Bread of life

[nosmokes]

nothing in the world like bread. i'd love to grab a hunk of this fresh out of the oven and smear some butter on it, eh? who says we can't live by bread alone? well ok, let's add a salad.:) another reason to eat local and organic.

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original-grain
Bread of life

Hélène Zaharia

In their effort to improve the taste and nutritional value of their bread, a group of French paysans boulangers (peasant bakers) are seeking out old varieties of wheat, many of which had not been planted for more than half a century. Experimenting with them, they are discovering that some have unexpected advantages, such as provoking a much lower level of gluten intolerance among consumers than industrialised bread.

Like so many good things in life, it all happened because people began to think for themselves. In different parts of France, small groups of mainly organic wheat farmers have for many years been bucking the trend and continuing to produce good, nutritious bread, despite the growing dominance of the industrial bakeries. Using old-fashioned millstones, they have been grinding the wheat they grow in their fields and, using natural yeast, they have been making their own bread, baking it in traditional ovens. The bread tastes good, so people in the neighbourhood have gone on buying, even when the mass-produced bread has been cheaper.

But recently the paysans boulangers (peasant bakers), as they are called, began to realise that modern varieties of wheat, which was all they could find on the seed market, didn’t really suit their needs. For decades wheat has been bred by the seed companies to respond to the needs of the big wheat farmers and the big industrial bakeries. What these groups want is wheat that has a high yield and a high protein content, and that grows fast by capturing as much soluble nitrogen as possible from the chemical fertilisers added to the soil. But these are not the qualities that the peasant bakers want: they need varieties of wheat that are healthy and disease-resistant; that stand up to different kinds of weather; that are suitable for old-fashioned bread-making techniques; and, last but by no means least, produce tasty and nutritious bread.
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complete article here