So exciting (starting small of course); we’ll keep you posted! Check out Marty at @minchinsmilling to see the grain at home before it comes to us
Fermentation - 'a party in the pantry'
I am totally enjoying Sandor Ellix Katz’s vision of ‘the bubbly world’ as he describes it in Wild Fermentation. I got the book out because fermentation is awesome. We all know it and we all know the basics of why… but still, really… why?
Well, Katz’s Tshirt in the first photo in the book states: “there’s a party in my pantry!” which pretty much sums up fermented food, right? Love it. A great book, full of recipes and passion. Eminently quotable, too. And so I shall throw a few cool points at you below, but in summary:
Fermentation makes food more digestible, more nutritious, and tastier. Want proof? Think: bread and cheese, chocolate, coffee, wine, and beer. Think kimchi, sauerkraut, yoghurt, miso. Think YUM and keep thinking...
Sandor Ellix Katz on the benefits of fermentation and fermented food:
“Fermented foods and drinks are quite literally alive with flavor and nutrition.”(p.1 Katz)
“Bacteria enable us to effectively digest our food and assimilate its nutrients. They synthesize essential nutrients so that we do not need to obtain them via food. It has become clear that serotonin and other chemicals that influence how we think and feel are regulated by gut bacteria. Our immune function is largely the work of bacteria, and bacteria that come into contact with stimulate immunity.” (p.9) “Fermented foods can improve digestion, immune function, mental health, and possibly much more, contributing in important ways to overall health….” (p.xxi)
“One great practical benefit of fermentation is that it can preserve food. Fermentation organisms produce alcohol, lactic acid, and acetic acid, all “bio-preservatives” that retain nutrients while preventing spoilage and the growth of pathogenic organisms. Vegetables, fruits, milk, fish, and meat are highly perishable, and our ancestors used whatever techniques they could discover to store foods from periods of plenty for later consumption.” (p.1)
However, “Fermentation doesn’t only preserve nutrients, but generally breaks them down into more easily accessible forms.” (p.2) From toxic to just ‘difficult-to-digest’, fermentation makes foods more digestible. “Not all food toxins are as dramatic as cyanide [which is present at poisonous levels in Cassava prior to the simple soaking fermentation to which it is commonly subjected]. Grains and legumes contain a compound called phytic acid, which binds with zinc, calcium, iron, magnesium, and other minerals, blocking their absorption and potentially leading to mineral deficiencies. Fermenting grains by soaking them before cooking breaks down phytic acid, rendering the grain far more nutritious.” (p.2) “Fermentation also creates new nutrients. As they go through their life cycles, microbial cultures create B vitamins, including folic acid, riboflavin, niacin, thiamin, and biotin.” (p.3)
“Perhaps the most profound benefit of eating fermented foods is the bacteria themselves, which are probiotic, meaning they can be beneficial to us. Many different fermented foods are embodiments of dense and biodiverse microbial communities, which interact with our microbiome in ways we are just beginning to recognize. This interaction can improve digestion, immune function, mental health, and many other aspects of our well-being.” (p.3) “Microorganisms are our ancestors and our allies. They keep the soil fertile and are an indispensable part of the cycle of life. Without them, there could be no other life.” (p.xviii) Unfortunately; “The advent of microbiology gave rise to a sort of colonial outlook toward microorganisms, that they, like other elements of nature and other human cultures, must be dominated and exploited.” (p.20) We are now beginning to realise the adverse effects on health that excessive anti-microbial behaviour has and, hopefully, things are coming full-cycle back to valuing fermented foods and the microbes that make them tasty.
Sandor Ellix Katz (c2016) Wild Fermentation: The flavor, nutrition, and craft of live-culture foods. Updated and Revised Edition. Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, VT
https://www.wildfermentation.com/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08xxfz5
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09cvyv1
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csv0pf
Actually, the BBC 4 Food Programme has loads of interesting podcasts - and plenty on fermentation. Check out:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b073655s
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01g4ks7
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cswpt4
NOTE: IF you want to know more about the fermentation work inside a good bread, Vanessa Kimbell is an active voice on the matter: https://www.sourdough.co.uk/
How to eat grass
“Grains are basically grass seeds and humans don’t eat grass.” - Jane Mason
This pretty much says it all, right?! … Why do we ferment our grains? Well, that’s why! Also, because… um… delicious!
Unfortunately, how we process the grains to make them edible matters. Much has changed in the last century and wheat grains are largely unfermented these days. They are still cooked out as flour in most of the baked goods we eat, but the fermentation process is much less common. Hand in hand with this, we have seen a huge rise in incidences of gluten intolerance. There is more to it than that, of course, but for me this coincidence provokes key questions. Other considerations include the ones Jane Mason writes about…
She explains it like this:
“Eating grass or raw flour would give us an almighty tummy ache, as our tummies would struggle to know what to do and become bloated. Bread, and specifically bread made with wheat flour, has received a lot of bad press over the past few years, with articles about the dangers of consuming grains, and the rise of allergies and intolerances. …Celiacs must avoid any food with gluten, which includes bread made with wheat, rye, spelt, emmer, einkorn, kamut, barley, and oats (unless they are labeled gluten free).
Some people who are not celiacs still feel uncomfortable when they eat bread. There could be several reasons for this:
Overexposure: a daily diet of highly refined wheat-based breakfast cereal for breakfast, white bread sandwiches for lunch, and pasta for dinner is limited in the extreme. Years of following that diet will put pressure on your system and could make you sensitive to wheat, or particularly, highly refined wheat. Eat everything in moderation is the advice our grannies gave us and they were probably right.
Changes in the wheat plant: [This is a disputed point, but some people believe that modern wheat production may have also contributed to the increase in wheat sensitivities]. Today, some farmers are returning to what is now called “heritage wheat.” If you find you have a sensitivity to modern wheat, you could try heritage wheat as an alternative.
Flour: flour is not clearly labeled everywhere in the world. [There is plenty added to flour long before it’s added to bread. Always consider the source of your flour if your body reacts, even to homemade bread]
Bread ingredients: [there is an awful lot of stuff put in breads these days to make it last the journey from factory to pantry. However, the only necessary ingredients are really flour, salt and water. Read the label.]
p.148 Jane Mason, Ed wood et al. (2015) Homemade Sourdough: Mastering the art and science of baking with starters and wild yeast. Voyageur Press: Minneapolis
What’s cool is that in order to ferment the grains, all we really need to do is (make flour;) add water and watch for the yeast activity to start producing bubbles. After that, a little know-how and you can make bread!!!
Wild yeasts and commercial yeast - some background
“Yeast is a microorganism that lives in the air. There are yeasts in the air all around us, and making a sourdough is a way of bottling them.” p.10 Homemade sourdough - Jane Mason
When yeast feeds on the sugars in the flour, it starts to emit carbon dioxide gas, which creates the bubbles in bread (and determines the crumb of the baked product).
The wild yeasts bakers talk about are ‘wild’ because they are in the air of the bakery and present on the grain. Commercial yeast, by contrast, is a single strain of yeast which was isolated because it proved to be a particularly excellent rising agent. There is no yeast diversity when commercial yeast is used without any fermentation process and the flavour that results has considerably less depth.
The work of yeast
In his book, Wild Fermentation, Sandor Ellix Katz explains how yeast is used to make bread and how its isolation in the 19th-century gave us a totally different type of bread… I know the logic of quoting and all that, but why try to re-word something so clearly written??? He writes:
“We generally think about the fermentation of bread primarily in terms of yeast, used in bread-making to make dough rise. In our time, yeast is available in every grocery store as an isolated microorganism, a fungus called Saccharomyces cerevisiae….
The same yeast that makes most beer makes most bread. [Bread and beer] are made from grains, just with different processes. In both, the yeast does the same thing: It consumes carbohydrates and transforms them into alcohol and carbon dioxide. In bread, the carbon dioxide is the more important product. Its bubbles are what rise the bread, giving it texture and lightness. The alcohol evaporates as the bread is cooked.
Though yeast as a particular type of organism was not isolated until the mid-19th century, the word yeast is ancient and comes from the Greek zestos, meaning “boil”…. Prior to the science of microbiology, yeast referred to the visible action of fermentation, the rising of a dough, or the frothing of a batter or a beer, and to the various clever methods that people developed to perpetuate that bubbling transformative power. Yeast is the lifting action, the bubbles, the leavening. Until Louis Pasteur isolated a particular fungus and named it yeast, neither yeast nor any microorganism ever existed in isolation. French historian Bruno Latour, in his book The Pasteurization of France, observes of Pasteur’s isolation of pure microbial strains: “For the first time - for them as well as for us - they were to form homogenous aggregates… which none of their ancestors ever knew.”
The yeasts you find in nature are never pure. They travel in motley company. They are always found with other microorganisms. They embody biodiversity. They have distinctive flavors. And they are everywhere. All earlier “yeast” consisted of biodiverse microbial communities including the type of fungus we know as yeast but also lactic acid bacteria and others. Such biodiverse microbial communities exist in abundance on our grains, as well as in (non-chlorinated) water and air, always ready to stop and feast.
In bread-making, the perceived advantage of working with pure yeast is that the huge concentration of yeast works fast and that makes the process of making bread easier and more predictable. Natural leavening with wild fermentation is slower. The bacteria in the mixed culture get a chance to break down the hard-to-digest gluten, liberate minerals, and add B vitamins. The lactic acid and other metabolic by-products of fermenting organisms contribute complex sour flavors and enable the bread to keep longer. With pure yeast breads, nutrition, digestibility, flavor, and preservation potential are sacrificed for speed and ease.
Prior to the widespread availability of commercial yeast, people used any one of a number of methods to propagate their yeasts. Most often bread makers reserve a bit of their yeasty batter or dough as a “starter”. A starter can be maintained for a lifetime and passed on for generations. It often accompanied immigrants (dried on a cloth) on their journey to new unknown lands. Starter is mostly referred to nowadays as sourdough or natural leaven.”
italics in original pp.156-157, Sandor Ellix Katz (c2016) Wild Fermentation: The flavor, nutrition, and craft of live-culture foods. Updated and Revised Edition. Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, VT https://www.wildfermentation.com/
Sourdough: the ultimate in ‘eat local’ and ‘eat Slow’
At its most basic, a starter is just flour and water left out to ferment. As with anything, what you feed your starter and how well you care for it determines how healthy and effective it is. Dusty’s starter is called Obi (see my earlier post on Obi) and Obi does the lion’s share of yeast work at The Dusty Apron. Hopefully, having read Katz’s explanation, you can now see behind the scenes and understand better what exactly Obi’s doing all day long.
An interesting point about starters; Figuring out their age is basically impossible:
On the one hand, Obi is reborn each day; as he’s fed and the wild yeasts gather round to feast, a new Obi is created, depending on where and what he’s fed. On the other hand, Obi’s been living this way for 20+ years…
Some people talk about using starters that come from San Fransisco, but what makes San Fransisco sourdough so amazing is the climate, the fog and the actual yeasts and bacteria that live there (as well as the good bakers, of course). So, unless you’re actually feeding your starter in San Fransisco every day (and letting the San Fransiscan yeasts and bacteria do the work), it is no longer a San Fransisco sourdough. It’s a sourdough from wherever you are. It’s completely your own and the ultimate in ‘eat local’ (not to mention ‘eat Slow’). Pretty cool really.
Quinoa - super and delicious
Quinoa, the Incan Superfood that ranges in colour from ivory to magenta, yellow, orange, red, green, brown, and black, is from the same family as spinach and beets (as in; not a grain and not related to wheat). With so much to offer in terms of nutrition, it’s just a blessing that quinoa is super pretty and delicious too.
Quinoa is rich in: vitamins E, B2 and B6, folic acid, biotin, calcium, potassium, iron, copper, magnesium, manganese and chloride. It’s easily digestible. Full of fiber. A complex carbohydrate (so you digest it gradually and stay full longer). A fantastic ‘first food’ apparently.
Also called “the mother grain.” I like that. (But it’s not a ‘grain’ per se.) Just great for mothers and babies and an awesome food all round. Why? Because: Quinoa “contains all of the essential amino acids necessary to support human growth and development.” It is “classified as a complete protein.” It is also gluten-free and hypoallergenic. (p.10 ref below)
As to the saponin in quinoa:
“The quinoa seed contains a bitter coating called saponin, which is normally removed prior to consumption. Saponin has an undesirable taste, making it an effective means of protecting the plant from attack by insects and birds. The majority of saponin is removed by means of mechanical abrasion prior to distribution, but it is still recommended that quinoa be rinsed before using to wash off any remaining bitterness. The saponin byproduct has potential industrial uses, including natural insecticides, soaps and shampoos, and is being investigated for its possible pharmaceutical uses.” (p.9)
Okay so this last part really has very little to do with our bread. But it’s interesting so never mind relevance! I always wondered what the point of saponin was. So now I know. And now you do, too. We are informed together.
Thank you: Claire Burnett and Laurie Scanlin ‘The Mystery & History of Quinoa’ pp.9-10 Patricia Green & Carolyn Hemming (c2010) Quinoa 365: The everyday superfood. Whitecap. Vancouver (tons of recipes BTW)
Dusty uses quinoa in his Ancient Grain. One reason this bread is so delicious and nutritious!
Do it yourself
One of the best ways to learn a hands-on skill is… well… by doing it hands-on with someone who knows how to show you the way, tweak your technique and guide your learning. Dusty already has an apprentice (the AMAZING WILSON), but may be on the look-out again in the future.
Dusty also hopes to offer bread courses soon.
Meanwhile, if you’re more than weekend-keen, check out the tertiary institutes for Baking courses - or look for a job and ask about Apprenticeship schemes. Bread Bakers are an in-demand skilled worker in NZ and Dusty has had job offers from all around the world, so think where you could go with this!
Do a Culinary Safari
Not for every budget, but we also highly recommend a trip to San Fransisco:
- Do a course at the world-renowned San Fransisco Baking Institute (SFBI). You’ll learn heaps and meet amazing people https://www.sfbi.com/courses.html
- queue up for the good stuff at:
https://www.tartinebakery.com/
https://boudinbakery.com/
- and, nothing to do with bread, but bread tourism is tourism all the same, so totally totally go to the R18 evening of the Exploratorium (so so so much fun! https://www.exploratorium.edu/ ), jump on a hop-on-hop-off busride to see the city, and go to a baseball game, too. (If you’re not already American and in the know, then you should see those fans in action. Serious family fun. Get an uber and be there in time for the anthem.)
Look online or Just Read Books
The bread world is heavily into Instagram. Check out Dusty’s account if you want to get a feel for the community (https://www.instagram.com/thedustyapron/ ).
If you can’t get out to see the world, then get to your library and get started:
A couple of good books that will help you make your own sourdough (and there are lots of these out there, because it’s a totally zen and delicious skill to develop):
Jeffrey Hamelman (2004) Bread: a baker’s book of techniques and recipes. Hoboken, MJ
Jane Mason; recipes by Ed Wood et al. (2015) Homemade sourdough: Mastering the art and science of baking with starters and wild yeast. Voyageur Press, Minneapolis, USA
Andrew Whitley (2014) Do Sourdough: Slow bread for busy lives. The Do Book Company
Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson (2006) Tartine. Chronicle Books. San Fransisco
Baker pro bread tip
Flour the bench and your hands not the dough.
This (and moving fast) will stop the dough sticking. Less likely to get a dry bread this way!
The Double Down
There are many challenges in life. When you’re friends with Dan Cruden, mastering the Double Down (double boule shaping) technique is one of them. If you can only use one hand in the bakery, you only get paid half the wage.
I’d joke and say ‘don’t try this at home’, but when it comes to bread, you should try everything. Bakers are a give-it-a-go bunch of folk. Put some enthusiasm in your bread and see what happens.
Long Fermentation explained
At The Dusty Apron, every one of our breads has undergone a ‘long fermentation’. What is this and why do we say it like it’s a good thing?
Dusty says:
“The answer is simple: time = flavour.
The longer a bread takes to ferment, the deeper the flavour that is produced. Also on the plus side is that while the dough ferments, all those sugars and carbohydrates and starches are broken down, making it easier to digest. Basically, all the wild yeasties are doing the digestive work for you.”
Thus, long fermented breads have a lower Glycaemic Index than fast-rise breads. They are also a ‘fermented food’ and if you haven’t seen that these are all the rage for good health reasons, then where have you been living???
Note: “yeasties” is cool trade-speak for ‘yeasts’. Don’t ask me to explain that one.
And as for 100% sourdough vs 24 hour fermentation; what’s the difference really?
Basically a 100% sourdough is fully reliant on using the wild yeasts (found on the grain and in the air of the bakery) and is thus ‘naturally leavened’.
In contrast to sourdoughs, breads described as having undergone ‘24 hour fermentation’ will have some commercial yeast added. Such breads still rely on fermentation for their flavour and texture, but the commercial yeast helps the baker by guaranteeing more consistent leavening.
Interestingly, one of the secrets to making good bread when using commercial yeast (as with, for example, traditional baguettes or brioches) is to just use the smallest amount and let time do the work for you (via fermentation). To give you some idea of the ratios we’re talking about; if Dusty makes baguettes, he puts 5g of fresh yeast per 1kg of flour. They take 24 hours.
Shaping the Urban Sour
A sneak peak into the bakery: