A big step for mankind and local consumers alike was taken last month in a small farmhouse. With the sun streaming through the windows on the bills of feed caps, a delicate negotiation was taking place between two factions whose strange coupling could affect our daily diets and their effects on the wider world.
It was a freakish coupling, like Radiohead and the USC marching band performing together. In one corner indie rock, in the other, university bowl game musician. In the farmhouse were indie bakers and their opposites, farmers who do business on a very large scale.
The negotiation table was strewn with pieces of bread and crackers and around 10 people discussed their hopes and fears about growing wheat in the Valley. Spoilage, mold, winter wheat vs. summer wheat and how much flour, exactly, are the bakers currently buying from Canada now? The three bakers said that they would buy all of their wheat locally if the farmers would grow it for them. Why transport it when we can grow it right here? Why not keep the money in the Valley? Why not create a new market?
There in the sun-streamed room, a farmer from Easthampton with a fresh row of stitches pointed his finger at the owner of a bakery in Northampton and said, "Well, how much flour do you guys want?"
Jonathan Stevens, one of the owners of the bakery, Hungry Ghost, stood up and replied, "Tons and tons!"
In that brief moment, after more than two years of trial wheat growing, it was decided that, yes,?wheat would be grown by at least one major player in the Valley. No surveys, no marketing consultants, no graft. Just buyers and sellers in a room together.
If you've been playing along with the Little Red Hen Project or the new grain CSA (Community Supported Agriculture farm) being developed in Amherst, you're familiar with area efforts to grow grain. If you're really paying attention or are a 4H club member, you know that rye is already used by farmers as a cover crop, and as you also know, a cover crop is used in between plantings to provide nitrogen to the soil. The fact that what has been used as a cover and then perhaps turned into animal feed can now be sold as a commodity is nothing short of a revelation.
Back in the 1600s, when it's said that Old Man Puffer ground flour from local wheat at a water-powered mill in Amherst, New Englanders farmed wheat. Getting back to those roots is involving the New England Farm Institute and three bakeries, Hungry Ghost of Northampton, El Jardin of South Deerfield and Wheatberry Bakery and Cafe of Amherst as well as a group of established farmers, several of whom participated in the trial by growing some grain, some more successfully than others. Spelt, oat and rye are fine for crackers but they don't hold a candle to wheat, which has the gluten that makes bread rise. There's a reason that wheat production moved to the Midwest: drier weather than New England's is preferable. But many are hopeful that wheat growing in Vermont and New York can be duplicated in Western Massachusetts.
"I want to begin baking bread with local grains," says Neftali Duran, the owner of El Jardin. This baker wholesales his sourdough bread to area restaurants and stores. He says that parents making sandwiches and other customers require more than rye and spelt. Although Neftali is already experimenting with some of our local grain, he looks forward to getting his hands on some wheat for his multi-grain loaves. "Kids like the puffy bread," he says.
No one knows or will commit to estimating how long it will take to produce a harvest that can provide a consistent source of wheat to make puffy bread, but in the mean time there are crackers.
Eli Winograd has been with Hungry Ghost for around two years and makes crackers with a hybrid of wheat, rye and spelt. "I hope the wheat works out and that people will be satisfied with it. It irks me that our local bread costs more than our other bread," says a man so dedicated to baking that he called his friend Kiernan, who worked at the bakery, to learn about it. "He wanted to know everything," says Kiernan. "How hot to make the oven, how to make yeast, everything." Winograd joined the crew at Hungry Ghost almost two years ago. Before that he had no past to speak of. "I moved around a lot," he says.
Below is Winograd's formula for crackers. This is the most basic version. "It's based on Jonathan's matzoh recipe," he says, adding that one should be prepared for trial and error since the ingredients themselves are in a trial phase. His philosophy about bread is that you're only as good as your last loaf, or cracker: "I can't pin it down, but you're always reacting and you're using your brain and maybe failing but learning something for the next time."
Recipe: Local Grain Crackers
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups ground wheat/rye hybrid with 65 percent hydration (filtered water, almost 2/3 of grain content)
1/4 teaspoon sea/kosher salt
Equipment
Spray bottle, baking sheet
Directions
Mix and roll out dough, getting it as thin as possible.
Place on an oiled baking sheet, salt liberally and spray with water bottle for sheen.
Bake in a hot oven (around 350 degrees) for between 15 and 20 minutes until crisp.
Break by hand and serve.
Market News
Local spelt and rye can be purchased at Wheatberry Bakery and Cafe in Amherst, which also has a local rye bread. At the Upinngil Farm in Gill, where wheat is grown, both wheatberries and ground wheat are for sale. Hungry Ghost is selling rye and wheat-and-rye crackers and in Haydenville, bakers incorporate wheat from Upinngil Farm in their Grainary Loaf.
Restaurant Buzz
The boys on the common at the center of Colrain are at it again in the old church that houses their restaurant and gallery. The not-so-common pair who opened Mike and Tony's Pizzeria at the Green Emporium late last fall have pledged to begin using local grain in their dough. Menu items, affordable, include regular pies, whole or by the slice, such as the Genzano Potato Pizza with rosemary and gorgonzola cheese as well as the Margarita and Sicilian Pizza. Mike and Tony's is open in winter on Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
