long history in what is now the southwestern United States, grown by the agricultural Native Americans in Mexico who used it to make whole-wheat tortillas. This wheat is purported to be the first wheat successfully introduced to America after Columbus’s 1492 journey.
Hourani wheat seeds also have an ancient history. This wheat was stored by King Herod the Great in the Masada fortress in the Middle East’s Fertile Crescent 2,000 years ago until it and other wheat varieties like Jaljuli were discovered and excavated by archeologists in the 1960s. And so how did Honoré get a hold of this ancient wheat? In 2019, DeRuff received a small box of Hourani seeds from Washington State University’s Breadlab, with the intention for her to further the food and its spirituality, which naturally she is honoring.
Hourani is a wheat landrace, which means it was developed over the millennia and has adapted to local conditions, plus it has not been hybridized so it retains its original genetic form. “I believe we are the only ones in the country growing it commercially, may-be even the world,“ says DeRuff. This rare supergrain has caught the attention and palates of local chefs and bakers—among them Chef de Cuisine David Breeden of the famed French Laundry in Yountville who makes has made the restaurant’s dinner brioche rolls from Honoré’s hourani wheat for the last two years.
Wheat may be one of the last categories embraced by the farm-to-table movement, but DeRuff believes this crop is inching its way closer. A few challenges exist however, including a lack of traditional knowledge, infrastructure, funding and proper equipment. Adding to this, wheat is not instantly attractive like, say, an apple. The humble grain starts as a seed that grows into a blade of grass that grows into a seed head, which then has many processes to go through. It’s difficult to look at a wheat field and understand how that becomes a loaf of bread. “That idea of seed-to-loaf guided the sort of level of inquiry when I first started,“ DeRuff says.
Germination of an Idea
One day, while passing out communion during a service and seeing that some people couldn’t participate because the wafer was wheat, DeRuff contemplated why some people could eat wheat and others could not. What followed was a deep dive into the world of eco farm conferences and grain-growing group meetings, where she began to understand the difference between nutritious and digestible ancient grains and insulin-spiking, nutrient-deficient refined white flour.
The ultimate learning came when DeRuff and a few volunteers started a two-year program called Wheat Wednesdays at Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Marin City, where DeRuff volunteered after school with the Boys and Girls Club of Marin and Sonoma. Growing six furrows of wheat, 25 yards long, DeRuff taught children the growing cycles of wheat and the different plant parts, plus how wheat is grown, harvested, threshed and winnowed. She even brought a small stone mill with a handle to teach the grinding process.
“The minute the children put the seeds in the mill and saw the flour come out,“ she says, “it was like a lightning bolt for them. Now they understood how a wheat field can become a loaf of bread.“
After the success of the school program, DeRuff created a Kickstarter campaign in 2016 with the goal to create a traveling stone mill in a custom trailer that visited farmers’ markets and schools. In a brief 30 days, the goal was met. Now this mill serves as a critical educational tool.
“Less than 10% of the groups that I teach have previously touched wheat or seen it in person,” she says. Now the mobile mill makes its rounds (600 people visited it in 2023) and the wheat has integrated into schools. In fact, 8,000 new students get to experience Hourani as part of their school lunches in four public school districts, plus 1,084 Mount Diablo students, cafeteria staff and teachers were educated through a USDA-funded pilot project in 2023–24. Three schools even now grow wheat, and Honoré has also expanded to offer sourdough bread–making workshops.
Changing Times
With our climate shifting, farmers must consider altering their strategies. Such is the case for Honoré. DeRuff says, “The biggest change we made was in an effort not to use any irrigation, so we turned to dry farming three years ago.” Honoré also started planting in the fall instead of the spring like most farmers. As a result, Honoré achieves a crop without a drop of irrigation—even in years when rain is sparse. Fall planting allows plant roots to develop slowly over the winter and grow deeper where they continue to sequester carbon even after being harvested.
Growing for Good
Honoré Farm and Mill celebrated their 10<sup>th</sup> annual community harvest in June and received a $50,000 grant from the USDA to build a wheat curriculum that will be distributed in schools. Honoré also received a new contract with the Mount Diablo school district to provide whole grains for school lunches and to bring wheat education into the gardens. Getting cafeteria workers hands-on wheat experience and teaching them the importance of whole grains has been an effective strategy in the Honoré playbook, Deruff says, and she plans to bolster outreach programs.
The last piece of the puzzle for Honoré is figuring out how to keep the entire wheat process local, instead of the current situation where the grain is shipped out for storing and milling. DeRuff hopes to create a grain-centered farm where wheat is grown, stored and milled onsite. Honoré was recently granted a stone mill and it waits patiently in a warehouse looking for a home. DeRuff’s dream? To provide a permanent home for the local wheat community where farmer, miller, baker and eater can all make—and break—bread together.
Recipe