Bread

I came across Don Wilder in the grocery store years ago.

"I bake beans, you know."

That explained a lot. Don Wilder was a nice guy. Solid, honest (as far as I know), and frugal. He once bought a house in Brattleboro for around $6,000 and when he paid for it at the closing he put three bags of coins on the table. It took the Realtor and the lawyers three hours to count it at least twice. It was all there, though, to the penny.

Don Wilder baked beans.

I, on the other hand, like to bake bread. Not enough to make it a business, but a loaf or two at a time is rather enjoyable. It's not a big deal, it can be simple or complex, but it's always good. And once you get used to a substantial slice of bread a lot of the commercial bread just doesn't cut it anymore.

This is not about gluten. I actually add gluten to my bread. That's what makes it rise, after all, and with the seeds and dried fruit I sometimes add, it needs the extra gluten to push it up and hold it until it bakes.

Another thing, and I'm not a purist, but if you read the list of ingredients on almost any baked good you'll see stuff that will never be in your own kitchen. You'd be amazed at what goes into a tortilla, for instance, a simple peasant food. Pull a package off the shelf sometime and see what goes into those things. Then check out the sell by date. Those babies have a shelf life.

So I've been quite smug about making our bread. All basic ingredients and I know what's in it. But then came the story that wheat farmers spray the wheat with Roundup before harvesting to help it dry out. This story has been going around for a while. So I wrote to King Arthur Flour and asked them what the hell.

In their response they acknowledged that in very rare cases "glyphosate" might be applied as a last ditch measure to save a crop in an unusually wet year since it acts as a drying agent. If that were to happen, it would be a week or so before the actual harvest and any residue would only be on the outside of the grain which would be cleaned off during harvesting. But the cost is so prohibitive it would be extremely rare for this to happen. King Arthur stays in close contact with their growers and know of no instance where this has been used in any of the wheat they buy.

It annoyed me a bit that they refused to use the word Roundup and called it glyphosate instead. Even if they keep their wheat pure, what about other places? The word glyphosate in a list of ingredients looks a lot less hazardous than Roundup.

Anyway. I now spend the extra for King Arthur Flour, just in case.

Used to be food that came from a factory was suspect. 

Now we can't even be sure of the raw ingredients.