The Climate Crisis: Part 2
A Story About Grain
This week we’re finishing the story about the Appalachian wheat crop failure that we began last week. You can read Part 1 here.
Bakers get attached to the grains and flours they work with. I think this is because there is such a sense of wonder about the baking process that never fully goes away, despite years or decades of experience. To be able to take flour, water, salt, and yeast and turn them into a lofty loaf of bread still feels a bit like a magic trick to me. One of the reasons I love working with whole grains is that it’s so easy to visualize how each tiny little grain was once one of many on a wheat head, and before long I’m picturing a field of wheat rustling in the wind and glistening in the sun. All this is to say that bakers get attached to wheat, I get attached to wheat, and just like how naming a kitten turns it from a stray animal into a family pet, naming a wheat varietal makes it feel like a member of a bakery family.
When we first learned that the crop of Appalachian wheat we were excited to get our hands on was destroyed, it felt like a personal loss. Everyone knows that mycotoxins are always a risk, but no one thinks they will affect their grain. But after a few days of sadness, it was time to pick ourselves up and find a solution.
The first step was to ask our farmer how long until the next crop would be ready. Unsurprisingly, the response was one year. Although it was almost time to sow the new wheat so it could overwinter, the next harvest wouldn’t be ready until August of 2026. Mauricio and I are firm believers in using our baked goods to represent the current state of grain in an honest and open way. Still, we didn’t want to wait a whole year to have our famous conchas on the menu once again. So, it was on to step two.
Next, we wondered if we could source some Appalachian wheat from another farmer who perhaps had been a bit luckier. But then we remembered the difficulty of finding our original source of Appalachian wheat not long ago. It’s a recently developed varietal that was bred at NC State University in 2009 specifically to thrive in the damp climate of the east coast. Although it’s popular among bakers, many farmers prefer to grow older varietals with a longer history. When we first sought out Appalachian wheat, we were only able to locate two farmers that grew it, and only one farmer was able to sell us the whole wheat berries. That’s because the machine that cleans the wheat berries costs upwards of forty thousand dollars, and many farmers would rather just mill the wheat into flour and then sift it as the final cleaning step. Nervously, we considered putting out a new call for our beloved Appalachian wheat and seeing if any other farmers might miraculously have some available. But then, we had a key realization.
We realized that maybe the bright side of our wheat conundrum was that we had an opportunity to try something new. Since we’d moved farther north, our definition of “local” wheat had changed a bit. Maybe this was an opportunity to get to know the new landscape we were in and to familiarize ourselves with the new-to-us varietals grown in Vermont. We knew we wanted to buy single-varietal whole wheat berries that were moderately high in protein and suitable for bread making. We figured they must exist, and all we had to do was find them.
A thorough Google search turned up exactly two local grain farms that sold whole wheat berries. I excitedly reached out to the one that specialized in wholesale, only to learn that they no longer sell wheat berries in 50lb bags. That left just one farm: Gingue Family Farm in Waterford, Vermont. They were two hours north of us, and they only sold one varietal of wheat called Warthog, a hard red winter wheat which we had never worked with before. But, their farm store was open, and they had whole berries in stock, so we figured it was worth a shot.
One of the things that’s nerve-wracking about baking bread is days of preparation go into it, but one can’t be certain the recipe will work until it’s out of the oven. We said a few prayers to the bread spirits, and we took a leap. Our excitement and curiosity about this new varietal was offset by the knowledge that if it didn’t work, we’d be back to square one. We were very nervous, but then… it worked! The bread rose, and the oven spring was perfect! The flavor was different, the color was different, and the texture was different, but they were still our conchas, and they were still made in a manner that told a story about the importance of wheat. We got lucky.
I think the moral of this story is just how much the nature of grain is beyond our control. A farmer can do everything right but still have their crop ruined by untimely rain. A baker can take a leap of faith and hope for the best, and sometimes things work out. A Warthog concha is not what Mauricio and I originally had in mind, but it’s deliciously different, and it’s a real way to tell a real story about grain.
The conchas were delicious!