The line outside Tulsa’s Country Bird Bakery stretched down the sidewalk well before the doors opened on a Saturday morning. Inside, trays of warm croissants rest beside loaves of bronzed sourdough. A Danish garnished with flowers of cheese sat in the display case.

Behind the counter, Cat Cox, owner of the bakery, moves between tables of rising dough with flour dusted across her apron.

For Cox, flour is not just an ingredient; it is the foundation of her work and part of her philosophy.

“I like to say that flour is flavor,” Cox said.

Cox grew up in Oklahoma, but after graduating from the Kansas City Art Institute, she traveled nationally, finding work in kitchens before returning to Oklahoma.

When she returned to Tulsa from Marfa, Texas, nearly 14 years ago, she did not have plans to open a nationally recognized bakery, but was searching for meaningful work.

Something shifted while she helped open Tulsa’s FarmBar, a farm-to-table restaurant that sources local produce, meat and dairy, she said.

“That is where I gained a really deep respect and desire for meticulously sourcing ingredients from local farmers,” she said.

At the time, however, stone-milled flour was difficult to find in Oklahoma.

Cox had taken a workshop in North Carolina at a bakery using stone-milled grain and saw firsthand what it could contribute to the baked goods. When she returned home, she could not find a local mill offering what she wanted, she said.

She tried milling her own flour using a second-hand mill she purchased, she said. However, today, much of the flour at Country Bird Bakery comes from Chisholm Trail Milling in Enid, Oklahoma, she said.

The company mills regionally grown wheat using traditional stone mills, preserving the entire grain kernel and producing flour that carries more flavor and nutritional value, Cox added.

Cox uses several varieties milled by Chisholm Trail, including hard red wheats such as Gallagher and Butler’s Gold, and a hard white wheat known as Big Country. Each grain behaves differently in dough, allowing the bakery to carefully shape flavor and texture across its breads, pastries and cookies, she said.

Her preference for stone-milled flour is rooted in both flavor and nutrition, Cox added.

“Sourdough is a living being,” Cox said. “It’s a community of yeast and bacteria that work together to create a bread that rises, has really good flavor and improved digestibility.”

For Cox, fermentation is a time-consuming process demanding attention and patience, she said.

“Making commercially yeasted breads doesn’t excite me,” she said. “Because that’s really about making more bread in less time, so you can sell more, and sourdough is the antithesis of that.”

Instead, Cox leans into a slower process, one that mirrors her broader philosophy about food and agriculture, she said.

“I want to do anything I can to make people aware we have all these incredible farmers here growing really beautiful ingredients that you can get at the farmers market,” Cox said.

That philosophy extends beyond the bakery walls. Cox described baking as an agricultural act, one that connects consumers back to the land and the people who grow their food.

“Any time you spend money with a local farmer or a local producer, like someone who’s making jams or bread, you are putting that money back into the community,” she said.

The grain Cox uses follows a path that can be traced long before it reaches the bakery.

Chisholm Trail Milling licenses wheat varieties developed by Oklahoma State University’s wheat improvement team. Those varieties are bred in Oklahoma for Oklahoma growing conditions, planted and milled locally before arriving in Tulsa.

“I felt there was an opportunity to do stone-milled flour and fresh-milled whole grain flour, locally sourced, single-variety flour, for consumers looking for fresh, natural ingredients,” said Brady Sidwell, entrepreneur and co-founder of Chisholm Trail Milling.

Sidwell works with contract farmers who grow specific wheat varieties for the mill. He provides the OSU-licensed planting seed, receives the harvested grain, then cleans, mills and distributes the flour to bakeries and customers, he added.

Most of those wheat varieties began their journey through research in OSU’s wheat improvement program, Sidwell said.

The program’s reach extends far across the state, said Brett Carver, OSU wheat genetics chair and Regents professor in the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences.

“About 70% of the wheat growing in the state comes from this breeding program,” Carver said.

As the varieties move from research plots and eventually into flour, they carry the work of breeders, millers and bakers along the way, Sidwell said.

“It’s not just helping the farmer have an outlet,” Sidwell said.

“It’s actually helping our consumers be healthier and helping sustain rural communities,” he added.

For Carver, partnerships with mills like Chisholm Trail are intentional. Instead of entering large commodity systems in which wheat from many farms is blended together, some varieties developed through the university’s wheat improvement program move through smaller identity-preserved processes, Carver said.

“The value has to be maintained throughout the supply chain,” Carver said. “You’ve got the grower, the miller and the end user, and they help us connect all those dots.”

Operations like Chisholm Trail allow that chain to remain visible, linking university research, Oklahoma farmers, regional millers and bakers like Cox before the grain finally reaches the table, Carver added.

“This wheat is identifiable all the way to the table,” Carver said.

For Cox, traceability is not abstract, she said, adding it shapes how she buys flour, how she teaches and how she talks about food.

She can name the mill. She can name the farmer. Often, she can name the variety of wheat in the dough she shapes, she said.

Her commitment to local sourcing extends beyond flour. Seasonal produce determines what appears in the pastry case each week: oyster mushrooms, squash and strawberries preserved at peak harvest, Cox said.

Rather than ordering from large distributors, she often calls farmers directly to ask what is available, she said.

Through monthly sourdough workshops led by Cox, she said participants gather in the production kitchen for five-hour sessions baking bread. They leave with sourdough starter, loaves and a deeper understanding of whole-grain flour, she added.

The workshops are about more than technique; they are about greater awareness, real impact and meaningful connection, Cox said.

“Every time I teach a workshop, and we use those flours, people are more likely to turn around and buy that flour, which helps support the miller and the farmer,” Cox said.

Country Bird Bakery is open two days most weeks, yet customers regularly wait in line around the block.

In 2025, Cox was named a James Beard Award winner for Outstanding Baker. The recognition brought her Tulsa storefront into the national spotlight, but the bakery’s growth has remained thoughtful and intentional, she said.

“It feels good to grow organically on your own terms and not rush anything that didn’t feel right,” Cox said.

Inside the bakery, customers carry warm loaves in paper bags. Few know the name of the wheat variety in their bread, or the research programs that helped develop it, but they recognize the flavor and the care behind it, Cox added.

At Country Bird Bakery, flour carries a story, one that stretches from Oklahoma soil to a Saturday morning breakfast table.

Story by Ella Harmon | Cowboy Journal