Join us as we go beyond the label with food brands that we love at Martie. Today, we chat with Thomas McNaughton and Ryan Pollnow, Co-Chefs of Flour + Water Hospitality Group in San Francisco and founders of Flour + Water Foods, a dried pasta line that brings the craftsmanship of their award-winning restaurants to the home table. Save on Flour + Water Foods at Martie, here, and read the story below!
We’ve been hearing about Flour + Water everywhere, so we are thrilled to chat with you and learn more!
Martie: Tell us the story of Flour + Water and how it became one of San Francisco’s most well-known restaurants.
Thomas: After several years working in San Francisco’s fine dining scene, I took time off to travel through Italy and dive headfirst into pasta-making at the legendary pasta laboratorio, Bruno e Franco in Bologna. It was an incredible experience, and I decided to head back in 2009 with renewed inspiration for reentering the Bay Area culinary scene. I began searching for jobs online and connected with my now-business partner, David Steele, through a Craigslist ad for a pizzaiolo. Suddenly I found myself collecting coins to go to a payphone each day to talk with David as we developed a business plan for what would become Flour + Water. We bought all of this used equipment from a former boss of mine and cobbled together this small restaurant in the Mission with no idea what it was going to be.
Initially, we envisioned Flour + Water as a small, neighborhood pizza restaurant that offered delivery by bike, but the demand for our fresh pasta immediately exceeded our production capabilities. We quickly built out a dedicated Dough Room and hired talented pasta makers to keep up, doubling our pasta offerings. 15 years later we’ve got a repertoire of 90 unique pasta shapes and a daily-changing pasta tasting menu.
Martie: How did the idea come to life for you to offer pasta in grocery stores?
Thomas: It’s always been a dream of ours to be able to extend our hospitality beyond the walls of our restaurants. We’ve spent years perfecting bronze die crafted pasta at Flour + Water and our sister restaurant, Penny Roma, but there’s a limit to how many guests we can serve on any night of the week. We’ve developed such a strong community in our neighborhood and saw an opportunity to really grow that network by developing a dried pasta line available to a broader audience beyond the Bay Area. A foundational reason we were driven to launch dried pasta was also to deepen our impact for Zero Foodprint, an organization that is building a movement with chefs, farmers, scientists, and regional governments to change the food system from the ground up. Flour + Water Hospitality Group was a founding member of the org, and Flour + Water Foods is the first CPG product to support their work.
Martie: What’s your favorite Flour + Water product?
Ryan: I think it’s safe to say that campanelle is our team’s favorite pasta shape!
When it comes to favorite recipes, cacio e pepe will always be my number one back pocket pasta recipe. No matter what my schedule looks like, I always have staples like black pepper and salty Pecorino on standby at home. While spaghetti is the classic noodle pairing for this Roman dish, I like to sub in campanelle to soak up the cheesy, peppery goodness inside its ridges.
Thomas: My daughters would not allow me to say anything besides elbow macaroni! I like to joke that I’m a chef specializing in mac and cheese now that I have two young children at home. The texture of these noodles makes them almost impossible to overcook, an attribute I never thought about until I was running around after two kids and a dog at home and completely forgetting to set a timer. We get creative on the recipe each time depending on which cheeses we have in the fridge, but this classic recipe on our site is one of my favorites (especially with a dash of Crystal hot sauce to finish).
F+W’s Elbow Macaroni & Cheese
Ingredients
- 1 box Flour+Water Elbow Macaroni Pasta
- 2 cups whole milk
- 1 tsp. kosher salt
- 2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
- 3 Tbsp. all purpose flour
- ⅛ tsp. whole nutmeg, freshly grated
- 1 lb. cheese mix, freshly grated (sharp cheddar, mozzarella, jack, provolone, etc.)
- 4 oz. mascarpone (*or substitute cream cheese)
- 3 oz. parmigiano reggiano, finely grated
- TT kosher salt
- black pepper *optional
- hot sauce *optional
Method
Step 1
Cook the pasta according to package instructions. For this dish, we are going to cook the pasta fully in the boiling water, as it does not have additional cooking in its pan sauce. Once the pasta is cooked, reserve a quarter cup of the pasta water for later use and strain through a colander.
Step 2
For the cheese sauce, begin by bringing whole milk to a simmer in a 1 quart saucepan. Season milk with 1 teaspoon kosher salt & freshly grated nutmeg. Remove from heat and reserve. In a separate saucepan, heat butter over medium heat. Once butter is melted, stir in all purpose flour and continue to cook and stir over medium heat for one minute. Slowly whisk milk into butter and flour mixture in a slow steady stream. Once all the milk has been added, bring to a boil over high heat, whisking constantly. Remove from heat and whisk in cheese mix, mascarpone and parmigiano reggiano. Add drained pasta to the cheese sauce. Stir and adjust consistency with reserved pasta water if needed. Season to taste with salt and if desired, black pepper and hot sauce.
Martie: Let’s talk regenerative and organic…what is it and how does it fit into your product development and recipe process?
Thomas: Our philosophy for cooking at the restaurants is simple: we find the best possible ingredient at that moment and plan a dish around it. Since day one we’ve prioritized our relationships with farmers and purveyors who employ sustainable practices - we’re hyper aware that restaurants have a reputation as being wasteful, and our experiences cooking in Italy really underscored the importance of sourcing and whole-ingredient utilization. Many of the regenerative farming practices that are being championed today have been in practice for many years around the world - when we talk about regenerative agriculture, we’re really talking about soil health and fostering an environment where incredible food can be grown.
Ryan: Our relationship with Zero Foodprint really opened up our eyes to what true sustainability means. 1% of all sales from every meal, and now, every box of pasta, go back to this organization that we believe is paving the way for massive change here in the US.
Martie: What has been your biggest “aha” moment when building Flour + Water?
Thomas: Where do we even start? It’s crazy to me that even 15 years in, I learn something new every single day, and my role continues to evolve. An important area of focus for me now is supporting our team’s engagement, and creating a path that inspires their growth for many years to come.
Ryan: A recent ‘aha’ moment was realizing that we have the potential to change the way that wheat is grown in America through our partnership with Zero Foodprint. As we expand our brand, we’re able to leverage that growth to impact the supply chain and conversion of acreage to regenerative practices. It gives our work meaning and inspires our team daily to continue down this road.
Martie: What’s in the pipeline next for Flour + Water?
Thomas: Right now we’re in the R&D stage for expanding our Flour + Water Foods divisions with frozen pizza. Since opening Flour + Water Pizzeria in North Beach (SF’s ‘Little Italy’ neighborhood) in 2023, we’ve assembled a crazy talented team of pizzaiolos who will be producing our signature pies out of a production facility inside the restaurant. By centralizing the frozen pizza program within our flagship pizzeria, we’ll be able to ensure the quality mirrors what we serve in the restaurant. We’ll start with local distribution here in San Francisco.
Ryan: On the restaurant side of things, we’re making plans for the next location of Flour + Water Pizza Shop, our more casual to-go operation and companion concept to the Pizzeria business. Not only will the Pizzeria in North Beach be fueling our frozen pizza production, it’s also going to serve as a dough commissary for future Pizza Shop locations throughout the Bay Area.
Martie: Why is working with Martie important to Flour + Water?
Ryan: At our restaurants we’re obsessed with minimizing food waste, getting creative with food scraps, and creating long-lasting sustainable practices to reduce the restaurant industry’s footprint. When your output is at the scale of a high-volume restaurant you have to be strategic to avoid waste. We’re excited to partner with Martie to give a new audience access to our Flour + Water Foods products, while championing our mission of zero-waste whenever possible, a through line that is central to all our operations as a hospitality group.
