staples

This week, I wrote a free-wheeling exploration of everything that happens in order to put bread on your table, starting with the sowing of wheat in the field. It’s online and free to read over at The Prepared (which also happens to be my favorite newsletter).

Something that really struck me as I put this issue together: the artisanal and the industrial are inseparable in our food system. Every artisanal bakery today still relies on flour (and sugar, dairy, and eggs) from industrial-scale operations – there’s just no other way to keep up with the demands of a consumer society. One way to react to this is to throw our hands up and say that artisanal production today is just a fantasy, Marie Antoinette playing at being a baker. But another might be to ask whether we can move the model up the supply chain. Artisan bakers appeared in the US before artisanal mills. For artisan mills to become more common, they needed the market of bakeries to sell to, and for someone to get into the artisanal manufacture of small stone mills…

And here are some other things I’ve written about bread and baking. When I first sent the pieces below, there were many fewer subscribers to this newsletter, and the Substack ecosystem was much smaller than it is now.

I visited Balthazar bakery, probably the best big bakery in New York. I also wrote about Rover Bagel, probably the best tiny bagel bakery in Maine. Wheat flour goes into cakes as well as breads – including that staple of neighborhood bakeries in Singapore, the pandan chiffon. It also goes into my favorite pastry, the kouign amann. And finally, a chat with Jeffrey Hamelman, long-time head baker at King Arthur Flour, author of the classic baking text book, Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes, bread-fueled philosopher and all-round mensch.

A very happy thanksgiving to my American readers. There is much to dislike about the origins of the holiday, but companionship is worth celebrating in itself.