Wildgrain Delivery Subscription Review

I'm a big carb fan. For me, a meal or snack doesn't feel complete unless there's bread, rice, or a similar carb component included. I blame this obsession on my Italian upbringing, which consisted of having pasta for dinner several times a week and always having a fresh loaf of bread on the table.

So when I heard about Wildgrain, a bakery delivery service shipping out healthy breads, pastas, and pastries all across the country (and based right in my backyard in Boston!) I had to try it out.

What is Wildgrain?

It all started in 2019, when couple Johanna Hartzheim and Ismail Salhi started pursuing their passion for baking as a side project. But things really kicked into high gear at the start of the pandemic, when the demand for home-delivered food (and comfort carbs) exploded. The couple decided to focus on Wildgrain full-time—and the rest is history.

The subscription service now ships boxes of frozen artisanal baked goods across the country at a frequency of your choice (either once every two, four, or six weeks, with the option to schedule or skip anytime). The variety of goods in each box changes monthly, but the staple options are either a Mixed Box with bread, pasta, and pastries, or a Bakery Box with just bread and pastries. You can also choose to include add-ons, like brioche rolls, fresh cheese tortellini, or English muffins.

But what really sets Wildgrain apart is what's in its products: Everything is made with a short list of clean ingredients, without the additives you'll find in grocery store breads—like bleached flours and chemical yeasts. Instead, those ingredients are replaced with nutritional ones that offer gut-friendly probiotics and fiber.

Plus: Each new membership provides six meals donated to The Greater Boston Food Bank. So you can feel extra good about that extra slice of bread.

What we tried

Naturally I ordered a Mixed Box, aka the option with the most carb-filled goodness. In it, there were two types of freshly made, frozen pasta: fettuccine and tonnarelli (a long, thin pasta I had never tried before). The three types of par-baked bread included were traditional sourdough, a sourdough walnut loaf, and a three-seed slow-fermented bread. Then there was the featured pastry: giant, ready-to-bake chocolate chip cookies.

Plus, as a bonus, there were eight free sourdough rolls, which are currently being included in every Wildgrain order.

What we like about Wildgrain

The clean ingredients

Sure, making bread from scratch is a sure-fire way to know exactly what you're eating. But let's be real: Who has the time for that? Ordering a box from Wildgrain takes the guesswork out of shopping for healthy bread that's made with only wholesome, natural ingredients.

The sourdough, specifically, is the star of the show. It's fermented slowly, containing pre- and probiotics that aid in digestion, and lactic acid that helps the body absorb nutrients like calcium, magnesium, and iron more easily. This technique also strips the bread of most of its gluten content—which was particularly exciting for me (a bread lover with a gluten intolerance) to be able to enjoy this bread without any typical bloating symptoms.

Wildgrain also lists all of its nutrition information on its site, so you can see exactly what ingredients are in those croissants, tortellini, and rolls you're enjoying.

The easy-to-follow instructions

Each product arrives frozen and is wrapped individually, with instructions on how to prepare it that's approachable and easy to follow. And each time I followed Wildgrain's suggested instructions for baking and cooking, it was spot-on. The bread developed a delightfully crispy crust while maintaining its doughiness on the inside; the pasta was cooked perfectly al dente; and the chocolate chunk cookies were slightly crispy on the outside, but warm and gooey on the inside.

Some of the packaging even offers serving suggestions; the pasta boxes, for example, suggest which sauces and recipes would do best with particular shapes (the fettuccine are better suited to thicker sauces, like meat ragu or pesto, while the tonnarelli are ideal for cacio e pepe).

Everything is tasty

Forget how clean and healthy these ingredients are: The food is just plain delicious. The bread tastes like something you'd get fresh from a local bakery, even after it's been sitting in your freezer for weeks. The cookies are everything a good cookie should be: sweet and gooey with a buttery crisp. And the fresh pasta was good enough to gain compliments from my fussy Italian grandfather at the dinner table (the ultimate badge of honor).

What we don't like

The website is confusing

Compared to other food delivery websites I'm used to navigating, it took me a while to find out how to actually place an order at Wildgrain when I first encountered the website. Currently there's a "free sourdough rolls for life" campaign going on, which ultimately navigates you to the general subscription order page, but it took me a while to figure that out. Additionally, there's no plain-to-see "order" or "shop" button on the main menu that allows for intuitive navigation.

The lack of customization options

As I mentioned earlier, Wildgrain currently only offers two products for subscription: The Mixed Box and Bakery Box. It's impossible to buy a one-time purchase of either of these (unless you cancel your subscription right away), and in your first order, there's no way to customize what's inside, aside from buying add-ons.

The website states the reason why Wildgrain is membership-based is due to the fact that the sourdough takes 26 hours to bake, and it would be difficult for the team to produce those time-consuming products—and staff their bakeries—without knowing how many customers they'd be supplying in a given month.

Wildgrain does offer more modification options for folks who create a Member Account (which happens after they sign up for a subscription). Once that's set up, all future boxes can be modified by selecting favorites and substituting options that they might not prefer.

Personally, I loved the sourdough bread I sampled, but I likely wouldn't want to regularly add pastries or pasta to my orders, since they're more difficult for me to digest. I would've liked to see the option to subscribe to singular items at a time, but it's good to know I'd have the freedom to cater more to my needs going forward.

It's pricey

It's tough to stomach $89 per box—which comes out to about $15 per product—especially if you're receiving Wildgrain on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. Sure, it pays to invest in small businesses that are putting high-quality ingredients and artisanal craft behind each product, but we'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge that not a lot of people can afford that, (especially now).

This issue becomes even more difficult if you receive a product that you don't enjoy (the featured breads, pastries, and pastas rotate regularly). But, luckily, this would likely only happen with your first box (which you can save $10 on through August 2022 by using the code REVIEWED). After that, you can modify the contents of the box through your membership by swapping out items you don't like with something you know you love.

Is ordering from Wildgrain worth it?

Yes—as long as you're a regular carb-eater!

All in all, every product I tasted from Wildgrain was really delicious. You can't beat the convenience of receiving high-quality baked goods right to your door, full of nutrient-rich ingredients that you don't have to think twice about. And having the option to curate future membership boxes is definitely a plus. As long as you're not too picky about your baked goods—or have an intolerance like me—you probably wouldn't be mad about receiving any of the goods that the Wildgrain staff creates.

In the future, I'd love to see Wildgrain extend its offerings, so that folks can pick and choose individual items they'd like shipped to them, without having to make a pricey deposit for a hefty box each time. But for now, I'd still recommend it to any friends who are just as passionate about carbs as I am.

Get a Wildgrain box for $89 and save $10 with code REVIEWED