Tuesday, October 30, 2007

BreadFoot

I like bread. Making it, eating it, taking photos of it. Not just an excuse for playing with yeast and digging both hands into a pile of dough, these loaves proved excellent substrate for pesto, hummus, a quarter-inch layer of garlic, etc, etc.

The Nearings had no good opinion of bread, deeming it a "dead" food. And I guess they're right, since it's usually milled, packaged, shipped a distance, and then left to sit on a shelf. I tried looking up bakeries that mill their own flour on site, but only came up with one place, in England. I'm sure there are other, less web-savvy operations out there--if you come across one, please let me know!! This article, The Oil We Eat, includes a deeper look at the cost of large-scale processing of staple grains.

At Kings Valley Gardens, the rule is to make about 10 loaves in one go and freeze them. We used a John Robbin's recipe, "Ocean's Bombs of Love Bread", from May All Be Fed, and an unusual kneading process. I'll post the recipe as soon as I can get my hands on a copy of the book...

1 comment:

Derek said...

good thing we did not try that @ work.