Friday Bread Basket 4/26/24
Basket's back
At last, the Wordloaf Friday Bread Basket, a weekly roundup of links and items relating to bread, baking, and grain, is back. The basket is so full from my long absence that I am never going to get through the backlog of items I have, but I’m going to keep the items a little shorter than usual to cram a few more in each week, at least for awhile.
But first, quickly: I have a new t-shirt design in the works, for all the millers out there:
If you are interested in one, comment on the Instagram post or here, and stay tuned for the preorder sale announcement here. I’ll also be reordering my “How Much Bread a Human Eats” shirts (possibly in a new color) at the same time, in case you wanted one of those and missed out last time. (Both shirts will be available in unisex and women’s cuts.)
I can’t keep both in stock indefinitely, so if you are interested in either, be sure to make a purchase during the preorder period.
For the LA Times,
talked to bakers—including Arturo Enciso and Ana Belén Salatino of Long Beach’s Gusto Bread and friend of Wordloaf —about the incorporation of masa harina in their pastries and breads:Panadera and recipe writer Teresa Finney, from At Heart Panadería in Atlanta, is one such pastry chef whose use of masa harina in the world of desserts widens the scope of imagination and flavor. Rooted in nostalgia and longing for family tamaleada traditions with her grandparents, she approaches masa in pastry with a sense of play. “My thought process for using masa harina in a baked good is ‘Let’s just see if this works’, then going from there,” Finney said. “I’ve used it in cakes, pie dough, cookies and even as the main thickener in a custard.”
Finney says depending on how much is used, the flavor of masa harina has a “kinda smoky, earthy, corn flavor [that] can either just be a pleasant background flavor, or it can really dominate.” She adds that in pastry because so much butter is used, masa harina “compliments the butter flavor nicely.”
Gustavo Arellano writes at the New Yorker on the joys of flour tortillas, which don’t deserve their bad (w)rap:
The most popular brands—Mission and Calidad, subsidiaries of Gruma, the largest tortilla company in the world—too often stick on comales and turn into clammy muck once they enter your mouth. They taste like the industrial-scale process from which they come: metallic, rushed, with no soul. If you live or travel in the borderlands, though, you quickly learn that great flour tortillas do exist, and can be revelatory. Like good corn tortillas in Mexico, Southwestern flour tortillas vary from state to state. They are products of the long-standing Mexican-American communities who have proudly made and eaten them despite scorn from all sides. They are, in that sense, the Mexicans of Mexican food.
Wordloaf fave Ruby Tandoh, again at The New Yorker, on the heroism of buckwheat flour in baking:
Increasingly, I want to slip buckwheat into everything, though it has occasionally punished my enthusiasm: it has no gluten, which means it doesn’t have the elastic, lissom potential that wheat does. Too much buckwheat and things won’t rise—a loaf cake will end up with the funk and density of a cuboid Scandinavian rye. The smartest deployment, rather, is with dairy. In this case you need the whole buckwheat groats. Once roasted, you can infuse them into just about any cream or custard and get a concentrated, malt-like flavor. I’ve been telling friends that I dream about opening an ice-cream shop someday, and when they ask what flavors I’m going to make all I can think to say is buckwheat ice cream, assembled into a sundae with cream and toasted nibs sprinkled on top.
I just learned all about sumalak, a Nowruz (Persian New Year) pudding made by grinding sprouted wheat berries to a paste and cooking it long and slow until it caramelizes:
The recipe may vary from region to region, but the gist is simple. The star ingredient in sumalak is sprouted wheat grains, which give the porridge its unique sweet taste. Women place the wheat in water until it begins to sprout, then crush it into a paste and mix it again with water until a whitish liquid oozes from the grains. They then toss the mixture into a cauldron with water, boiling oil, and flour, stirring for several hours. In some rituals, seven stones are placed in the pot to keep the paste from burning. When the sumalak is finally ready, it’s served warm to friends and family, enjoyed with fresh bread and a pot of tea.
A Curious Cook’s
on why saltless Tuscan bread is not worth its (lack of) salt:There’s a recipe for panzanella further down, but let me just talk about this bread a bit more first. Everyone else in Italy calls it ‘Pane Toscano’, literally ‘Tuscan Bread’. In Tuscany itself they call it ‘Pane Sciocco’ - sciocco meaning ‘without salt’. Wonderfully, sciocco is also a synonym for 'stupid'. Unless you’ve eaten this specific loaf, you’ve probably never eaten unsalted bread, nobody else makes it, and for good reason. Salt plays a few critical roles in the process of bread making, beyond simply making it taste nice.
For Eater, Camila Merino spoke with several owners of the new wave of bakeries in Puerto Rico utilizing local ingredients and dealing with the challenges of getting quality ones that have to come from beyond the island:
Though bakers’ hearts lie in French boulangeries and Italian pasticcerias, they have to deal with sourcing ingredients in Puerto Rico. As a commonwealth of the United States, Puerto Rico imports over 80 percent of its food. Due to the Marine Merchant Act of 1920, also known as the Jones Act, goods have to be delivered to the island on U.S. flagged ships, causing hefty markups and limiting supply.
When she set out to bake bread commercially, Laborde tried ineffectively to get a local Dawn Foods sales rep to bring King Arthur’s organic flours to the island.
“I think the lady didn’t like me from the get-go. She kept saying that flour goes bad quickly and is expensive, that nobody would buy it,” Laborde says. “I told her I’d buy the entire pallet. Maybe she didn’t believe me.”
That’s it for this week’s bread basket. It’s good to be back, have a peaceful weekend everyone.
—Andrew
As always, thanks for the links! The sumalak looks similar to a traditional New Mexico Lenten dish, panocha--a sweet pudding made with sprouted wheat flour.
I’m interested in pre ordering one of the miller tshirt.