The Midwife and The Baker
Mac McConnell mills 3,000 pounds of organic grain a week on 40-inch granite stones and bakes it into loaves that are half to fully whole wheat. In June 2026 the Austrian World Cup team ordered its match-week bread here.
Why go
McConnell was a bread instructor at the San Francisco Baking Institute before this was a business, and the business started as loaves sold out of his wife Jaime's San Francisco midwifery practice.2 In 2018 they took over Acme Bread's Mountain View facility on Independence Ave.2 The point of the operation is the mill. Two 40-inch granite stone mills from New American Stone Mills grind wheat, spelt, rye and khorasan in-house, all organic.3 Elena Kadvany watched it run in 2019: 3,000 pounds of flour a week, a staff of 35, flour as fine as pastry flour
that makes the whole-grain loaves loftier than the old mill could.2 Blue Bottle put their pastries in all its Bay Area cafes shortly after the move.2
Order this / avoid
- Order: the 100% whole wheat, the bakery's most popular bread.2
- Order: the khorasan baguette. The Austrians ordered it for match week.1
- Order: a croissant. McConnell folds whole grains into the laminated doughs too.2
- Avoid: treating the address as a cafe. It is a production bakery; the loaves also sell at Bay Area farmers markets and through cafes and grocers.3
What locals & experts say
- Elena Kadvany, Palo Alto Online (2019):
Flour — specifically, fresh-milled whole-grain flour — is the heart and soul of The Midwife and the Baker, where McConnell is working to elevate grains like kamut, rye, wheat berry, spelt and Khorasan by proving they can taste just as good, if not better, than their white wheat flour counterparts.
2 - Becky Duffett, The San Francisco Standard (July 2026), reporting the Austria order:
The Midwife and the Baker, one of the Bay Area's top bakeries, was among the first to mill their own flour, a labor of love that unlocks next-level aroma and flavor.
1
Good to know
- The World Cup order, June 2026: the Austrian team's nutritionist required naturally leavened, slowly fermented bread and approved this bakery. Austria beat Jordan 3-1, its first World Cup win in 36 years.1
- Grain policy: local and organic only. McConnell would not order kamut from Texas even for the national team.1
Verdict
should-visit — Mac McConnell taught bread at the San Francisco Baking Institute, took over Acme's Mountain View facility in 2018, and mills his own organic grain on 40-inch granite stones, 3,000 pounds a week on Kadvany's 2019 count. The loaves are 50 to 100 percent whole wheat and the baguette is the 'whitest' thing he makes at 25% kamut. In June 2026 the Austrian national team ordered its World Cup match-week bread from him because his fermentation met their nutritionist's European standard, then beat Jordan 3-1. That is a bakery with a thesis, proven at volume, still being sought out this summer.