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‘cos Friday means challah…
The Dusty Apron challah is certified kosher and available at Grey’s Ave Deli (essential service).
It tastes a bit like brioche if you’re not familiar. If you are familiar, then you already love it!
This is a pre-lockdown photo obviously, but it sums up the life!
Ingredients: flour, water, yeast, salt, sugar, egg (cracked under the supervision of the Rabbi or one of his assistants) and olive oil
The development of the gluten can be seen in the ‘window test’. When sourdough instructions ask you to do the window test, this is what you’re looking for. You can see a clear pane window through your dough.
Gluten is found in rye, barley, and especially wheat. It is used as an additive in many unexpected foods in the supermarket and has had a fair bit of (mostly bad) press in recent years. Pretty much everyone has heard of gluten, but do you know what gluten is and what work it does inside bread?
Basically gluten gives bread its structure. Without it, you get crackers or a brick of some sort. (Gluten is also degraded in a baked sourdough, because the fermentation process breaks it down!) Stephen Yafa explains the work of gluten:
“Gluten, which provides food storage for the germinating seed, is actually a complex comprised of two amino-acid proteins, gliadin and glutenin, that bond to form long, tangled molecules. Its stickiness - gluten comes from the Latin word for “glue” - adds elasticity and extensibility to wheat flour when mixed with water. The cohesion enables kneaded dough to stretch and hold its shape, a delicate compromise between strength and flexibility that gluten alone provides.
Bakers, for that reason, depend on gluten to create structure and resilience in their bread doughs. With the addition of water, this amino-acid bead string produces a web matrix of dough, the crumb. Carbon dioxide, the escaping gas released as a yeast by-product, fills the air pockets - named alveoli, like the lung’s balloon-like structures. That causes the crumb to swell inside the rising crust as it bakes.” (Ref: pp.10-11 Stephen Yafa (2015) Grain of Truth: The real case for and against wheat and gluten. Avery, Penguin Random House: New York
“If you do not have the type of bread you like in your house, eat crackers. If you do not have bread, eat cereal; eat oats; sardines.” - Silveria Jacobs, Prime Minister of Sint Maarten in the Caribbean (addressing her people about approaching COVID-19 restrictions) and my latest favourite quote. Ref: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmanuelfelton/coronavirus-viral-caribbean-video-message-sint-maarten
Oats have featured more prominently again lately. They are no longer just a thing of boring childhood breakfasts or up-and-go-mueslies, because we’ve all been eating from the pantry. And we’ve all probably eaten oats, just as Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs suggested.
COVID-19 has changed eating around the globe in a very short time.
In terms of bread, oats are generally an added ingredient, rather than a primary source of flavour and nutrition.1 That said, they’re also a pretty awesome addition to the bakery’s flavour basics (and an essential ingredient in one of my favourite sourdoughs, the porridge bread).
Oats are rich in proteins and unsaturated fats and have a good amount of B vitamins. Oats have a high starch content and provide a generous amount of slow-release carbohydrates. They are rich in fibre, notably the soluble kind, and also rich in thiamin, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, manganese, selenium, and iron. Not bad, eh.
Porridge bread is a good way of making another delicious bread by adding cheap ingredients (that you probably have in your pantry!). Cooking out the oats causes them to gelatinise, which allows you to get more moisture into your bread, resulting in a much softer crumb, and an awesome flavour.
Basically (and here, I’m assuming you have experience making sourdough…), if you want to make porridge bread:
RATIOS: 1kg flour; 650g water; 150g starter; 250g cooked, cooled porridge; 20g salt
Add cooked, cooled porridge (oats) to your final dough. NOTE: You can also ferment the oats before cooking them; put your oats to soak overnight with a little starter, then cook them out and carry on as above.
If this doesn’t make sense to you, then don’t freak; go back to basics and learn to do a basic sourdough first. It’s all the rage under lockdown and even though it isn’t super easy, it is super addictive, super healthy, and super tasty. All you really need is wheat flour, water and salt. You can make your own starter, without worrying about how old it is, whether it’s any good or where it comes from. If it’s yours, it’s perfect. Just don’t forget to name it.
“Oats thrive in the cool, wet summers of northern and eastern Europe. Because of their high water absorbency and inability to form gluten, oats are generally used as a secondary bread grain, in combination with wheat and/or rye.” Ref: p30 Stanley Ginsberg (c2016) The Rye Baker; Classic Breads from Europe and America. WW Norton & Company: New York and London
I am obviously biased, but I think bread is amazing. It tastes great and inhabits the now as fully as a zen buddhist priest; it’s a constant science experiment and getting bread right requires the most attuned and practical, if somewhat instinctual, manipulation of local biochemistry. Bread also has a history as long as civilisation. (In fact, the history of bread grains really is the history of human civilisation.) Bread should just be a compulsory subject in schools! Bread is science and maths and history and mindfulness, not to mention religious and cultural studies all in one… But you eat it; so cool!
In The Rye Baker, Stanley Ginsberg explains how technological innovation and climate change have determined the role of this grain over millennia. This book has masses of information (and a ton of recipes), but the history it tells about rye will have you wanting to eat rye bread today…
In short(ish):
…some 13,000 years ago… Rye was really just an accidental food
Archaeological evidence suggests that rye first “entered the human diet as a stowaway, a humble weed hidden among the harvest.” (p.14)
…some 12,000 years ago… Climate Change made rye a more prominent and preferable grain
“Then something very interesting happened - something that foretold the weed’s future. About 12,000 years ago, Earth entered a period of global cooling that academics call the Younger Dryas, aka “The Big Freeze.” Along with the rest of our planet, the Fertile Crescent turned dry and cold. Barley and einkorn struggled in those conditions, but rye flourished. And so the farmers followed the path of least resistance - and greatest yield. For 1,300 years, the abundance of domesticated rye in ancient grain troves attests not only to its importance in the human diet but also to its newly recognised standing as one of the founder crops in the Near East.
But, The Big Freeze waned, Earth warmed, and barley and einkorn regained their dietary preeminence. For the next five millennia, rye surfaced only sporadically in the Fertile Crescent… [then] disappears from the Near Eastern archaeological record.” (p.14)
…some 6,000+ years ago… Rye made its way to Europe where the conditions were perfect for its growth
Rye may have disappeared from the Near Eastern archaeological record at that time, but “It found a new home in central Europe. More than 6,000 years ago, rye appeared as a wild grain in modern Greece, the former Yugoslavia, and Ukraine. Cultivated rye first appears in what is now Poland and Bulgaria, brought there by farmers who migrated from the Middle Danube region. It flourished in the region’s clay and acidic, sandy soils, as well as its dry, cold climate.
”Unlike wheat, millet, and barley, rye withstood drought conditions, germinated at temperatures near freezing, and resisted winterkill even at forty below zero. And so throughout its new environment, rye prevailed over wheat, oats, and barley.” (pp.14-15)
…during the pre-Roman Iron Age through Roman times… technology gave rye greater prominence
“Rye cultivation continued to spread across Europe during the pre-Roman Iron Age and was a staple grain during Roman times …but hardly loved. Rye benefited from two important technological advances that drove the rapid expansion of European agriculture between 500BC and AD1000 - widespread adoption of the iron sickle and the appearance of the heavy plow.
“Until the Iron Age, farmers had harvested their grain crops ear by ear, choosing only the more desirable cereals, typically wheat and barley, leaving weeds like rye for the birds and rodents. The practice made for inefficient but highly selective harvesting, conferring an artificial advantage to grains preferred for their look and taste."
“With the iron sickle, farmers could clear-cut their fields close to the ground, which was more efficient but far less selective, collecting in the process weeds like rye along with the more desirable grains. Over time, as farmers replanted part of their harvest, the proportion of rye naturally increased in places where marginal conditions favored its growth.
“The heavy plow further cemented rye’s presence in the grain fields. Unlike its predecessor, the scratch plow… the heavy iron plow dug deep into the dense clay soils of northern Europe, improving drainage and bringing nutrient-rich subsoil layers to the surface. The new plow also changed patterns of land use… [letting some farmers] sow rye in the same fields year after year [or clear new land for rye cultivation].” (p.15)
…during the High Middle Ages… rye played an important role in massive population growth and migration
“The rapid growth of rye cultivation during the High Middle Ages increased food supply and encouraged migration into formerly inhospitable regions of northern and central Europe. This, in turn, fueled the rise of social infrastructure that created the conditions for massive population growth. In the mid-seventh century, it’s estimated that Europe’s population was stable at around 18 million. By AD1000, it had more than doubled to 38.5 million and then doubled again to an estimated 73.5 million in 1340, a decade before the Black Death of 1348-50 claimed the lives of half that number. Tellingly, most of this growth occurred in the rye-growing regions.
“Throughout the premodern period, bread was the foundation of the European diet at every level of society. [With gruel, bread provided] about 3/4 of their caloric intake. And while wheat may have occupied the top of the grain hierarchy,… rye fed the masses.” (pp.15-16)
…during the establishment of ‘the New World’ and the growth in economic prominence of the USA… rye fueled much of this growth, but technology once again influenced the popularity of rye, allowing wheat to dominate dietary preferences
“Rye came to the New World in the early 1620s…. it was rye and native maize that nourished America during its first 200 years of settlement and westward expansion. But rye’s primacy was not to last. The opening of the western plains and the introduction of mechanized agriculture in the mid-19th century - spurred on by the world’s first mechanical reaper - inundated North America with an ocean of wheat that all but swept rye out of the American diet. [The railroads followed, establishing America’s global economic primacy and the importance of wheat as an important grain for export and sale in America.] (pp.16-17)
…the 20th into the 21st Century… technology changes things again, but so does cultural revolution, so watch this space!
“By the turn of the twentieth century, wheat had conquered America [and become a massively important export commodity]. [Technological developments helped, while] selective breeding programs spawned hardier and more prolific strains of wheat able to thrive in soils and conditions that once supported only rye. The Green Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, with its emphasis on high-yielding varieties of wheat, corn and rice, expanded wheat’s share of global farm output even further, driving rye back into the margins of food cultures it once dominated.” (p.17)
However, “For the populations of Europe’s northern tier, rye has remained an enduring fixture of their tastes and traditions” (p.17) and many of these breads (so full of national pride and a sense of home for expats) are again gaining popularity as niche breads among the bread lovers of the world.
(Ref: pp.14-17 Stanley Ginsberg (c2016) The Rye Baker; Classic Breads from Europe and America. WW Norton & Company: New York and London)
See also: https://www.bakingbusiness.com/articles/49098-qa-giving-rise-to-rye
In the introduction to his third book of Tartine recipes, Chad Robertson talks about why bakers in the States have been working with only a few grains for so long. His discussion of how so few (high-yield) grains came to be dominant in the monocrop farming culture of twentieth-century America is really interesting and worth a read (see reference details below). Basically, with more grains becoming available in California, Chad Robertson decided to focus in on the fermentation and preparation of the grain to create great flavour. The fame of Tartine speaks to that work (as do the queues out its door and down the street).
photos by Bryan Lowe @nine10seventy
Because what he says about flavour is of interest to home cooks, professional bakers and all people with mouths (and because we all know Tartine have flavour sorted), I just want to quote a little more:
“Bakers use all sorts of flavorings for breads, such as nuts, seeds, dried fruit, herbs, and cheese. But I have always felt that relying on the addition of nongrain ingredients to add flavor to bread missed the heart of the matter. My focus would rely on the grains to bring the primary flavor - herbs, seeds, and other ingredients would complement this foundation.” p14 Chad Robertson
“In some cases the grains are used whole - toasted, soaked and/or cooked, or sprouted before being mixed into the dough - to add distinct flavors and texture. When we use flours ground from the grains, we use freshly milled (if possible), either milled the same day or a few days prior [because] the flavor from freshly milled flour is different from flour that is a few weeks or months old, much the same way that the flavor of freshly ground black pepper differs from preground.” p19
Looking at the photos alone in this book make me want to sit down and eat bread (lots of it), but what he writes about using grains is worth thinking about if you’re buying or making real bread (BTW feel free to message Dusty on Instagram or Facebook if you’re a home baker and have hit a snag in your baking!)
It also makes me excited all over again that we’re working with Marty from @farmriverview and the grains he’s producing in Canterbury. I just can’t wait to see where the flavour will go as The Dusty Apron starts working more closely with the grain itself.
Ref: Chad Robertson (c2013) Tartine Book No.3 Modern Ancient Classic Whole. Chronicle Books: San Fransisco
It’s all ‘back to basics’ in the world of food these days… people want to know where their food is coming from and who exactly is making it. On Instagram, there’s a #knowyourbaker following. So who is Dusty?
photos @nine10seventy
Dusty is Ngati Whatua, Ngapuhi, and Pakeha; based in Auckland, New Zealand. He was raised in in a wrecker’s yard in ‘rewa, which means he knows his car parts and can generally fix it when it breaks. If he can’t fix it, he’ll just push it. He could fill a book with funny stories about the pranks they used to play on each other in his Dad’s yard. Dusty’s dexterity, strength and ability to think outside the box come from that wrecker’s yard. Nevertheless, eight years ago, Dusty gave up cars and moved into the kitchen. He’s been baking bread every day since then and he still loves it.
Dusty’s big passion is the hand-crafted style - traditional breads; grain-to-loaf and everything in between. He loves the long fermentation and the life of the dough. He especially loves working with his hands and doing something that connects him with so many of those who have gone before him. (His Nani-Nani was also a baker and you should totally get him to make you her rewana!).
Actually, Dusty pretty much loves everything about bread except the early starts, so he’s turned that one tiny little negative into a positive and taken up listening to podcasts until Dan comes in at 5 (I’ll introduce you to Dan soon!).
If you want to meet Dusty, you are always welcome in the bakery (doors open at 2am; midnight on a busy day!)
#localfood #localgrain #knowyourfarmer #knowyourmiller #smallfoodnotbigfood
I’ve mentioned before that seedbanks will have (and are already playing) a really important role in coming decades as we tackle climate change and food scarcity. Carolyn Fry’s Seeds; A Natural History (2016) tells some amazing stories about seedbanks, as well as the role of seeds in propagating human culture more generally. Fry explanation of the loss of genetic diversity that has been one side-effect of agriculture (especially agriculture on a massive scale) and how saving wild species will help us find ways of reintroducing the genetic diversity necessary to tackle the challenges of the coming century. Part of her explanation goes like this:
“A handful of wild wheat seeds is genetically diverse in much the same way as a crowd of people. Just like humans, plants in different wild populations can have markedly different characteristics despite being the same species. When farmers began to cultivate crops, the first seeds they sowed from wild plants would have contained only a small subsection of the genetic diversity present in their local wild wheat population. This, in effect, created a bottleneck in genes at the point at which agriculture first developed. Over subsequent millennia, farmers domesticated plants through a process of selection and breeding. They bred out natural traits, such as the shattering of seed heads and dormancy, which enabled plants to survive in the wild but were not useful for agriculture. On the other hand, they retained and selected for characteristics that were helpful, such as higher yields and pleasant taste. Any individual landrace is therefore the result of breeding work by thousands of farmers over many generations.
“Modern cultivars are the result of sophisticated programs of breeding and genetic improvement specifically designed to meet the needs of large-scale commercial agriculture. Monoculture farming, under which vast areas are planted with a few such cultivars, results in the highest yields but the lowest genetic diversity. The Green Revolution is an example of this [think the introduction of modern pesticides, inorganic fertilisers and new plant-breeding techniques in the twentieth century]. At the start of the twentieth century, India was home to over 30,000 varieties of rice; today, just ten varieties are grown in 75 percent of the country’s rice fields. Moreover, some crop varieties have been genetically modified to tolerate specific herbicides such as Mosanto’s Roundup product, a development that has enabled farmers to easily eradicate weeds but has led to them abandoning traditional landraces and varieties in favor of crops that offer better financial returns.” (p.22 Seeds)
Ref: Carolyn Fry (2016) Seeds; A Natural History. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago
I’ve mentioned the BBC 4 Food Programme podcasts before… but again: check out their podcasts and maybe start with these ones on gut microbiota:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07ff0hl
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07h60lv
The BBC is actually just a great site to do searches for topics you’re interested in. The following podcast looks into Gut Microbiota, too:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03h429g “Adam Hart discovers the role gut microbes play in our health and development, and asks if we should consider ourselves an ecosystem rather than an individual?”
Wheat is basically a grass that provides… 21% of food calories globally… (shocked emoji!).
It is one of the earliest plants to have been domesticated and has been cultivated for so long by mankind that it would no longer survive in the wild. It is an absolute product of nature and culture working together and one of the most prominent food crops world wide.
We eat the seeds - except that, in order to eat them, we have to process them in such a way as to make them palatable and digestible. Grinding the grain (seeds) allows us to produce flour. Different flours (white vs whole wheat etc) use more or less of the whole wheat grain, but the most important contributor to flour is the endosperm of the seed, which contains the gluten. It is the gluten that allows us to make bread and which can contribute much of the nutrition long sought after by man.
John M Warren explains that “one of the genes that was incorporated into bread wheat from its goat grass parent, codes for gluten production. This piece of genetic material enables wheat to produce large amounts of protein in its grains. This gluten protein is essential in the bread making process, because by trapping bubbles of carbon dioxide… it causes the dough to rise. …without gluten, bread would be hard and heavy.” (109 The nature of crops) Gluten intolerance has become much more of an issue in recent decades, but for many people, properly fermented wheat is no bother at all to their digestion.
In terms of bread, the other cereals (rye, barley, oats, maize, millet, rice, etc) can also be ground to make flour just like wheat, but with so much less (or no) gluten in them, they make much heavier denser breads. Structurally, most of these seeds are very similar to wheat (hence flour), but chemically, they are quite different.
There are so many breeds and varieties and types of wheat that it would probably shock you. Different wheats have different gluten yields, different flavor profiles, different climactic and seasonal preferences. Which of these wheats is currently being made into flour is determined by the grower, the miller, and (with luck!) the baker, each of whom have their own interests and preferences. So; wheat is as subject to fashions as any other product of culture, in that it changes depending on ‘who’s buying’. My point? Well, two points: 1. The wheat flour you are so used to buying is really just one option of the many that are actually out there, and 2. Things are changing; heritage wheats and different grains are becoming fashionable again. You might soon be able to taste different wheats. How cool is that?!
Of course… there is a major constraint on this; one of the reasons so few bakers actually use organic flour is this changing profile that makes it so unpredictable and inconsistent to work with. You can do it, of course; milling the wheat that’s in season and working with the gluten yield provided by that season’s growing, but few customers want to buy bread that changes so much from day to day and season to season. Also, let’s face it; the cost of organic is about three times higher, which gets to be a pretty expensive bread. Today’s flour companies blend different seasons’ grains to get a consistent quality.
Basically, think about your school biology: water the seed and it germinates, right? A plant grows? Well, each seed carries the food it needs to germinate inside its hull. While the seed is dry, it can keep for a long time: add water and things start happening! What’s so cool is that we can harvest that seed, mill it to get the ‘food’ out in the form of flour, add water and (with a bit more work) make food for ourselves.
Wheat forms an oval seed or grain. It is made up of a few basic parts; the endosperm, which is the largest bit, where the gluten and starch (the food for the embryonic plant) are found; the embryo itself (the ‘wheat germ’ that is milled out of white flour because it has enough oil in it to affect the potential shelf life of flour by making flour go rancid, but which is still sold separately because it offers plenty of nutrition); and the outer layers, which are much more fibrous and basically milled out of flour because they give it a coarse, dark character (you can still buy this as bran in the supermarkets - or wheatbix!).
FYI: if you’re into genetics and stuff, you might like to know that bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) has a “complex impressive genetic history that has seen it hybridised twice.” (107 The nature of crops). Apparently amazing stuff… my genetics is too old to share the joy but I could tell it was there in John Warren’s book. If it impresses you, then good; wheat is impressive!
Wheat came to New Zealand in the early years of the country’s colonisation by Europeans. In the early 1800s, Maori and European settlers both took to farming wheat and other grains to feed local populations. At that time, before the introduction of the railways (and the more efficient transportation possibilities of trains), there were small mills all over the country. Apparently, between 1834 and 1918, there were over 300 mills built in New Zealand. These days, in contrast, there are fewer than ten mills in New Zealand (excluding the smaller mills of artisan bakeries WATCH THIS SPACE). Basically; “As the colony’s transport infrastructure developed it gradually became more economically sensible to produce flour closer to larger centres of population, or closer to the main areas of wheat production.” (p.11 Flour Milling in New Zealand) This trend has continued and the costs of transportation (including those between Australia and NZ and South Island and North Island) now mean that much of the flour used in the North Island is imported from Australia, while the South Island is more able to use locally grown grain.
Further reading and references:
Dave McKinnon and Geoff Tempest (2015) Flour Milling in New Zealand: How today’s industry evolved. New Zealand Flour Millers Association Research Trust, Christchurch
Edward Hyams (1971) Plants in the service of man; 10,000 years of domestication. J M Dent & Sons Ltd, London
John M Warren (2015) The nature of crops: How we came to eat the plants we do. CABI. Wallingford, Oxfordshire
Carolyn Fry (2016) Seeds; A Natural History. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago (21% global calories statistic p27)
Over generations and generations of human history, the seeds that we grow into food crops have been selected for qualities that suit human needs. Flavour, yield, pest-resistance, and better survival under specific climactic conditions are key qualities for which plants and their seed have been propagated. These days, the scale on which harvesting and food production is done has changed the way in which seeds are selected, gathered, distributed and more broadly ‘used’ as a tool for survival.
The seeds that dominate the world market in food today have become patented, owned, and grown more specifically for mass food production; less for flavour, nutrition (and these two are connected!) or regional tradition and difference. However, there is a movement that is gaining momentum; ‘heirloom’ seeds, ‘local’ plants and cuisines, and (with regards to bread) heritage grains are gaining market interest.
As we better understand the importance of these grains to nutrition and to the constantly underestimated value of biodiversity more generally, their preservation is being valued more highly. That is not to say that such preservation is an entirely new thing! Seed stocks in Saint Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) were protected by scientists during the WWII Siege of Leningrad when so many starved to death (and they were starving themselves but believed in the value of these grains to post-war survival!). The curator of the rice collection apparently died at his desk, surrounded by food he refused to eat (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050yh95). There are plenty of amazing stories around the preservation of seed. (Goodness, the preservation of seed is the history of agriculture, and the history of agriculture is the history of humanity, isn’t it!)
In any case, seed banks now have a vital role to play as we play catch up with the importance of biodiversity and find ways to balance this importance with the power of the market. In fact, did you know: “Although the edible plants of the world are known to number some 80,000, only 150 species have ever been cultivated on a large scale, and for 90% of the world’s food, we currently rely on fewer than twenty species.” (p.7 Andrew Crowe (2004) A Field Guide to the Native Edible Plants of New Zealand. Penguin Books: North Shore, New Zealand)
Carolyn Fry explains seed banks and their importance to the rapidly changing world around us:
”Essentially gene stores, they conserve the genetic diversity present in wild plants, as well as that within agricultural landraces. They offer the chance to: breed diversity back into genetically sparse cultivars and make new crops that are resilient to climate change; support in situ conservation by providing seeds and plants to supplement depleted biodiversity; and prevent rare plants that may be valuable to humanity from going extinct.” (pp.12-13 Carolyn Fry (2016) Seeds: A natural History. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago)
To learn more, check out these podcasts:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0bgblcg (Seeds: a 400-million-year-old food story)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003yd2w (Banking on Life)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050yh95 (The Grain Divide)
Check out The Bread Lab at Washington State for an example of practical research into heirloom and heritage varieties of wheat that can better be used in the future : http://thebreadlab.wsu.edu/about-the-bread-lab/
