I hate to waste food. Even bad food.

 

That’s how a loaf of bread made with more ingredients that I can count on both hands worked its way into the two photographs below, illustrating quotes that get at, with more folk wit and elan than I could wring from a slice of milk-soaked bread, why you should avoid processed, or “white,” bread.

The mixed media, faux egg-colored (or it the color meant to conjure butter?) loaf of bread that I sacrificed to art came into my possession this October, during a weekend get-a-way with my husband. Destination: My family’s remote Appalachian cabin. For our three-day excursion, our car was packed with provisions aplenty: the essential coffee and cream; savory hand-held pies from Proper Pie; bacon from Belmont Butchery; my own prepared greens; and raw milk cheddar cheese as well as fresh cider, apples, and eggs from Apple Tree Market, a market outside of Winchester, en route to our cabin. But, when we were nearly at the cabin, I realized I forgot to pack one crucial foodstuff: bread. In a panic—how could we have bacon and eggs for breakfast without toast?—we resigned ourselves to picking up a lesser-of-evils loaf at the nearest place to get bread: a locally owned gas station and quickie mart combo.

 

Even before our week-end away this autumn, I’d been thinking of using the bread quotes for a New Year’s Resolution blog posting—to make an “official” declaration to commit to doing something I’ve already been doing, mostly: to eat bread made with just grain, water, yeast, and salt. Period. (Except on occasion butter or eggs, which have a place in traditional, enriched breads or pastries, such as challah bread or croissants.)

 

Ideally, the four-ingredient bread will also be a sourdough bread baked in a wood-fired oven. And better yet, bread made with stone-ground flour. And best of all, bread made with grain that’s grown and milled locally, so that I know I’m contributing to the maintenance of a working agricultural landscape and food economy where I live.

 

As if their beautiful, hand-crafted appearance and superior texture and flavor aren’t reasons enough to resolve to eat sourdough, or levain, breads, increasingly it seems modern science is uncovering that food made using traditional methods has numerous health benefits. As relayed by Barbara Griggs in her story, “The Rise and Rise of Sourdough Bread,” published last August in The Guardian, sourdough bread, versus commercial bread, has more nutritional value, produces lower surges in blood sugar (important for diabetics), and often can be eaten by people with gluten-intolerance.

 

An additional attribute of sourdough bread, which isn’t discussed in the Guardian story, is its excellent keeping quality. The defenders of modern processed breads made with preservatives will argue that if made without preservatives, bread would stale and mold quickly. That’s true—relative to the type of loaves in question. What’s not being said is that if made with a sourdough starter, bread does not need added preservatives to keep. As explained by food scientist Harold McGee in his seminal On Food and Cooking, “The bacteria [in sourdough breads] somehow delay starch retrogradation and staling, and the acids they produce make the bread resistant to spoilage microbes: so sourdough breads are especially flavorful and keep well.”

 

So, when making the case for sourdough bread to your friends and family, you can say that not only is it the healthier choice, it’s also the practical choice.

 

Why bother to buy bread baked in a wood-fired oven? You get the same health benefits of sourdough bread whether it is baked in a modern electric oven or a wood-fired oven. For me, the added subtle flavor, allure of the tradition, respect for the skill required, and the rustic, bien cuit effect are sufficient reasons. But I know that some of you are guided more by practical factors than romance and sensual pleasure. For you, I pondered the effect of wood smoke on the bread. Is there anything else it might do?

 

And then came the notion. Based on reading I’ve done about smoked meats, I am aware of the preservative effect of smoke on the surface of foods (some of the compounds in smoke kill or repress the growth of microbes). Could the smoke produced in wood-fired ovens produce the same effect in bread?

 

Who better to ask, to make sure my idea was not complete guff and nonsense, than Harold McGee. In an email reply to my request to entertain my (harebrained?) idea, he wrote, “I think you probably do end up with antimicrobials on the surface of wood-oven-baked bread, though I doubt that they penetrate any further, and bread generally molds on moist cut surfaces rather than the dry crust.” That means, I mused, that the preservative action of smoke on bread is short lived indeed—and the more irresistible the loaf, the shorter lived. As with smoked meats, once cut and exposed to air, the interior would no longer be protected. But then, you have the wonderful keeping qualities of the sourdough bread itself to help keep the interior from staling. It’s a win-win.

 

Tips for storing and enjoying sourdough bread:

• Do not store in the refrigerator.
• Store in a paper bag, two layers for extra measure, tightly sealed for the first three or four days.
• When the bread starts to stale, move it to a plastic bag.
• To resuscitate bread that has become a little stale, or bread that’s been frozen, spritz generously with water on all surfaces before heating in a preheated 350°F oven.
• My source for sourdough, wood-fire-oven-baked bread in Richmond is Sub Rosa Bakery.