Bread's Comeback: Great Harvest Opens in Kirkwood

Tom and Judy Honigfort realize their dream today with the opening of the Great Harvest Bread Company at 125 West Argonne Drive in Kirkwood. For about a year, the Honigforts have been planning for this day and it appears all their hard work is about to make them very busy bakers.  

The Honigforts transformed part of the Messenger Printing building into a bakery and café seemingly windswept off the Montana prairie. The wall mural of wheat stalks on the plains, by Kirkwood artist Katherine Kamphoefner, coupled with Downtown Kirkwood’s only silo gives the space an expansive but comfortable feel. Reaching this point wasn’t easy, however. 

“It’s such an old building; we ran into surprises during construction,” Judy explained. “The floors had to be reinforced, for example, especially under our heavy equipment.”

The oven alone is huge. “It holds 40 pans of bread each pan containing four sandwich bread-sized loaves,” Honigfort said.

The mill is probably their second largest piece of equipment. Yes, they mill their own flour every night at Great Harvest Bread Company.

Bread's Timeline: The perfect Loaf Means Rise and Shine

Here's the process: Wheat from Montana is shipped to the store about once a week. Every night the wheat will be milled into flour for the next day’s baking. “It has to sit and cool to be at its best,” Honigfort said. At about 4 a.m. the next morning staff will begin to arrive to produce that day’s breads and breakfast sweets. Breakfast items are ready by store’s opening at 7 a.m., but the daily bread selections are not ready until 9:30 a.m.

“We’ll need to educate our customers about this timeline,” Honigfort said. “If a customer arrives at 7:30 a.m. we’ll have breakfast sweets and bread from the day before, if there is any left, but the loaves for today’s menu won’t be available.”

A Dynamic Daily Menu

The bread menu changes daily. Five different breads are offered every day: Honey Whole Wheat and Honey White are standard, while the Dakota, Cinnamon Chip, Cheddar Garlic, Nine Grain, Apple Crunch and Cracked Pepper Parmesan rotate daily. “The bread menu will change every month too,” Honigfort said. “Everyone wants the Olive Bread. Hopefully we’ll have it in July.”

Their entire menu is a work in progress. “Right now we are just offering cold sandwiches, but we will add other items such as paninis and soup in the coming months,” Honigfort said.

As for today, the Honigforts are soaking in the long-waited celebratory opening. “We’ve waited and anticipated the opening for so long, it’s surreal that it’s finally here, but it will be worth all the time and hard work,” Honigfort said. “Kirkwood is going to be a great community to serve.”