Wheat Nerds and Scientists Join Forces To Build A Better Bread
Wired—August 4, 2017
A FEW DAYS ago, in the middle of a field, Dawn Woodward and Jeff Yankellow presented me with a whole-wheat croissant, the thought of which would normally make me wretch. That pastry carried a pedigree, though. I was in Washington’s fertile Skagit Valley at the Grain Gathering, a conclave of 250 of the best bakers, millers, grain scientists, and industry types from the United States, Canada, and five other countries. Woodward, a baker at Evelyn’s Crackers bakery, and Yankellow, of King Arthur Flour, would have been fools to try to pull a fast one on this crowd.
As someone who’s lived in France for 10 years and written about food for 15—and is cognizant of the bile likely to appear in the comment section at the bottom of this page—I will say this anyway: This pastry stood shoulder-to-shoulder with top-flight Parisian croissants.
Like me, legions of people are averse to whole-grain anything. Experts attending the Grain Gathering and their acolytes share that opinion, but they strive to make such foods so delicious that you might need to reconsider. Backing it up with a ton of lab and kitchen legwork, and taking into account the viability of everyone who deals with the grains, from the field to your table, the best minds in the whole grain field want to sell the masses on flavor.
Read the whole story here in WIRED.
