There’s nothing quite like a fresh-baked, well-crafted loaf of bread—but the time and effort it takes to produce such a delicacy (not to mention the knowledge it takes to do the job right) can be an obstacle. Wildgrain, a bakery company that brings carefully crafted baked goods directly to consumers using an innovative subscription model, has grown from a pandemic-era home-baking project to a nationally known operation.

To learn more about Wildgrain, Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery connected with Johanna Hartzeim, one of the company’s founders.

Jenni Spinner: Could you please tell me about your life and the path your career took you before founding Wildgrain?

Johanna Hartzeim: While I was working on my graduation project in Industrial Design in one of the best design schools in Paris, Ismail [Salhi] was looking for a designer for a project he had in mind. We started working on this together, founded our first company together (a music player), moved to Boston for investment and started dating here.

I took a trip to Germany after living in Boston for a bit, and once I tasted European bread again, I immediately missed the high-quality product offered. From that moment, my interest in learning how to make bread from scratch was born and turned into my favorite weekend activity.

JS: Please talk about some of the reasons why you started baking at home, in favor of bringing home store-bought baked stuff.

JH: When we first moved to Boston in 2015 from living in France, we realized the lack of fresh-made, high-quality bread products. We were not interested in bread products with a long list of ingredients but were nostalgic for the pastries and bread we had accessible in Europe. This inspired me to start baking at home which is where I began to tackle the unique challenge of sourdough bread, as it is a difficult item to perfect. This hobby quickly turned into a passion where I dedicated my weekends to perfecting the sourdough loaf and offering bread to friends, family, and loved ones.

JS: Then, could you tell me about how you made the leap from home bakery, to bakery business?

JH: I started baking at home to create high-quality bread with simple ingredients and quickly became passionate about making better bread accessible to everyone. This passion project took off in 2020 when the pandemic hit. I purchased a Tartine cookbook and began baking sourdough every weekend and began offering the loaves to family and friends.

During this time, Ismail and I identified a significant market gap, perfected the par-baked loaf, and launched the business. Due to COVID restrictions—we were not able to have everyone in one place, working together—so, we got creative on how to meet consumer demands. To expand access for customers—and to accommodate pandemic restrictions—we partnered with artisanal bakers across the country, ensuring more people could enjoy high-quality bread from home. This turned out to be the best decision we made as we now have the ability to support local bakers across the country while seeing our product quality and consumer demands met.

JS: You’re focused on sourdough—could you please talk about some of the benefits of fermentation in baked goods? Feel free to talk about health, taste, or anything that comes to mind.

JH: Wildgrain prioritizes simplicity, using only a few high-quality ingredients—flour, water, and salt—to create our bread. While sourdough offers numerous health benefits, our focus is on delivering a delicious, artisanal product with minimal ingredients and processing. Our team prioritizes the long, 30-hour, fermentation process really needed to create a high-quality sourdough loaf. This long fermentation process and simplicity of ingredients allows us to deliver a product unlike what you can purchase in store. For example, some stores use sourdough flavoring vs. going through the long, time-consuming, fermentation process. Since sourdough’s fermentation process is time- and labor-intensive, we make fresh sourdough baked goods more accessible without compromising quality.

Although sourdough was our starting point, Wildgrain has since expanded into a variety of categories, including hand-crafted artisan pastas, pastries, pizzas, and more. We also offer gluten-free and plant-based options to accommodate different dietary needs.

JS: You’re also all about clean-label products—could you please share some of the reasons why you think that careful, clean approach to baking is important?

JH: This stems from our time in Paris and truly enjoying the freshness of European baked goods. Wildgrain’s focus is to bring that bread experience to the U.S. and allow customers to experience the simplicity of European bread in the U.S.

JS: Does clean-label baking present any challenges that a bakery producer without those standards might face?

JH: Delivering high-quality, handcrafted artisan products at the scale of Wildgrain was a large initial challenge for the brand. It takes much more time to perfect a recipe, teach the recipe, and furthermore perfectly reproduce that recipe. I work hard to make sure we deliver the same quality of product around the board and with this comes the process of carefully selecting the bakers and bakeries we work with. We have a long vetting process to ensure we are working with additional teams that align with our mission and quality standards.

JS: Then, you have a unique business model—could you please share how Wildgrain’s system works?

JH: Wildgrain’s production process goes directly back to our mission - ensuring high-quality, handcrafted products with fewer ingredients than what you can purchase at your local store. With the influx of consumer demand, it was necessary we cultivate a system that involved additional bakers and bakeries to maintain the quality of product while meeting the demand of our consumers. Bringing in bakeries to help supply the demand has been a joy as we get to work with and support small businesses while sharing a similar love for artisan goods.

JS: What are your plans for the future—any new products or expansion in the works?

JH: Wildgrain’s mission stems from making artisanal bread more accessible to all and, with that, we are on a mission to continue catering to a variety of dietary requirements. Right now, we offer a plant-based box and gluten-free box offering and are actively looking to continue to expand into new categories to reach an even larger consumer base.

Related: Janey Lou’s growing bakery business has its sights set on future success