For almost a quarter century, Sixteen Bricks bread has been a mainstay in Greater Cincinnati's best restaurants and specialty grocery stores. Now the company's founder, Ryan Morgan, is ready to bring his talents to the masses with a new line of soft, grocery-store-style sandwich breads.
"I have been working on these breads for a couple of years now," Morgan told me. "While it's fun to make artisan bread, I'd like to get more people eating whole grains ... and America likes soft bread."
The bread, which can currently be purchased in specialty groceries and butcher shops, comes in three styles, including Stone Age Slice, made with spelt; Leviathan, made with white wheat; and Super Seed, packed with nine grains and seeds. All of the breads use a slow
fermentation process and are made without seed oils. While they have a 28-day shelf life, they contain no chemical preservatives, Morgan said.
Morgan has especially high hopes for the Leviathan, which looks and tastes like white bread, even though it's made with stone-ground white wheat. He's hoping it becomes a mainstay bread for parents, who can use it to pack even the pickiest of kids' lunches.
"Let's give them something good to eat," Morgan said. The Leviathan is sweetened with Ohio maple sugar and the white wheat is sourced from Walnut Grove Farm, in Kentucky.
In creating all three breads, Morgan wanted to figure out a way to get regular grocery store shoppers to embrace whole grains by making products made with them easier to find. "Everybody talks about certain ways people should eat, but nobody makes that accessible," Morgan said.
While he is just rolling the breads out now, he hopes to soon be selling them nationwide. He also plans to introduce a fourth bread, this one packed with protein, soon.
All of the loaves are made at Sixteen Bricks bakery, located in the former Klosterman headquarters in Bond Hill. While Klosterman, which was purchased by a private equity company in 2022, was once a part-owner of Sixteen Bricks, Morgan said he bought his shares back a year ago. Since then, he's tacked on a 6,000-square-foot addition and changed the color of the art deco building from its iconic pink to multipattern yellows and blues meant to resemble the Empire State Building, when it first opened.
You can purchase Sixteen Bricks' soft bread at Jungle Jim's, ETC Produce & Provisions in Walnut Hills and Findlay Market, Bridgetown Finer Meats, Rekas butcher shop in Covington, Kremer's Market in Crescent Springs and Morgan's El Camino Baking Company in College Hill. For a full list of stores that carry it, visit Sixteen Bricks' Instagrampage.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Sixteen Bricks announces the greatest thing since sliced bread
