Hey everyone, we are back with another episode to show you around local favorites in Boise. Welcome to Great Harvest! This is our very favorite bakery. They have been in business for 10 years and under current ownership for over 3 years.
The owners Jon and AJ fell in love with Great Harvest bread through their daughter who worked for the company. Jon worked in an industry that kept relocating the family which they got tired of. The couple saw how much everyone loved working for Great Harvest and how high the quality of the bread was. Now the pair has opened a second location and launched a new delivery service so you can order and receive fresh bread the next day!
The wheat used is provided from the golden triangle of wheat in Montana. Great Harvest has been working with the same farmers for over thirty years. The wheat is ground fresh every morning. Loaves are only sold for a single day after baking even though they are fresh for up to ten days.
Bread that is left at the end of the day doesn’t go to waste. Love Inc and the Meridian Food Bank come collect bread each morning that is left over from the night before. They pass out the bread to those who need it most.
The bread is made from simple, quality ingredients. Their honey whole wheat which is the most popular, has only five ingredients: yeast, salt, honey, whole wheat, and water.
Baking bread is a very scientific process. It has to rise, sponge, and mix on a very specific schedule. We got to watch the team work on Challah known both as a traditional Jewish and Hawaiian sweet bread. The team rolled individual strands with their hands forming long snake-like sections of dough and then braided it to form the traditional look of this famous bread.
The bakery is investing in cool new equipment. They toss dough into a machine and it weighs them and cuts it evenly into separate loaves, saving the bakers a lot of time! Their oven can fit thirty pans. That’s a lot of dough.
At Great Harvest, they make plenty of breads (over 25 different types!), pastries, sandwiches, soups, and they love to cater and work on gift baskets.
My wife’s favorite is the cinnamon burst which has cinnamon chips throughout. When they make the cinnamon burst they use a base that is also used to make cinnamon roll bread. We also love the pumpkin chocolate chip.
It’s not just about the sweets, they have healthy options too like their High Five Fiber which has five grams of fiber in EACH slice. Their Dakota Whole Seed has pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and millet which gives it some nice crunch. AJ told us about the Popeye made of spinach, roasted red peppers, and a little bit of garlic. She suggests making grilled cheese with a few slices of the Popeye!
Definitely stop by and visit the Great Harvest bakeries. Each visitor gets a free slice of bread! They even have butter at the end of the counter. If you can’t make it to the brick and mortar, you can order delivery or catering so check out their website.