Finding all things whole.
If you had told me four years ago that by 2020, I would have devoted my time/brain power/waistline to anything and everything about flour and grains (outside of eating things made with them), I would’ve said you’re nuts.
But now I care. I care a lot.
Before I go further, I want to make one thing clear: I’m not interested in telling you what you should or should not be eating. We all make our eating choices, choices based on multiple and individual factors (I’ll leave all of that to those who study food policy and food justice, and I shall tip my hat to all of you, b/c that is some intense work). What I am interested in telling you is that you’ve been missing out. And that your parents, and your grandparents have been missing out. And you don’t even know how, where, why, or even what.
What you’re missing out on is flavour. And just as importantly, you’re missing out on how to best harness that flavour.
I fell into this rabbit hole four years ago on a trip to Toronto, while visiting my friend Naomi. Naomi had told me of her friend Dawn Woodward’s baked goods on multiple occasions, specifically that everything she baked was made of grains grown in Ontario, and all of them used whole grain flours.
I appreciated the idea behind this kind of baking: to use locally sourced and produced grains and flours, to show them off as it were. But the taste memory part of my brain conjured up images of dense breads, sawdust cookies, and off-tasting flours.
When we got to Dawn’s table at the farmers market, it looked like what you would expect: cookies and squares dominated, bags of handmade crackers, a few cake slices. Interestingly, each baked good had a sign in front of it detailing not only the price, but also the variety of grain used in it. Some of the names of the grains were even vaguely familiar, having seen them used in breads at farmers markets where I lived. Red Fife was used in an applesauce spice cake, with a maple glaze. It was also in the butter tarts that were filled with maple syrup instead of the usual brown sugar. The chocolate cookies were made with rye, and the brownies spiced with cardamom.
It was that last one that made me open my wallet, thinking it would go well with the coffee I would eventually be drinking as soon I could locate some.
And then I had a bite.
It was a reverse Proustian moment. There were no memories of things past, no grandmothers with madeleines and tea, let alone any positive memories of whole wheat baked goods. If anything, all I could think about was how delicious this was, how much I wanted more, and what else I needed to buy.
“What have I been missing out on all this time,” I thought. How many combinations of flavour and texture have I not had access to as an eater, as a baker, as someone who bakes for sustenance and as a form of affection? How many other ways could I have said I love you to someone via baked goods? How many experiences and memories was I robbed of? How many of these experiences had we, as a population, has been given culinary short shrift?
And that’s when the rabbit hole got deeper. That’s when the eater took a seat, and the journalist started asking questions. Why doesn’t everyone know how to bake like this? Why is white flour the norm, on grocery store shelves, in pastry cases, in bakeries? Where is the knowledge that makes this kind of eating accessible, normal, and as tasty as possible? Has it been lost?
What has followed over the past few years has been more than I ever imagined could come from a brownie bite. Research trips that took me from rural Washington to Montreal to Los Angeles to New York. Home baking efforts and recipe testing of multiple cakes, breads, cookies. Long-distance phone calls discussing everything single topic imaginable related to anything and everything grain. Countless conversations about not just eating and growing grains, but who gets to eat and grow it, who gets to collect, assess, and transmit the necessary information that ensures that everyone, anyone, has access to eating something as basic and fundamental as grains, and in their simplest state: whole.
Recently, I was asked by the gang at Whetstone to talk about all of this on their podcast, Point of Origin. It was a real gift and a privilege to get to talk about all of this. Because like those whole grain baked goods of old, talking about food outside of recipes and travel, can often be dry and dusty. if not borderline unpalatable. But Point of Origin avoids those pitfalls in its work, and I was glad to be a part of that for their latest episode. You can listen to the episode here, as well as peruse links to some of the people featured in the podcast.
There is so much more to say, to share, to bake, and to taste. I’m a home baker who wants to eat well, who wants to eat delicious things. I’m a writer and journalist who wants to know the story of how we got here. How we got to ease of access to white flour, and lost access to whole grain flours. What did we gain as a society in having such a thing so easily stocked on shelves, and what did we lose: culinarily, agriculturally, culturally, economically, ecologically. All of it.