November 4, 2020 • 41 mins
In many ways, no other food represents the center of culinary and communal life more than bread. It is likely the most consumed food in the world, but as it has been a staple food over the millenia, when we think of "bread", the images that come to mind are as diverse as the cultures of the world. Though it is a staple of just about every culture on earth, the contents of the bread we eat have become wildly disconnected to the grains of our ancestors. Today on Point of Origin we're looking at why that is, and how it came to be.
In this episode we examine the whitewashing of wheat and the emergence of the whole grain revival. Our guests are a smattering of whole grain bakers, farmers and scholars from around the world. We begin in Oaxaca with Mixtecan bakery owner Martina Julieta Castellanos Lopez from Rincón de la Grana bakery, then we move to Nova Scotia Canada where food writer, author and amateur whole grain baker Simon Thibault breaks down the industrial grains along with some home baking tips. In Puglia Italy, multigenerational grain farmer Leonardo Petruccelli and writer Marissia Tiller discuss the transformation of his family farm from into a whole grain enterprise, and finally, in Washington DC, Jonathan Bethony, baker and co-owner of Seylou Bakery talks about his whole grain journey as a baker. Today on point of origin, we're going Beyond Wheat.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Perooka, no ingredients, nod la limento. My name is Martina Es.
I'm from Aca, which is a town that is located
(00:23):
in the lower Mixed Tea means land of the Cochineal,
not just gland, is the main entrance to the mixed Teca.
I personally define myself as a person with values, with principles,
and with a great faith. I value my roots and
my culture very much. That is why I have always
liked to rescue and value all the customs and traditions
(00:44):
of my ancest No no no pan mass mass, notritio,
no pancor the no pane problem lost Celia. I opened
my bakery in March. Originally, my idea was not to
open a bakery, but another type of business where I
(01:05):
could provide good sources of nutrition to people. But my
mother is from a nearby community called There is a
bakery that was closed for many years, So I said, okay,
why not ask the community to give me that bakery
and start using it. The community agreed, so I started
working in the bakery. But I wanted to offer something different,
(01:26):
ingredients that are healthier because here in our communities the
daily food is bread. So I said, why not offer
a more nutritious bread. Not a bread that makes you fat,
not a bread that gives you problems to those who
are Celiac, not a bread that produces obesity, but a
different bread, a bread with high nutritional value, and a
bread that I could take ingredients from my locality. My
(01:49):
favorite item is the cons because then the bakery conchs
can never not be on the menu. There are different sizes,
big ones, small ones, different flavors, different colors, and why
not offer some delicious amaranth concs right that would have
a high nutritional value Above all, something very important that
I want to teach to my community. As I mentioned before,
(02:13):
tat well tat healthy tape products are breads with natural ingredients.
Why not use recipes that are from our community? There
are local that are organic. That way we can support
our local conduct that welcome back to point of origin.
(02:33):
On today's episode, we're talking about a global movement of
whole grains and that intro you just heard was Martina
Julietta Castellanos Lopez and her daughter Carmen Reyes from Rincome
de la Granda Bakery and Wahaca, Mexico. Bread is the
most widely consumed food in the world. Not only has
(02:54):
it provided nutritional sustenance for international communities well over the millennia.
In many ways it represents the center of culinary and
communal life. But over time the contents of the bread
we eat has been wildly disconnected from the wheat and
grains of our ancestors. Today we're looking at why that is,
(03:15):
how it came to be and the agrarian shift that
has ensued. We're chatting with journalists and grain researcher plus
amateur baker Simon Tebow in Halifax, Canada. Then we go
to southern Italy to Puglia where Leo Petrucelli is reviving
his grandparents farm using ancient grains, and finally in Washington,
(03:38):
d C. We chat with Jonathan Bethany, baker and owner
of Saylu Bakery, who uses grains like millet and sorghum
on his menu. Today's guests are focusing on recentering whole
wheat and ancient grains in their natural form and moving
beyond the standardized, the prepackaged, and the painfully uniform industrial grains.
(04:00):
Today on point of origin, we're going beyond the wheat
types of grains that you can be milled and be
used in baking. I mean you have everything from buck
wheat too emmer to ride. Um. My name is Simon Tebow.
I am a journalist and food writer and author and editor.
I'm based out of Halifax, Nova Scrocer, Canada, and grains
(04:23):
have become the rabbit hole of my life over the
past two and a half years. You have spring wheats
and winter wheats. You have red wheats and white beats.
I am friends with a Canadian food writer name named
me do Good, and she said, you need to come
and meet Dawn. And I had heard of Dawn the baker.
(04:45):
So I go and I see this table and there's
Dawn with her daughter, Evelyn. The name of the company's
Evelyn's Crackers. And I'm just standing there and there's like
stuff that you expect to see at anybody's table, you know,
like there's pastries and pie and breads and like the usual,
like uh, loaves of rye and loves of a few
of the things. I'm like, okay, sure, uh. And then
(05:10):
I decided to try um one of our brownies. So
brownie is pretty like nondescript, their lovely things to have
on occasion and Uh, this was a buck wheat flower
Cardiman brownie. But at that initial moment when I bought it,
I was buying it to be polite. At the time,
(05:31):
would have considered myself a competent home baker, like I
would have been the guy like I had made my
sour doughs. But everything was all white flower all the time,
and the triumes. I tried to make anything with whole
grains flower or whole wheat flowers, it never turned out right,
and it was just this weird thing. I'm like, this
is not worth my time. And then I've been into
this thing and I was like I just kind of
(05:52):
went and it was this delirious kind of thing. And uh,
and it wasn't just like, okay, cardimon and pocolate are
amazing first of all, but I mean beyond that, the
texture of this. It was like, what is this texture?
And because it was soft and pillowy, most of us
(06:12):
in North America, when we think of whole grains, we
think of things. We hear those words, and we think dents,
we think unpalatable, we think the loaf of bread that
can be used as a doorstop, you know what I mean.
And this was none of those things. This was luxuriant,
this was beautiful. The journalist in me and the writer
in me went wait a minute, like, how did she
(06:36):
do this? How did she do this? What is necessary
to get to this point where the preconceived notion we
have of what whole grain baking can be versus this
platonic ideal which is achievable? What is that? And it
(06:57):
just started from there and from there I have been
starting research on this for two two and a half
years now and uh, I have gone across North America
for the first time in my life. I went to
California to meet with a miller in Pasadena named named Kohler.
She runs gristin Toll, which is wonderful urban mill. I
(07:18):
went up to Washington State to Washington State's campus in
Burlington where they have the Bread Lab where Dr Steven
Jones is doing all kinds of work. Over there, I
went to Montreal to another grain conference to hear from
women and men from around the world talking about grains,
and the further I dig into it, the further I
(07:39):
keep seeing how grains are emblematic of every single thing
that has happened in food production over the past two
to three years, and the huge amount of erature that
has happened in terms of ecological, economic, cultural, and culinary
advantages and disadvantages that we now experience. As eis. So,
(08:02):
what you're saying is because of the ways in which
the food system has been industrialized that I guess flower
is a severe example of how we've lost touch with
our food. With apples, for instance, we can name multiple varieties,
or we can name multiple varieties of vegetables, and yet
(08:23):
we can't do that with wheat. So and this hyper
processing of weed, not only are we losing nutritional value,
but we're also losing, as you pointed out, the cultural
value and the loss of that knowledge. Well, let me
give you a preaking pretty easy scenario. You're going to
go into a grocery store and you're gonna go and
(08:43):
buy flower. Okay, that's you will find all purpose white flower.
Bleached or unbleached, doesn't matter. In this scenario. You're gonna
take that flower home. You have a general before you
even buy it. You have an estimation of how much
this is going to cost you. You have an estimation
of how long it's gonna last your household. You have
an estimation of how it's going to behave, how it's
going to taste all of these things? How do we
(09:06):
get here? How did we take what is a living
thing the same with it apples and like other things
that we grow in the ground, or even like varietals
of animals that we raise for food production. How did
we get to this uniformity of experience that anybody can
(09:28):
take this and use it and know what to expect
and have a sense of what is what it's worth
to them in terms of time and money and effort.
And who gets to gauge what that is worth? Who
gets to gauge all of those things? And that was
the thing that kind of made me go, wait a minute,
like what is this? And the thing is that that
(09:49):
system that makes that happen, that creates that ubiquity, this
homogeneity within baking and within access to food and all
of the things that brings it to play, everything from
food security, which we experienced no matter who you are
in North America or even like throughout most of western
Europe when COVID hit, baking shelves were decimated and all
(10:14):
of a sudden, like and I kept on having conversations
with people who were stalking the shelves and they're saying
people are trying to understand now, like how food distribution works.
And I mean from from a certain perspective, the whole
thing of like that flower, you know it's gonna last
a year roughly speaking, like it's baking qualities will not
(10:34):
be impacted in the first year of that thing being
out there, so you know, you've got a good amount
of time. But that was this kind of like someone's
rattling the cage of the food system right now, and
it's a disease. And why because you don't know where
that was milled. You don't know how long that's been
on that shelf, You don't know hong, that wasn't the truck,
You don't know how long that wasn't a in a
(10:56):
storage facility. We wheat and grains are the most whitewashed,
arguably one of the most whitewashed foods out there when
it comes to understanding the procedures necessary to feed us
as human beings and s s society. I guess the
(11:17):
more crass and cynical part of me feels like we
shouldn't really be surprised that industrial food producers are more
willing to discard the parts of the grain or the
wheat that are more expensive to produce, because obviously these
companies are purely driven by profitability. So how can we
(11:38):
make people understand the urgency of really thinking more critically
about this and maybe even acting in opposition to this
system when, for instance, we don't really even know where
to buy these flowers. We can't buy these flowers at
the grocery store. So what are we as consumers supposed
to do? It becomes this question of who gains access
(12:02):
not just to the ingredient, but who gains access to
the money that plays into this two More importantly, I
would say, the information that is necessary to use these
products to the best degree possible. And when I say best,
I don't mean just in baking at home. I meaning
questions of social equity and inclusion and an understanding of
(12:24):
the culinary and cultural background that are intrinsically linked to
not only bringing these grains into North America, but also
into how to use them and how those things fed
generations of people. And now we are at a point
where that information is nearly erased, and we cannot deny
that the proliferation of especially in a country like Canada
(12:49):
where I live, The proliferation of this uniformity and this
homogeneity in terms of distribution and the flavor, or rather
the distribution of no flavor, also brought about a greater
amount of food security, because grain is a living thing.
I have um grains in my cupboard that i've been there,
(13:09):
that I bought in California that are two years old,
and I have yet to mill them. They're fine. The
second I mill them, they start to turn rancid, So
I have six months to use that flower. That whole
rancidity is basically what most of us believe that whole
grains and whole grain flowers taste of, and that's what
we're accustomed to. And so the removal of that creates
(13:34):
an ease and a facility that allowed generations of individuals
to be able to bake at home in an affordable way.
And we cannot deny that in the same way that
like um, you can't deny that UM. The progressions of
canning food, of frozen foods, the development of supermarkets, all
(13:55):
of these things emancipated people who cooked. And we're talking
mostly about women here, oftentimes woman of color, and especially
in the Southern United States in certain parts where grains
are even more part of it that this emancipation and
this ease fostered huge changes in how we view um
the work necessary to create these things, whether it be
(14:17):
baked goods or like making a roue in Louisiana, or
if we're making biscuits. I am not anti white flower.
I've been baking for the past two to three years
with whole green flowers, and I had a huge learning curve,
and I still bake with white flower and occasion, depending
on what I'm making. Having said that, there are also
other benefits, especially in a place like Canada and where
(14:40):
there are things such as the Wheat Board of Canada,
which is a government body which helps ensure a arguably
equitable or fair pricing system for grain, which is a commodity.
So let's say you are a person of enough means
to pay um, let's say seven or eight dollars for
(15:03):
a kilogram of buck wheat flour or ten dollars for
a kilogram of locally milled and grown corneal arguments. Say
you're able to do that, You're gonna take that home?
What are you gonna do with it? Do you know
what to do with that? You don't we have because
we don't have to anymore. We have lost. But that's
(15:23):
the loss and that that we have experienced as eaters.
And I think that we have been robbed of this.
I mean, I really do, and I think it's unfortunate.
And I think we can have all the best of
intentions and when it comes to the ecology and when
it comes to the economics and the ethics of these things,
but in the end, if we don't know how to
use the product, we're s O. L. Simon makes several
(15:44):
critical points here. One is the erasure of knowledge surrounding grains.
Whole wheat is actually flavorful and adds a depth and
complexity too recipes, but we've pejoratively associated it as an
unappealing healthful or as a bread with a brick like texture,
(16:04):
which raises the question, once we've bought our grains, how
do we know what to do with it? And how
do we know what to bake? And I think that
baking at home specifically is a one of the most
tentative and doable answers to understanding and using and respecting
(16:27):
the work that goes into agriculture, the work that goes
into milling and the work that goes into providing food
for people. Because baking at home is where most of
us can learn how to use it. You can eat
something from a professional baker and appreciate the work that
goes into it because you're experiencing flavor. You're experiencing texture
(16:48):
in a context you never perhaps understood or new. You
could be even experiencing both of those things in completely
new ways and in completely new cultural context Um, you're
eating rye in a Scandinavie in uh, either a dry
like cracker style bread or something super dense and moist,
or you're experiencing buckwheat in a croissant. All of a
(17:10):
sudden you're like, how did they do this? But more
than anything where it's still about consumption and consumerism in
that true way, not just consumption of eating but consumption
of product. But that is the gateway to getting into
understanding what is possible. Professionals can show you what is possible,
but you at home, we're the ones who buy the
(17:32):
flour and bake things at home for ourselves out of
joy or out of necessity, and to be able to
gain access to that. But let me to get back
to that is the thing of like, how do we
I think home bakers are the are the real way
to get to this because home baker is the one
who spends the money to feed themselves. The home baker
is the one who's going to do the work and
(17:53):
see the value in the work. And I don't mean
the esoteric idea of work of what brought that to
their table, the work of putting their hands in flour
and playing with water and fats and flavors, and in
doing that there is a greater appreciation and a greater
um sense of satisfaction and being able to figure something
(18:16):
out that you've never figured out before, even if it's
something as simple as how much fat or how much
water or how much sugar or whatever I need to
add to this to make it taste the best possible way,
so that I am being respectful of my time and
at the time of everybody else down this food chain.
Anytime we're disrupting or derailing the corporate food system, I
(18:39):
think we're on the right track. So I'm with you there,
But can you help us understand on a primary level,
when wheat is grown industrially, what is that process like
from grain to consumer? And can you just walk us
down the two distinct journeys from industrial grain into the
final value added product like flour or bread. So to
(19:05):
do the t L d R version of great agriculture
in North America, basically after the war, after World War two,
agriculture change in North America in which we had a
lot of people to feed, and we wanted to feed them,
and we want to feed them in a way that
again liberated workers to a certain degree to be able
(19:27):
to make more money or to work a little bit
less or what do we need? We well, we're going
to put things into the ground. We're going to put
um petro chemicals into the ground. And then now especially
we're putting pesticides into the ground. Whether you agree with
the use of those things or not, that's fine, that's
not what I'm interested in. What I'm interested is what happens.
(19:48):
And so for a farmer, let's talk about the both
the agriculture and the economics at once. For a farmer
to be able to make money, to grow grain, they
have to plant lots of it. The question of scale
and the maintenance of that scale is incredibly difficult and
(20:08):
incredibly high. Why because you have to grow it or
raise it or rear it in a certain way, and
that's a big way. And to do that well, then
you have a huge amount of land. Land is expensive,
gas is expensive to run the tractor or the mill
or whatever else you're going through all of this, and
so that means that the inputs that go into your land.
(20:32):
And when I say input, I mean time, I mean petrochemicals,
I mean water, I mean whatever else is necessary to
do this often denigrates and ruins the soil in and
of itself. We are now at a point where the
amount of soil that is used to grow our food,
the top soil for that, is being destroyed. What's also
(20:55):
being distorted the communities in which that these grains are
being grown. And what was it that changed that necessitated
those higher volumes of wheat production. Was it a growing
demand from the government from the consumer or was it
just because we had to fill grocery store shelves. Money
necessitates volume, more money, more volume, more grain, more bread
(21:18):
on the shelves, more people eating grain. In whatever way
possible that we can. Where can I insert Like people
always talk about corn being inserted everywhere. If you were
someone who's glued, intolerant, or Celiac and you look for
something that doesn't have grain in it, you're doing a
lot of work um And also also because grain is
(21:39):
a commodity, therefore it is traded in economic ways, and
so for all of these things link into it. And
yet the dividends are mostly economic and the losses are
agricultural and um cultural as well in terms of how
to grow these things, because we have become so used
to growing things in this very specif of big way
(22:01):
that we're constantly losing the information that could have been
brought there. I don't know if it's the answer, but
an answer that is constantly coming up within grains is
a very grassroots kind of look towards greens. And I
will be completely honest and say I don't know what
is the right way yet. In Canada, for example, there's
actually an organization, this really great group in Vancouver called
(22:24):
Flowerist and what it is is they are the daughters
of grain farmers, are of the daughters of people who
grew up in grain regions, and they're like, we really
want to highlight the work that these people are doing.
And so they found specific farmers who are growing grain
in very specific ways that are agriculturally sound and ecologically sound.
(22:45):
They buy that grain whole, they send it the ship
to Vancouver, and you, as a consumer can buy that flower,
have an idea of where that came from, and have
it shipped to you anywhere in North America. So is
that the way to do it? I don't not entirely
pretty sure, because that helps one farmer and it has
the same It has the ethical Footbritain that I wanted
(23:08):
to have or the but it doesn't necessarily always have
the ecological one because shipping things cost money. And so
it's a question of personal because all of this all
comes back again to personal responsibility. And that's the thing
with the small scale allows you to see it is
your personal responsibility, while large scale it removes your responsibility
from all of this. But also in terms of like
(23:29):
um that small scale in the grassroot thing that also
happens within all of this have been conferences popping up
across North American and even across the world. Um. Like
I said, there was the needing conference which happens in Maine,
and there is the grain gathering which happens in Washington State.
And then there is also um or a taste for
(23:54):
grain in Montreal, and there are grain conferences happening in
UH the UK, and people are looking all over North America,
from small scale to large scale, into like what can
we do to ensure that our food security is safe,
but that we're still able to have a food experience
(24:16):
that is worth our time from all points of view,
from flavor to agriculture. I love to eat grain, cards
(24:37):
all that stuff, but my body hated it. Um. It
wasn't until I came to Europe and I started. I
was in France and it was eating bread there, and
then I came to Leo's farm and I was introduced
to ancient grains. It wasn't so much the grain and
the flower. It was as it is I think the
quality of the grains that we eat nowadays, and it
(24:59):
basically change my whole world. That's writer Mauricia Tiller talking
about Leonardo Petrocelli from Zeletta de Brancia, a farm in Puglia, Italy.
She came to me and she was not eating grain,
past and so on, but you have to eat this stuff.
(25:19):
Then she starts little bit, little bit, and then and
now she and she don't feel enough. And yeah, Leo
is a multi generational grain farmer, having received a master's
degree in ecological farming. On his farm, he cultivates harvests
and cells ancient grains like capelli, frasianetto, risciola, saragola, faro, monacoco, segalle,
(25:45):
jumana or zomondo and majorca. While reviving these grains on
his grandparents farms sounds romantic, this is by no means
a popular endeavor in southern Italy. Eating the grains here,
I've had no issues, so that it made me question, like,
maybe it's not grains, it's the quality of the grains
(26:08):
versus industrialized modern grains. So in a relatively short amount
of time since the Green Revolution, almost all of Italy
has gone on to this industrialized crop as you refer to.
So how does your fellow country person and Italy feel
about the work that you're doing to maintain or revive
(26:31):
these ancient grains. Do they think it's kind of strange
or patriotic or are they excited that you're bringing back
some of the local history. Yeah, it's you may as
a little bit too difficult because the people in the
south of Italy commit with the clothes mind, their traditional
(26:54):
thought to the start, the people the other farmer were
watching me going got these big grains, because some of
them they are tall, like two meters in front of
the the new one. So they say, what are you doing, Leonardo.
They produce so much, this is not good. But I
(27:17):
continue in my way. I continue my way. The people
start to taste my flower to see and they say
to me, now, that Leonard you have there is on
your flower is different than the flower that we buy
in the supermarket. And the taste, the smell of the
(27:39):
bread that is completely different. So yeah, the other farmers
see me like a crazy person. Yeah, you know you're
doing something good. Yeah, contain gene tech is. We need
(28:09):
farmers and poets. We need people who know how to
make bread, people who love trees and acknowledge a breeze.
More than a year of growth, we need a year
of attention. Attention to those who fall, Attention to the
(28:31):
sun that rises and dies, to our kids as they grow,
Attention to a simple street light, a chipped wall. Today,
being revolutionary means reducing, rather than adding to, slowing down
(28:51):
rather than speeding up. It means seeing the value of silence,
of light, of fragility, of kind, Armenno. It was the
(29:13):
gluten free air. I was seeing things from a dark
side of oh Man gluten free one of my pedaling poison.
I didn't get into baking for this, and it's a
terrible career weeks. You know, it's just it's not good
for people. That's Jonathan Bethany. Jonathan is the co owner
and head baker of say Low Bakery in Washington, d C.
(29:37):
He's been on a journey of experimental grains and research,
having worked at the Washington State University's Bread Lab with
Dr Stephen Jones, where he learned about the importance of
plant variety, farming practices, fresh milling, and long fermentation, all
of which are essential to unlocking flavor and nutrition. In
November two thousand seventeen, Jonathan opened Saalu with his wife,
(30:01):
Jessica Disease. Salu is the first bakery in Washington, d C.
Operating its own mill. Well known at Salu are there
whole week croissants and millet chocolate chip cookies, which are
emblematic of his style of baking European bakery staples with
freshly milled grains. Once I kind of shifted my internal
(30:24):
world all of a sudden, I found myself mingling with
folks that are like, oh, well, you don't have to
bake like that. There's other ways to bake. You can
use whole grains, you can use long fermentations. You know,
wheat isn't bad, it's just how you've gone about it.
You know, you have to take a fresh look at that.
And then damn, all of a sudden, the bread Lab
(30:45):
opens up and here I am as a resident baker
in the Bread Lab and Washington State University and a
cutting edge you know, breeding program under Dr Jones. As
Jonathan explains, long fermentation is important for digestibility. Most bread
in a plastic bag goes from flower to loaf in
just a matter of hours, and in the process, the
(31:07):
benefits of the pre digestive period, where enzymes and micro
organisms break down the grains into a state in which
it's easier to absorb, are all lost. The benefits of soaking, sprouting,
and fermenting grains to maximize nutritive value is something many
cultures around the world have long known and practiced, and
(31:29):
so at my time in the bread Lab, um, you know,
I really got into varietals, and I really got into
whole grain baking. Dr. Jones made me only baked with
whole grains. Working with Dan Barber, only whole grains. What
are all the flavors we can get out of wheat?
What are all the flavors we can get out of grains? Um?
That turned me into a whole grain baker. I came
(31:50):
to d C to the Mid Atlantic. I met some
of the farmers I work with now that really convinced
me to open salute because I'm like, these are farmers
that can really work with and we can go through
all the little changes together, we can take risks together. Um.
That's when Heinz Tomas next step produce in southern Maryland
(32:12):
towards me in his fields showed me buck wheat, millet, sorghum, beans, barley, rye,
you know. Finally he takes me to the wheat and
I'm like, okay, cool, how much week can you sell
me this year? And He's like, son, didn't you see
everything that it took to get you this organic wheat?
(32:32):
So what about all these other things? So I'm like,
oh man, what about all these other things? I want
to ask you about the flower boom from the spring
of this year two thousand twenty, A lot of people
were for the first time thinking about where their flower
was coming from at a time when suddenly it was unavailable.
I think many people were for the first time thinking
(32:54):
differently about baking at home. Did you experience a different
or ridden nude relationship to your customers in terms of
their understanding and curiosity about the value of whole grain flower? Yeah,
I ran out of rye, I ran out of many
wheat varieties. UM. I struggled this year to keep up
(33:18):
due to the boom. And it's what we wanted to happen,
you know, I've wanted I mean, I didn't want it
to come, you know, riding on COVID nineteen per say,
But we we needed something to to to to bring
this awareness and this desire to um seek healthier foods
(33:42):
and to seek you know, cooking at home again. You know.
I think there's the root cause that we can look too,
which is unhealthy systems, uns animal systems and unhealthy eating,
(34:03):
and these kind of tragedies bring all that to light.
(34:28):
Before we end, I wanted to go back to Simon Are,
esteemed journalist and amateur baker, and ask if he could
share with us some advice to make the home baker
in us all feel a little less intimidated and more
empowered when baking with whole grains. I will say this,
start small and be open. One two. Think about what
(34:50):
happens when you're baking with something. Let's stick with wheat.
We're not going to go into buck wheats and rise
and embers and iron corn or even corn and of itself.
Just regular wheats. Okay. So, like I said, you live
in California, eat your hands in some Sonora and let's
say you don't know how well this was meal. Do
you put it in your hands and it feels like
regular whole weed flour? What we know that brand is
(35:12):
good for us? And what does brand new? It absorbs
in your gut. It absorbs lots of liquid. So remember
that when you're putting liquid into your batter or your dough,
you're gonna need a little extra water. Try fifteen more
water or less flour in whatever you're baking that you've
baked before. That's a good way to start um whole grains.
(35:36):
If you don't want to go at a hundred person
all greens, add to something and see what happens to
a recipe that you know super well, and a quick
anecdote as I was one time I was making I
had a friend over and I'm like, hey, I'm gonna
make a coffee cake. And I've made this coffee cake
X number of times and I've done it whole green
a whole bunch of times. And so I bake it
(35:57):
and I'm talking to my friend and it comes out
and I slice it up and go. I forgot to
add the sugar to my bank. But I came to
realize how much sugar do I actually need? Because it
was still super flavorful. There was so much flavor and
I was like, how much sugar do I actually need
in this thing? And I was like, I could reduce
(36:20):
my sugar easily and still have a super tasty cake.
And there was lots of sugar in the strusol on top,
so that's fine. But is this thing of like you
start to have these moments of like what do I
actually need? And that's the thing that happens in home baking,
especially when you're playing with home grains, with whole grains,
is you start to be like, what do I want?
What do I want to play with? But I'm not
(36:40):
depending so much on just the recipe. I'm using my senses,
my hands, my taste buds, or even like I'll smell
things in the kitchen. Like you become much more comfortable
in your kitchen, and that kind of emancipation that comes,
that kind of independence that comes and being able to
feed yourself and feed yourself in more than just the ways.
You know, that's the thing that really gets home. Baker
(37:02):
is excited, and that's the thing that I think can
really truly lead people to understanding and making whole grains
accessible because you become your own teacher in that kind
of way, in a way that industrial food systems don't
want you to be independent, don't want you to have
a certain of um brain trust or intelligence towards what
you're putting in your own body. You know, there's a
(37:32):
lot to take away from the episode, whether it's the
role of gluten or gastronomy or the green revolution in
what we eat today. But the benefits of whole grain
eating are multifaceted, just as the negative impacts are of
not eating whole grains. Our taste buds have been bleached,
and so has our soil and our immunity. The whitewashing
(37:57):
of our food is no more apparent in our industrial
system than it is with wheat. And whether or not
you believe the green revolution was a success, which probably
depends on the metrics by which you define success, what
it does allow is a fertile terrain of critique. What
we do know is that any solution in feeding people
(38:18):
that is rooted in agrochemical companies, consolidating power, and weakening
biodiversity is not a long term solution. As always, we
are advocates for reimagining new systems, the ones that predate
industrial solutions, as those solutions are only designed to respond
(38:39):
to industrial problems. Maybe the system is the problem, and
in that context our solutions bring us closer to the
outcomes rooted more in our imagination and less so in
our limitations. I'd like to extend a tremendous thank you
(39:01):
to all of our guests who helped make this episode possible.
Martina Julietta Castaiano's Lopez and her daughter Carmen Reyes from
Brencombe de la Grana Bakery in Wahaca, Mexico, to journalists
and author Simon Tebow in Nova Scotia, Canada, Leonardo Petrocelli
and writer Mauricia Tiller from Zeletta de Brancia and Pulia, Italy,
(39:25):
and to Jonathan Bethany from Saylu Bakery in Washington, d C.
You can learn more about this episode and our guest
at wet Stone Magazine dot com, Backslash podcast, or by
following us on Instagram at wet Stone Magazine. We'll be
back next week with more from the world of food
from around the world. I'm your host, Steven Saderfield, Take
(39:48):
it easy piece. We'd also like to thank our incredible
podcast producer Selene Glazier. Selene, you are the best. To
our editor and wet Stone part partner and director of
video David Alexander in London. Appreciate you, Dave. Thanks to
our wet Stone production intern Quentin le Beau, and last
(40:10):
but not least, my business partner Mel she who makes
all things at whet Stone possible. Thank you Mel. We'd
also like to thank our partners and production at I
Heart Radio to Gabrielle Collins, our supervising producer and executive
producer Christopher Haciotis. We'll be back next week with more
from the world of food worldwide. Point of origin listeners.
(40:41):
As you know rating and reviewing our podcast is the
very best way for more people to find out about
our very important work at Whetstone, so please, if you're able,
we would really appreciate a positive review in rating on
Apple podcast that will help others like yourself find out
(41:02):
about Point of Origin.
Perooka, no ingredients, nod la limento. My name is Martina Es.
I'm from Aca, which is a town that is located
(00:23):
in the lower Mixed Tea means land of the Cochineal,
not just gland, is the main entrance to the mixed Teca.
I personally define myself as a person with values, with principles,
and with a great faith. I value my roots and
my culture very much. That is why I have always
liked to rescue and value all the customs and traditions
(00:44):
of my ancest No no no pan mass mass, notritio,
no pancor the no pane problem lost Celia. I opened
my bakery in March. Originally, my idea was not to
open a bakery, but another type of business where I
(01:05):
could provide good sources of nutrition to people. But my
mother is from a nearby community called There is a
bakery that was closed for many years, So I said, okay,
why not ask the community to give me that bakery
and start using it. The community agreed, so I started
working in the bakery. But I wanted to offer something different,
(01:26):
ingredients that are healthier because here in our communities the
daily food is bread. So I said, why not offer
a more nutritious bread. Not a bread that makes you fat,
not a bread that gives you problems to those who
are Celiac, not a bread that produces obesity, but a
different bread, a bread with high nutritional value, and a
bread that I could take ingredients from my locality. My
(01:49):
favorite item is the cons because then the bakery conchs
can never not be on the menu. There are different sizes,
big ones, small ones, different flavors, different colors, and why
not offer some delicious amaranth concs right that would have
a high nutritional value Above all, something very important that
I want to teach to my community. As I mentioned before,
(02:13):
tat well tat healthy tape products are breads with natural ingredients.
Why not use recipes that are from our community? There
are local that are organic. That way we can support
our local conduct that welcome back to point of origin.
(02:33):
On today's episode, we're talking about a global movement of
whole grains and that intro you just heard was Martina
Julietta Castellanos Lopez and her daughter Carmen Reyes from Rincome
de la Granda Bakery and Wahaca, Mexico. Bread is the
most widely consumed food in the world. Not only has
(02:54):
it provided nutritional sustenance for international communities well over the millennia.
In many ways it represents the center of culinary and
communal life. But over time the contents of the bread
we eat has been wildly disconnected from the wheat and
grains of our ancestors. Today we're looking at why that is,
(03:15):
how it came to be and the agrarian shift that
has ensued. We're chatting with journalists and grain researcher plus
amateur baker Simon Tebow in Halifax, Canada. Then we go
to southern Italy to Puglia where Leo Petrucelli is reviving
his grandparents farm using ancient grains, and finally in Washington,
(03:38):
d C. We chat with Jonathan Bethany, baker and owner
of Saylu Bakery, who uses grains like millet and sorghum
on his menu. Today's guests are focusing on recentering whole
wheat and ancient grains in their natural form and moving
beyond the standardized, the prepackaged, and the painfully uniform industrial grains.
(04:00):
Today on point of origin, we're going beyond the wheat
types of grains that you can be milled and be
used in baking. I mean you have everything from buck
wheat too emmer to ride. Um. My name is Simon Tebow.
I am a journalist and food writer and author and editor.
I'm based out of Halifax, Nova Scrocer, Canada, and grains
(04:23):
have become the rabbit hole of my life over the
past two and a half years. You have spring wheats
and winter wheats. You have red wheats and white beats.
I am friends with a Canadian food writer name named
me do Good, and she said, you need to come
and meet Dawn. And I had heard of Dawn the baker.
(04:45):
So I go and I see this table and there's
Dawn with her daughter, Evelyn. The name of the company's
Evelyn's Crackers. And I'm just standing there and there's like
stuff that you expect to see at anybody's table, you know,
like there's pastries and pie and breads and like the usual,
like uh, loaves of rye and loves of a few
of the things. I'm like, okay, sure, uh. And then
(05:10):
I decided to try um one of our brownies. So
brownie is pretty like nondescript, their lovely things to have
on occasion and Uh, this was a buck wheat flower
Cardiman brownie. But at that initial moment when I bought it,
I was buying it to be polite. At the time,
(05:31):
would have considered myself a competent home baker, like I
would have been the guy like I had made my
sour doughs. But everything was all white flower all the time,
and the triumes. I tried to make anything with whole
grains flower or whole wheat flowers, it never turned out right,
and it was just this weird thing. I'm like, this
is not worth my time. And then I've been into
this thing and I was like I just kind of
(05:52):
went and it was this delirious kind of thing. And uh,
and it wasn't just like, okay, cardimon and pocolate are
amazing first of all, but I mean beyond that, the
texture of this. It was like, what is this texture?
And because it was soft and pillowy, most of us
(06:12):
in North America, when we think of whole grains, we
think of things. We hear those words, and we think dents,
we think unpalatable, we think the loaf of bread that
can be used as a doorstop, you know what I mean.
And this was none of those things. This was luxuriant,
this was beautiful. The journalist in me and the writer
in me went wait a minute, like, how did she
(06:36):
do this? How did she do this? What is necessary
to get to this point where the preconceived notion we
have of what whole grain baking can be versus this
platonic ideal which is achievable? What is that? And it
(06:57):
just started from there and from there I have been
starting research on this for two two and a half
years now and uh, I have gone across North America
for the first time in my life. I went to
California to meet with a miller in Pasadena named named Kohler.
She runs gristin Toll, which is wonderful urban mill. I
(07:18):
went up to Washington State to Washington State's campus in
Burlington where they have the Bread Lab where Dr Steven
Jones is doing all kinds of work. Over there, I
went to Montreal to another grain conference to hear from
women and men from around the world talking about grains,
and the further I dig into it, the further I
(07:39):
keep seeing how grains are emblematic of every single thing
that has happened in food production over the past two
to three years, and the huge amount of erature that
has happened in terms of ecological, economic, cultural, and culinary
advantages and disadvantages that we now experience. As eis. So,
(08:02):
what you're saying is because of the ways in which
the food system has been industrialized that I guess flower
is a severe example of how we've lost touch with
our food. With apples, for instance, we can name multiple varieties,
or we can name multiple varieties of vegetables, and yet
(08:23):
we can't do that with wheat. So and this hyper
processing of weed, not only are we losing nutritional value,
but we're also losing, as you pointed out, the cultural
value and the loss of that knowledge. Well, let me
give you a preaking pretty easy scenario. You're going to
go into a grocery store and you're gonna go and
(08:43):
buy flower. Okay, that's you will find all purpose white flower.
Bleached or unbleached, doesn't matter. In this scenario. You're gonna
take that flower home. You have a general before you
even buy it. You have an estimation of how much
this is going to cost you. You have an estimation
of how long it's gonna last your household. You have
an estimation of how it's going to behave, how it's
going to taste all of these things? How do we
(09:06):
get here? How did we take what is a living
thing the same with it apples and like other things
that we grow in the ground, or even like varietals
of animals that we raise for food production. How did
we get to this uniformity of experience that anybody can
(09:28):
take this and use it and know what to expect
and have a sense of what is what it's worth
to them in terms of time and money and effort.
And who gets to gauge what that is worth? Who
gets to gauge all of those things? And that was
the thing that kind of made me go, wait a minute,
like what is this? And the thing is that that
(09:49):
system that makes that happen, that creates that ubiquity, this
homogeneity within baking and within access to food and all
of the things that brings it to play, everything from
food security, which we experienced no matter who you are
in North America or even like throughout most of western
Europe when COVID hit, baking shelves were decimated and all
(10:14):
of a sudden, like and I kept on having conversations
with people who were stalking the shelves and they're saying
people are trying to understand now, like how food distribution works.
And I mean from from a certain perspective, the whole
thing of like that flower, you know it's gonna last
a year roughly speaking, like it's baking qualities will not
(10:34):
be impacted in the first year of that thing being
out there, so you know, you've got a good amount
of time. But that was this kind of like someone's
rattling the cage of the food system right now, and
it's a disease. And why because you don't know where
that was milled. You don't know how long that's been
on that shelf, You don't know hong, that wasn't the truck,
You don't know how long that wasn't a in a
(10:56):
storage facility. We wheat and grains are the most whitewashed,
arguably one of the most whitewashed foods out there when
it comes to understanding the procedures necessary to feed us
as human beings and s s society. I guess the
(11:17):
more crass and cynical part of me feels like we
shouldn't really be surprised that industrial food producers are more
willing to discard the parts of the grain or the
wheat that are more expensive to produce, because obviously these
companies are purely driven by profitability. So how can we
(11:38):
make people understand the urgency of really thinking more critically
about this and maybe even acting in opposition to this
system when, for instance, we don't really even know where
to buy these flowers. We can't buy these flowers at
the grocery store. So what are we as consumers supposed
to do? It becomes this question of who gains access
(12:02):
not just to the ingredient, but who gains access to
the money that plays into this two More importantly, I
would say, the information that is necessary to use these
products to the best degree possible. And when I say best,
I don't mean just in baking at home. I meaning
questions of social equity and inclusion and an understanding of
(12:24):
the culinary and cultural background that are intrinsically linked to
not only bringing these grains into North America, but also
into how to use them and how those things fed
generations of people. And now we are at a point
where that information is nearly erased, and we cannot deny
that the proliferation of especially in a country like Canada
(12:49):
where I live, The proliferation of this uniformity and this
homogeneity in terms of distribution and the flavor, or rather
the distribution of no flavor, also brought about a greater
amount of food security, because grain is a living thing.
I have um grains in my cupboard that i've been there,
(13:09):
that I bought in California that are two years old,
and I have yet to mill them. They're fine. The
second I mill them, they start to turn rancid, So
I have six months to use that flower. That whole
rancidity is basically what most of us believe that whole
grains and whole grain flowers taste of, and that's what
we're accustomed to. And so the removal of that creates
(13:34):
an ease and a facility that allowed generations of individuals
to be able to bake at home in an affordable way.
And we cannot deny that in the same way that
like um, you can't deny that UM. The progressions of
canning food, of frozen foods, the development of supermarkets, all
(13:55):
of these things emancipated people who cooked. And we're talking
mostly about women here, oftentimes woman of color, and especially
in the Southern United States in certain parts where grains
are even more part of it that this emancipation and
this ease fostered huge changes in how we view um
the work necessary to create these things, whether it be
(14:17):
baked goods or like making a roue in Louisiana, or
if we're making biscuits. I am not anti white flower.
I've been baking for the past two to three years
with whole green flowers, and I had a huge learning curve,
and I still bake with white flower and occasion, depending
on what I'm making. Having said that, there are also
other benefits, especially in a place like Canada and where
(14:40):
there are things such as the Wheat Board of Canada,
which is a government body which helps ensure a arguably
equitable or fair pricing system for grain, which is a commodity.
So let's say you are a person of enough means
to pay um, let's say seven or eight dollars for
(15:03):
a kilogram of buck wheat flour or ten dollars for
a kilogram of locally milled and grown corneal arguments. Say
you're able to do that, You're gonna take that home?
What are you gonna do with it? Do you know
what to do with that? You don't we have because
we don't have to anymore. We have lost. But that's
(15:23):
the loss and that that we have experienced as eaters.
And I think that we have been robbed of this.
I mean, I really do, and I think it's unfortunate.
And I think we can have all the best of
intentions and when it comes to the ecology and when
it comes to the economics and the ethics of these things,
but in the end, if we don't know how to
use the product, we're s O. L. Simon makes several
(15:44):
critical points here. One is the erasure of knowledge surrounding grains.
Whole wheat is actually flavorful and adds a depth and
complexity too recipes, but we've pejoratively associated it as an
unappealing healthful or as a bread with a brick like texture,
(16:04):
which raises the question, once we've bought our grains, how
do we know what to do with it? And how
do we know what to bake? And I think that
baking at home specifically is a one of the most
tentative and doable answers to understanding and using and respecting
(16:27):
the work that goes into agriculture, the work that goes
into milling and the work that goes into providing food
for people. Because baking at home is where most of
us can learn how to use it. You can eat
something from a professional baker and appreciate the work that
goes into it because you're experiencing flavor. You're experiencing texture
(16:48):
in a context you never perhaps understood or new. You
could be even experiencing both of those things in completely
new ways and in completely new cultural context Um, you're
eating rye in a Scandinavie in uh, either a dry
like cracker style bread or something super dense and moist,
or you're experiencing buckwheat in a croissant. All of a
(17:10):
sudden you're like, how did they do this? But more
than anything where it's still about consumption and consumerism in
that true way, not just consumption of eating but consumption
of product. But that is the gateway to getting into
understanding what is possible. Professionals can show you what is possible,
but you at home, we're the ones who buy the
(17:32):
flour and bake things at home for ourselves out of
joy or out of necessity, and to be able to
gain access to that. But let me to get back
to that is the thing of like, how do we
I think home bakers are the are the real way
to get to this because home baker is the one
who spends the money to feed themselves. The home baker
is the one who's going to do the work and
(17:53):
see the value in the work. And I don't mean
the esoteric idea of work of what brought that to
their table, the work of putting their hands in flour
and playing with water and fats and flavors, and in
doing that there is a greater appreciation and a greater
um sense of satisfaction and being able to figure something
(18:16):
out that you've never figured out before, even if it's
something as simple as how much fat or how much
water or how much sugar or whatever I need to
add to this to make it taste the best possible way,
so that I am being respectful of my time and
at the time of everybody else down this food chain.
Anytime we're disrupting or derailing the corporate food system, I
(18:39):
think we're on the right track. So I'm with you there,
But can you help us understand on a primary level,
when wheat is grown industrially, what is that process like
from grain to consumer? And can you just walk us
down the two distinct journeys from industrial grain into the
final value added product like flour or bread. So to
(19:05):
do the t L d R version of great agriculture
in North America, basically after the war, after World War two,
agriculture change in North America in which we had a
lot of people to feed, and we wanted to feed them,
and we want to feed them in a way that
again liberated workers to a certain degree to be able
(19:27):
to make more money or to work a little bit
less or what do we need? We well, we're going
to put things into the ground. We're going to put
um petro chemicals into the ground. And then now especially
we're putting pesticides into the ground. Whether you agree with
the use of those things or not, that's fine, that's
not what I'm interested in. What I'm interested is what happens.
(19:48):
And so for a farmer, let's talk about the both
the agriculture and the economics at once. For a farmer
to be able to make money, to grow grain, they
have to plant lots of it. The question of scale
and the maintenance of that scale is incredibly difficult and
(20:08):
incredibly high. Why because you have to grow it or
raise it or rear it in a certain way, and
that's a big way. And to do that well, then
you have a huge amount of land. Land is expensive,
gas is expensive to run the tractor or the mill
or whatever else you're going through all of this, and
so that means that the inputs that go into your land.
(20:32):
And when I say input, I mean time, I mean petrochemicals,
I mean water, I mean whatever else is necessary to
do this often denigrates and ruins the soil in and
of itself. We are now at a point where the
amount of soil that is used to grow our food,
the top soil for that, is being destroyed. What's also
(20:55):
being distorted the communities in which that these grains are
being grown. And what was it that changed that necessitated
those higher volumes of wheat production. Was it a growing
demand from the government from the consumer or was it
just because we had to fill grocery store shelves. Money
necessitates volume, more money, more volume, more grain, more bread
(21:18):
on the shelves, more people eating grain. In whatever way
possible that we can. Where can I insert Like people
always talk about corn being inserted everywhere. If you were
someone who's glued, intolerant, or Celiac and you look for
something that doesn't have grain in it, you're doing a
lot of work um And also also because grain is
(21:39):
a commodity, therefore it is traded in economic ways, and
so for all of these things link into it. And
yet the dividends are mostly economic and the losses are
agricultural and um cultural as well in terms of how
to grow these things, because we have become so used
to growing things in this very specif of big way
(22:01):
that we're constantly losing the information that could have been
brought there. I don't know if it's the answer, but
an answer that is constantly coming up within grains is
a very grassroots kind of look towards greens. And I
will be completely honest and say I don't know what
is the right way yet. In Canada, for example, there's
actually an organization, this really great group in Vancouver called
(22:24):
Flowerist and what it is is they are the daughters
of grain farmers, are of the daughters of people who
grew up in grain regions, and they're like, we really
want to highlight the work that these people are doing.
And so they found specific farmers who are growing grain
in very specific ways that are agriculturally sound and ecologically sound.
(22:45):
They buy that grain whole, they send it the ship
to Vancouver, and you, as a consumer can buy that flower,
have an idea of where that came from, and have
it shipped to you anywhere in North America. So is
that the way to do it? I don't not entirely
pretty sure, because that helps one farmer and it has
the same It has the ethical Footbritain that I wanted
(23:08):
to have or the but it doesn't necessarily always have
the ecological one because shipping things cost money. And so
it's a question of personal because all of this all
comes back again to personal responsibility. And that's the thing
with the small scale allows you to see it is
your personal responsibility, while large scale it removes your responsibility
from all of this. But also in terms of like
(23:29):
um that small scale in the grassroot thing that also
happens within all of this have been conferences popping up
across North American and even across the world. Um. Like
I said, there was the needing conference which happens in Maine,
and there is the grain gathering which happens in Washington State.
And then there is also um or a taste for
(23:54):
grain in Montreal, and there are grain conferences happening in
UH the UK, and people are looking all over North America,
from small scale to large scale, into like what can
we do to ensure that our food security is safe,
but that we're still able to have a food experience
(24:16):
that is worth our time from all points of view,
from flavor to agriculture. I love to eat grain, cards
(24:37):
all that stuff, but my body hated it. Um. It
wasn't until I came to Europe and I started. I
was in France and it was eating bread there, and
then I came to Leo's farm and I was introduced
to ancient grains. It wasn't so much the grain and
the flower. It was as it is I think the
quality of the grains that we eat nowadays, and it
(24:59):
basically change my whole world. That's writer Mauricia Tiller talking
about Leonardo Petrocelli from Zeletta de Brancia, a farm in Puglia, Italy.
She came to me and she was not eating grain,
past and so on, but you have to eat this stuff.
(25:19):
Then she starts little bit, little bit, and then and
now she and she don't feel enough. And yeah, Leo
is a multi generational grain farmer, having received a master's
degree in ecological farming. On his farm, he cultivates harvests
and cells ancient grains like capelli, frasianetto, risciola, saragola, faro, monacoco, segalle,
(25:45):
jumana or zomondo and majorca. While reviving these grains on
his grandparents farms sounds romantic, this is by no means
a popular endeavor in southern Italy. Eating the grains here,
I've had no issues, so that it made me question, like,
maybe it's not grains, it's the quality of the grains
(26:08):
versus industrialized modern grains. So in a relatively short amount
of time since the Green Revolution, almost all of Italy
has gone on to this industrialized crop as you refer to.
So how does your fellow country person and Italy feel
about the work that you're doing to maintain or revive
(26:31):
these ancient grains. Do they think it's kind of strange
or patriotic or are they excited that you're bringing back
some of the local history. Yeah, it's you may as
a little bit too difficult because the people in the
south of Italy commit with the clothes mind, their traditional
(26:54):
thought to the start, the people the other farmer were
watching me going got these big grains, because some of
them they are tall, like two meters in front of
the the new one. So they say, what are you doing, Leonardo.
They produce so much, this is not good. But I
(27:17):
continue in my way. I continue my way. The people
start to taste my flower to see and they say
to me, now, that Leonard you have there is on
your flower is different than the flower that we buy
in the supermarket. And the taste, the smell of the
(27:39):
bread that is completely different. So yeah, the other farmers
see me like a crazy person. Yeah, you know you're
doing something good. Yeah, contain gene tech is. We need
(28:09):
farmers and poets. We need people who know how to
make bread, people who love trees and acknowledge a breeze.
More than a year of growth, we need a year
of attention. Attention to those who fall, Attention to the
(28:31):
sun that rises and dies, to our kids as they grow,
Attention to a simple street light, a chipped wall. Today,
being revolutionary means reducing, rather than adding to, slowing down
(28:51):
rather than speeding up. It means seeing the value of silence,
of light, of fragility, of kind, Armenno. It was the
(29:13):
gluten free air. I was seeing things from a dark
side of oh Man gluten free one of my pedaling poison.
I didn't get into baking for this, and it's a
terrible career weeks. You know, it's just it's not good
for people. That's Jonathan Bethany. Jonathan is the co owner
and head baker of say Low Bakery in Washington, d C.
(29:37):
He's been on a journey of experimental grains and research,
having worked at the Washington State University's Bread Lab with
Dr Stephen Jones, where he learned about the importance of
plant variety, farming practices, fresh milling, and long fermentation, all
of which are essential to unlocking flavor and nutrition. In
November two thousand seventeen, Jonathan opened Saalu with his wife,
(30:01):
Jessica Disease. Salu is the first bakery in Washington, d C.
Operating its own mill. Well known at Salu are there
whole week croissants and millet chocolate chip cookies, which are
emblematic of his style of baking European bakery staples with
freshly milled grains. Once I kind of shifted my internal
(30:24):
world all of a sudden, I found myself mingling with
folks that are like, oh, well, you don't have to
bake like that. There's other ways to bake. You can
use whole grains, you can use long fermentations. You know,
wheat isn't bad, it's just how you've gone about it.
You know, you have to take a fresh look at that.
And then damn, all of a sudden, the bread Lab
(30:45):
opens up and here I am as a resident baker
in the Bread Lab and Washington State University and a
cutting edge you know, breeding program under Dr Jones. As
Jonathan explains, long fermentation is important for digestibility. Most bread
in a plastic bag goes from flower to loaf in
just a matter of hours, and in the process, the
(31:07):
benefits of the pre digestive period, where enzymes and micro
organisms break down the grains into a state in which
it's easier to absorb, are all lost. The benefits of soaking, sprouting,
and fermenting grains to maximize nutritive value is something many
cultures around the world have long known and practiced, and
(31:29):
so at my time in the bread Lab, um, you know,
I really got into varietals, and I really got into
whole grain baking. Dr. Jones made me only baked with
whole grains. Working with Dan Barber, only whole grains. What
are all the flavors we can get out of wheat?
What are all the flavors we can get out of grains? Um?
That turned me into a whole grain baker. I came
(31:50):
to d C to the Mid Atlantic. I met some
of the farmers I work with now that really convinced
me to open salute because I'm like, these are farmers
that can really work with and we can go through
all the little changes together, we can take risks together. Um.
That's when Heinz Tomas next step produce in southern Maryland
(32:12):
towards me in his fields showed me buck wheat, millet, sorghum, beans, barley, rye,
you know. Finally he takes me to the wheat and
I'm like, okay, cool, how much week can you sell
me this year? And He's like, son, didn't you see
everything that it took to get you this organic wheat?
(32:32):
So what about all these other things? So I'm like,
oh man, what about all these other things? I want
to ask you about the flower boom from the spring
of this year two thousand twenty, A lot of people
were for the first time thinking about where their flower
was coming from at a time when suddenly it was unavailable.
I think many people were for the first time thinking
(32:54):
differently about baking at home. Did you experience a different
or ridden nude relationship to your customers in terms of
their understanding and curiosity about the value of whole grain flower? Yeah,
I ran out of rye, I ran out of many
wheat varieties. UM. I struggled this year to keep up
(33:18):
due to the boom. And it's what we wanted to happen,
you know, I've wanted I mean, I didn't want it
to come, you know, riding on COVID nineteen per say,
But we we needed something to to to to bring
this awareness and this desire to um seek healthier foods
(33:42):
and to seek you know, cooking at home again. You know.
I think there's the root cause that we can look too,
which is unhealthy systems, uns animal systems and unhealthy eating,
(34:03):
and these kind of tragedies bring all that to light.
(34:28):
Before we end, I wanted to go back to Simon Are,
esteemed journalist and amateur baker, and ask if he could
share with us some advice to make the home baker
in us all feel a little less intimidated and more
empowered when baking with whole grains. I will say this,
start small and be open. One two. Think about what
(34:50):
happens when you're baking with something. Let's stick with wheat.
We're not going to go into buck wheats and rise
and embers and iron corn or even corn and of itself.
Just regular wheats. Okay. So, like I said, you live
in California, eat your hands in some Sonora and let's
say you don't know how well this was meal. Do
you put it in your hands and it feels like
regular whole weed flour? What we know that brand is
(35:12):
good for us? And what does brand new? It absorbs
in your gut. It absorbs lots of liquid. So remember
that when you're putting liquid into your batter or your dough,
you're gonna need a little extra water. Try fifteen more
water or less flour in whatever you're baking that you've
baked before. That's a good way to start um whole grains.
(35:36):
If you don't want to go at a hundred person
all greens, add to something and see what happens to
a recipe that you know super well, and a quick
anecdote as I was one time I was making I
had a friend over and I'm like, hey, I'm gonna
make a coffee cake. And I've made this coffee cake
X number of times and I've done it whole green
a whole bunch of times. And so I bake it
(35:57):
and I'm talking to my friend and it comes out
and I slice it up and go. I forgot to
add the sugar to my bank. But I came to
realize how much sugar do I actually need? Because it
was still super flavorful. There was so much flavor and
I was like, how much sugar do I actually need
in this thing? And I was like, I could reduce
(36:20):
my sugar easily and still have a super tasty cake.
And there was lots of sugar in the strusol on top,
so that's fine. But is this thing of like you
start to have these moments of like what do I
actually need? And that's the thing that happens in home baking,
especially when you're playing with home grains, with whole grains,
is you start to be like, what do I want?
What do I want to play with? But I'm not
(36:40):
depending so much on just the recipe. I'm using my senses,
my hands, my taste buds, or even like I'll smell
things in the kitchen. Like you become much more comfortable
in your kitchen, and that kind of emancipation that comes,
that kind of independence that comes and being able to
feed yourself and feed yourself in more than just the ways.
You know, that's the thing that really gets home. Baker
(37:02):
is excited, and that's the thing that I think can
really truly lead people to understanding and making whole grains
accessible because you become your own teacher in that kind
of way, in a way that industrial food systems don't
want you to be independent, don't want you to have
a certain of um brain trust or intelligence towards what
you're putting in your own body. You know, there's a
(37:32):
lot to take away from the episode, whether it's the
role of gluten or gastronomy or the green revolution in
what we eat today. But the benefits of whole grain
eating are multifaceted, just as the negative impacts are of
not eating whole grains. Our taste buds have been bleached,
and so has our soil and our immunity. The whitewashing
(37:57):
of our food is no more apparent in our industrial
system than it is with wheat. And whether or not
you believe the green revolution was a success, which probably
depends on the metrics by which you define success, what
it does allow is a fertile terrain of critique. What
we do know is that any solution in feeding people
(38:18):
that is rooted in agrochemical companies, consolidating power, and weakening
biodiversity is not a long term solution. As always, we
are advocates for reimagining new systems, the ones that predate
industrial solutions, as those solutions are only designed to respond
(38:39):
to industrial problems. Maybe the system is the problem, and
in that context our solutions bring us closer to the
outcomes rooted more in our imagination and less so in
our limitations. I'd like to extend a tremendous thank you
(39:01):
to all of our guests who helped make this episode possible.
Martina Julietta Castaiano's Lopez and her daughter Carmen Reyes from
Brencombe de la Grana Bakery in Wahaca, Mexico, to journalists
and author Simon Tebow in Nova Scotia, Canada, Leonardo Petrocelli
and writer Mauricia Tiller from Zeletta de Brancia and Pulia, Italy,
(39:25):
and to Jonathan Bethany from Saylu Bakery in Washington, d C.
You can learn more about this episode and our guest
at wet Stone Magazine dot com, Backslash podcast, or by
following us on Instagram at wet Stone Magazine. We'll be
back next week with more from the world of food
from around the world. I'm your host, Steven Saderfield, Take
(39:48):
it easy piece. We'd also like to thank our incredible
podcast producer Selene Glazier. Selene, you are the best. To
our editor and wet Stone part partner and director of
video David Alexander in London. Appreciate you, Dave. Thanks to
our wet Stone production intern Quentin le Beau, and last
(40:10):
but not least, my business partner Mel she who makes
all things at whet Stone possible. Thank you Mel. We'd
also like to thank our partners and production at I
Heart Radio to Gabrielle Collins, our supervising producer and executive
producer Christopher Haciotis. We'll be back next week with more
from the world of food worldwide. Point of origin listeners.
(40:41):
As you know rating and reviewing our podcast is the
very best way for more people to find out about
our very important work at Whetstone, so please, if you're able,
we would really appreciate a positive review in rating on
Apple podcast that will help others like yourself find out
(41:02):
about Point of Origin.
Host
Stephen Satterfield
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