Bread can change the world

[aaronatthedoublef]

An amazing article my brother sent me about a Lyonnaise bread baker. It made me laugh and cry. So many amazing parts to this story including the importance of flour.

I may never buy KAF or BRM again.

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[Joan Simpson]

Loved reading the article Aaron.

[BakerAunt]

Thank you for posting the link, Aaron. I enjoyed reading the article. I did think it sad that the author is not baking bread anymore. He could investigate some of the small mills working with different wheat varieties in the U.S. Have you read Samuel Fromartz, In Search of the Perfect Loaf? Supporting those is important. I wish that some of those in the link you posted were closer to me. I'd like to check out the one in Grand Rapids (once the social distancing becomes a memory). The cornmeal that I bought from the mill at Indiana's Spring Mill State Park is a revelation as to what cornmeal should be. Part of it is the old mill but some of it is the local Indiana sweet corn.

I wouldn't swear off of Bob's Red Mill or King Arthur. Their flour is still better than a lot of flour out there. Neither is as easily available where I live as the generic flours, which I do not use. I do buy Gold Medal or Pillsbury for cakes, although finding unbleached here is surprisingly difficult even when times are not difficult, as in our time of pandemic anxiety.

[aaronatthedoublef]

BA,

In reading the article I was thinking about the wheat grown in volcanic ash and thinking maybe I would try some of the small mills in Washington and Oregon if the shipping is affordable. West is where you'll find volcanoes. I didn't see any in Alaska or Hawaii. Not sure if they grow wheat there or not. Hawaii probably did once.

I will also try some of my local mills here just because I want to support them.

And I won't give up on KAF or Bob's. KAF is still small even though they've gone corporate and they probably needed to do it to survive. Bob's is going that direction too they just aren't so far along. But they are both still nice companies who will take the time to have real people talk to you about what you are baking and how to make it better. They've been really gracious giving me information and I'm probably a customer for life.

[BakerAunt]

The Bon Appetit e-mail newsletter just "helpfully" gave out websites for some small mills. I clicked on a couple and noticed that they too are sold out of a lot of flour.

I agree that it is good to support the small food producers where we can. That's one reason that I shop at the local farmers market for produce when possible.

When we went to the Covered Bridge Festival in the fall of 2018, I'd wanted to stop at a working mill located near one of the rebuilt (original was destroyed by arsonists) bridge. We had not realized what a mob scene the festival was and couldn't get near it. Our plan is to go back in the non-festival season, at which time I hope to be able to check out the flour they sell.

[Mike Nolan]

French (and European) farming is much more of a cottage industry than in the US, especially for things like corn or wheat. There are more strains of wheat grown, and the wheat could almost be described as artisinal.

I'm not sure the small US mills are going to be that much different from the bigger ones, because they're all getting pretty much the same strains of wheat grown on similar ground.

What the bigger mills can offer (and I include KAF in that category) is consistency. A common thread on the BBGA forum is this: "I just switched from brand X flour to brand Y flour, and my breads aren't coming out the same, how do I fix this?"

Prof. Calvel didn't always have kind things to say about North American wheat, but he still thought a skilled miller and baker could produce good bread from them.

What I find interesting is how many articles and books I've seen that talk about how much bad bread is being produced, even in France. (And I'm not talking about the mass-produced factory breads, which are almost uniformly awful.)

[aaronatthedoublef]

Hi Mike,

I've seen a couple of those threads and actually something I like about KAF/Bob's is how much they stay the same from bag-to-bag and year-to-year. This isn't trivial and I should not take it for granted.

I did find a place out west called Palouse Heritage and I am thinking about trying a couple of bags from them for fun if the shipping is not too expensive. One of the things that attracted me to them is their "heritage" breeds of grains. But it's hard to know if that is real or just marketing.

I did find one place out west selling triticale here at Nash Organic.

[Mike Nolan]

Triticale is an interesting and challenging grain. The breads I made with it at around 15% triticale were good; most people who tasted them preferred the triticale breads over similar loaves made just with wheat. The ones at a higher percentage started to show some structural effect from the triticale grain, which has weaker gluten proteins. The pasta I made with it didn't hold together very well, but it was edible.

Triticale adds a nutty taste that reminds me a bit of durum wheat or semolina; given that 75% of its DNA comes from rye (according to the geneticist at UNL), it really doesn't bring in any rye notes at all.

I've still got around 6 pounds of triticale berries, and Steve, the guy who grew it, said I can have more whenever I want. (Might have to wait until UNL is open again, though.)

[aaronatthedoublef]

Nash is the first place I've seen Triticale other than you here. I may buy a bag to test.

[Mike Nolan]

Bob's Red Mill has triticale berries in their webstore, but they're currently listed as being out of stock. I'm not sure if I've seen them in stores, but BRM still makes a number of products I haven't seen in stores here.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Would I need to grind the berries?

Oh, also one thing interesting in the article was that Bob saves some of his dough from the previous batch to use as a starter. This might not work if you didn't make bread everyday but I wonder.

[BakerAunt]

I've read that using "old dough" is a technique that many European bakers use. Sometimes they use some old bread. I have a hazy recollection that Germany limits how much old bread can be included in a batch of new bread.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I think using the old dough is instead of yeast.

I read using old bread is to reduce the flour and use up leftover bread.

[Mike Nolan]

You can cook and eat triticale as a cereal, but to use it in breads you'd need to grind it into flour.

'Old dough' is similar to sourdough, though I think with little or no lactic acid bacteria. You can refrigerate old dough for a few days, but a commercial baker would just set a bowl of it aside for tomorrow. If I remember the article, Bob was making his dough a day ahead of time, which means he was getting a lot of enzyme action as well as yeast growth.

[Mike Nolan]

The 'old bread' technique may be similar to the tangzhong method, as the starch in old bread would be gelatinized. Rye bakers also use old bread, calling it altus.

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