Owner and self-proclaimed “breaducator,” Aristos Tzannos, better known as “Rusty,” emigrated from his native Greece decades ago. He takes great pride in his heritage, mainly because it’s what inspired him to bring his method of bread baking to New York City. “I was searching for good bread rolls to use for my kids’ sandwiches and was shocked that I could only find pre-packaged, manufactured, white, fluffy loaves that stayed on the shelves for months without going bad,” he says.

While most Americans are accustomed to this type of bread, Rusty had seen nothing like it during his years in Greece. The bread he enjoyed was handmade, often by his grandmother or mother, through a process of stone milling, which uses two flat circular stones stacked on top of one another to ground grain in a continuous rotation until it’s smooth and fine. This is the same process that’s been used for millenia by cultures across the globe. 

“I decided to open up my bake shop—to make real bread the old-fashioned way, just like my grandmother used to do in Greece.” His method involves a custom-made slow rotation stone mill, a process that allows the highest nutrient content of the grain, maintaining the germ, bran, and endosperm. “This is the only way for the vitamins from the valuable sprout, trace elements, and minerals underneath the bran layer to be used for nutritional purposes.” The germ that’s retained during the stone milling process gives the bread its “nutty,” genuine flavor and aroma, which blankets the Brooklyn Mills bakery.