Features
Bringing in the sheaves
Before I refer back to Ehrefried Pfeiffer’s ‘Does bread nourish?’, I want to draw your attention to cereal production in Ireland and I wonder who can answer the following questions. How much cereal is produced in Ireland for direct human consumption? What quantity of the following cereals is produced for direct human consumption? Wheat (suitable to bake bread with)? Oats (suitable for porridge and oat flakes)? Barley (once the staple diet of the Romans, now only consumed as beer or whiskey...) Rye (in some parts it was grown for thatch and poitin...) continental people bake bread with it. And it grows quite well here.
In case you think your cornflakes are produced in Ireland, I can inform you not one flake of it is grown in Ireland, and the same applies to your rice crispies.
Lost Skills
Do you know, there is a huge number of dairy farmers who buy their milk in the shop for €1 – the same milk they sell to the creamery for €0.17 - 0.20 a litre, but they don’t trust their own milk in the bulk tank. Or the grain from the combine which will sell for around €80 – and buy back the same stuff with a bit of molasses added for around €300 – and this after purchasing seed, fertilizers and sprays from the creameries. These are hard bits to get your head around.
Are we only involved in trying to spin the economic wheel faster and faster until it flies off for good? Is there anyone using their own grain to bake? Or making flakes for muesli? Or anything? Brewing beer with your barley, or doing something with rye? Do people at least grow their own spuds and veggies? Or are they only good, when they are presented in a supermarket in some kind of plastic and you pay a steep price for them? Have we completely lost our freedom to grow and consume what we produce due to our addiction to image and presentation and loss of taste? Or have we lost only the skills and varieties?
Trial Varieties
I can tell you that I baked bread from winter wheat I grew in county Meath, cut with a scythe and put in to sheaves. Thanks to all who assisted. This was a trial to see what can be achieved or not.
The wheat seed for this trial I imported from a biodynamic seed-breeder in Switzerland, Peter Kunze (http://gz.peterkunz.ch/index.php?article_id=222). I imported the following varieties: Winterweizen ASZITA (winter wheat), Winterweizen LAURIN, Winterweizen SCARO, and also Rye Conduct and Spelt Oberkulmer. They are all certified organic seeds. These varieties are grown on two different farms, one organic/biodynamic and one a “minimal input conventional farm in county Meath”.
I think we also have to make the benefits of biodynamic seed-breeding available to our conventional farming colleagues, and what better way than when they can see and taste the difference? All three wheat varieties are from Biodynamic Seed breeding with good baking quality. But will this quality hold up under Irish conditions? This is the real test!
Weather Dependent
Because we have a problem in Ireland, it is the lack of sunshine at ripening time (June, July and August) which transfers in to wheat with low protein and poor baking quality. And this season was bad, actually very bad. I baked so far twice and I am happy enough and can’t wait to get the other two varieties in order to compare and maybe mix them (they are later maturing than ASZITA).
I also have over thirty spring-wheat varieties in trial plots and hope to get some indications about their suitability for baking. As I indicated in the last article I am not interested in your “large white air bubble trap” or should I say the art of selling air in a crust? It is a gimmick and even if organic is written on it, you are not getting nourishing bread!
I bake with back-ferment only, which gives a bread which you can cut a week after baking and it will keep for another week without going stale (try this with your ordinary bread)! It hardly ever lasts as long as this in my home as it gets eaten!
Food Security
So, I am optimistic that it is possible to produce wheat suitable for baking, even under difficult Irish conditions. I do not know if the wheat out of your neighbours combine will bake, but try it and let me know how you got on. Also see if you can answer the questions from the beginning - how much cereal is produced in Ireland for direct human consumption? This would make interesting reading for our food security and also highlight the question of seed availability, but this is a different slice of bread.
Sorry, too many urgent questions – will go back to E. Pfeiffer in the next issue.
Gillian Westbrook has been appointed to the new position of
General Manager with IOFGA. Coming from a background in the regulatory area...
