Bread Work

& other food labors

Dear Bread Fans,

I’m taking a break from writing about my sandwich obsession — but I have to tell you about a few recent wonders:

1. Beef on weck in Buffalo!!!! Salty caraway topped roll, fresh horseradish, delight.

2. Chicken with bacon, fig and hot honey on a ciabatta roll.

3. Homegrown tomato on Finnish rye I bought from The Placid Baker because it is TOO HOT to bake, and because this loaf is fantastic.

Beyond the stunning possibilities of putting things between bread, I marvel at the labors of food, not just because of the recent holiday, but often as I can. With each recall, I note to myself that we can never pay enough mind to all the people who are inside of our food.

Saturday morning, I loved watching the team work at Naughter’s, my favorite diner in town. We sat at the counter, right across from the grill, and seeing how the cooks coordinated orders as they got busy, was better than a movie. I was so transfixed I didn’t even recognize the pancake batter! What, I thought, as he ladled rounds of something onto the grill, is that? Once he flipped the curious stuff, I saw it was pancakes. Pancakes — what I only think of as home food.

Watching the host and servers announce their presence as they walked behind the cooks, seeing them combine their energies to feed us, was a balm. When do you get to observe cooperation?

I’m not waxing rhapsodic about restaurant work, the pace of which is intense. When I was young, I loved the bursts of demands that lasted an hour or a whole shift. I hummed with the charge of working. Frying 20 baskets of popcorn shrimp, or keeping a dining room flowing, was a thrill. It was also awful, and I’m lucky I only had to quit one waitressing job. I salute everyone who earns their keep in restaurants and hospitality, & I’m grateful for the activists working to make reasonable work environments in food service.

I also salute the many people who work with grains. I doubt many farmers, millers or bakers took Monday off! Or maltsters or brewers — food and beverage production doesn’t honor holidays. I remain in awe of the people I met as I researched my first book, The New Bread Basket — which is on sale for half price right now at Chelsea Green. Other grainy titles also on sale are Richard Miscovich’s cookbook From the Wood Fired Oven, and the late Jack Lazor’s Organic Grain Grower.

My next book will look at grain work from another angle. Through the lives of particular bakers, I’m exploring ideas about who should make our daily bread, which is generally women in the home and men in public. I’ll be digging into the history of bakery unions, and contemporary practices of making bakeries good workplaces. I’ll profile a few mighty women running bakeries, both brick and mortar shops and cottage bakeries. I’m still at the proposal stage, but feeling ready to start submitting this to agents.

I’ll close with a some pictures to visualize grain labors. First is my neighbor Howard Stoner, who helped me plant and harvest wheat lots of years ago in my backyard. He’s still growing some in his backyard, and a while back we snipped the heads off with scissors. I helped him thresh on Sunday, and thought you’d enjoy seeing his methods!

Howard uses a chipper mower to shake the kernels from the grain heads, and then we push the chaff over a chicken wire mesh to sieve out the grains. Next is multiple times of running the grain and chaff in front of a fan/in a breeze to further separate them.

Of course, most threshing happens at a different scale. Organic grain farmers Thor Oechsner and Dan Gladstone have been beyond helpful in showing me all parts of the grain farming process. Below is a picture of Dan running the combine — which is a combined thresher and harvester — over a field of wheat in July.

At Thor Oechsner & Rachel Lodder’s wedding, the combine was put to a very different use, to COMBINE this excellent couple!

Clockwise: combine, couple & banner; Wide Awake Bakery Farm-a-weddon bread; more banner; my husband and I in golf pants; flowers; and last but not least, the grain bin bar heading home to Valley Malt - look for it later this month at the Big E!

Yours, Amy

PS: Ellie and I are hosting a free remote conversation about Corn Kvass/ Aluá de Milho on Friday 9/8 at noon EST, and we hope you can join us — sign up here. A week later, we have another corn workshop, part of the Sanctuary for Independent Media’s Story Harvest.

Aluá de Milho is a fermented drink prepared from corn, traditionally used in ceremonies and celebrations in Brazil. There is not a single history of this beverage because it is a drink that travels through evolving cultures, embracing and adapting to local ingredients. It’s similar to the process of making other grain-based and bread kvass.

PPS: I can’t resist sharing this short film about Howard!