Great Harvest Bread -- An Anchorage delight

Anchorage has its share of excellent bakeries, among them Great Harvest Bread. It has the distinction of being a national franchise, with local owners Dirk Sisson and Barbara Hood bringing to fruition the high standards set across the country. Dirk spent an hour recently showing me around and describing the care and attention they pay to every aspect of their work.

Outside their bakery and store/cafe sits a bale of straw with pumpkins for the season. Inside, racks of the day's breads, and courteous staff people cutting samples to be topped with butter or honey greet customers.

Dirk and Barbara support local artists and writers, and this month their show focuses on intriguing photos by Bob Eastaugh and collages by Suzanne Dvorak.  

Bob Eastaugh photo.

Suzanne Dvorak collage.

Customers can get their breads or pastries to go, or relax in the cafe section.

Great Harvest bakes more than fifty types of bread and rolls, along with cookies, quick breads muffins, scones, pound cake, and more. Their home page lists what's fresh each day.

What makes Great Harvest unique? Besides their consistent high quality, and the great variety, their insistence on freshness adds depth to their food. They grind their own whole wheat flour fresh each day, using a hammermill set in one of the back rooms of the bakery. The wheat comes from Montana fields, blended to assure uniform performance from the grain in each batch. Dirk says that they grind only enough to use within a few days so that the oils in the kernels have no chance to grow stale or rancid.

Bins of white flour, and fresh-ground wheat flour ready for mixing. The copper pipes in the center of the bins of whole wheat flour draw away the heat created in the grinding process so that the flour stays cool enough for making dough.

Like most bakeries, even those featuring small-batch artisan loaves, Dirk uses both bakers' yeast, and his own sourdough, depending on the needs of the bread. The lower shelf of the cart holds his fermenting dough, each one marked to show where it is in the three-day process of developing as a sourdough.

This temperature probe is one of the most essential tools for good bread, Dirk says. Bread-making is a mix of science -- the exact proportions of flours, liquids, yeast, salt, sugars (Great Harvest uses small amounts of honey in their breads, in part to encourage the yeast to grow, and in part for flavor), and art -- every change in temperature of the room, moisture in the batch of flour and in the air, and a dozen other factors will change how the dough grows (develops). Dirk suggests using the temperature probe about five minutes before the estimated baking time is finished. There are various ideas about the temperature for a loaf of bread; if you are baking, check the recommendations in your recipe.

One interesting point was the order that Dirk uses to mix the dough. Because flours can vary so much in their moisture content, he measures the water first and puts that into the mixing tub. Then he adds about three-quarters of the flour specified in the recipe and begins to mix. Within a short while, he can tell by the way the dough is coming together whether it needs more flour. He adds the flour  slowly, to make sure that the dough doesn't end up too wet or dry. If the dough is a little "harder,"  than usual, he bakes it at a slightly lower temperature, but for about the same amount of time.

 Bakers test the loaves daily, and record  how long the bread was kneaded, how long the dough took to rise, how long the bread spent in the oven, and more. Standard, detailed measurements are described for each of the qualities that Great Harvest expects from its bread.

We talked for a while about the protein content of wheats. Very high-protein wheats are often considered the best for breads, but they may not have as much taste, or may be missing other desirable qualities. Mills often blend flours so that a lower-protein tastier grain combined with a higher-protein wheat gives the baker the optimum combination for reliably rising bread that is also delicious

Finished loaves cooling on racks.

Dirk Sisson and the beautiful breads that he and Barbara have been baking since 1994.

A densely-seeded loaf.

Knik Valley Wheat: Haibun

                                   Wheat flowering, Ben VanderWeele's farm, July 21, 2015.

                                                                                               

bread in hand                                                 

farmer resting from sowing

wheat for next year’s loaf                                                      

           

                                                                                               

            Knik Valley wheat fields – they are harvested by farmers from the Midwest, from the Netherlands, from temperate climates, who brought their seeds to plant in the subarctic shadow of Pioneer Peak. The Denaina Athabascan/Ahtna Indians who came a thousand years ago after the Yupik/Chupik people called the area Benteh (many lakes). They fished and hunted around Eklutna, Niteh, and their other villages for eight hundred years before the Russian Orthodox missionaries came looking for souls in 1840, and the American and European adventurers came seeking gold thirty years later. The Indians knew nothing of grains or bread until the Russians brought them Holy Communion and the Sourdoughs brought them fry-bread.

Saint Herman of Alaska, the first Russian Orthodox priest to stay in the state; he settled off Kodiak Island.

            The soil into which the Knik Valley wheat sinks its shallow roots is eolian – wind-blown, loess – dust particles from the rocks ground away by the glaciers. Two hundred and fifty million years ago the Mesozoic Era began, bringing dinosaurs, ferns, forests, the grassy ancestors of wheat, and the first mammals. Pangaea was breaking up. Late in the Mesozoic the tectonic plates were carrying the continents to their present places on the earth, pushing ocean floors up against the continental plates to build the Rockies, the Himalayas, the Alaska Range, and the Chugach mountains that frame the Knik River Valley. The earth is still restless today, pushing the mountains higher and reshaping the valleys.

            In those hundreds of millions of years, seas rose and fell, covering much of North America. The sea creatures died, settled into the dirt and detritus that collected underwater, and slowly packed together into rocks. When the ocean floor began crunching against the continental plates, the beds of bodies and sediments pushed up and shaped the mountains, mixed in with rocks spewed out from the hearts of volcanoes. In science-speak, “The Mesozoic lithologies, primarily marine sediments and volcanics, have been intensely metamorphosed, folded, and faulted and have been intruded by small to moderate-size igneous [rocks from the volcanoes] bodies.”  

                                          Knik Glacier.

               

            Then the glaciers arrived, covering and uncovering, and re-covering the river valleys, wearing the rocks into soils made of silt and sand. Shallow-rooted white spruce, large cottonwood trees, and balsam poplar forested the flat lands in the river valleys, with shrubs, wildflowers, and grasses on the slopes. The farmers who came in the early 1900s stripped the land of its trees, and sowed wheat into long straight rows stretching from their roads to the feet of the mountains. 

Ben VanderWeele's wheat, August 2, 2015, Knik Valley with Chugach Mountains in the distance. 

            Today winds blow off the Knik and Matanuska glaciers, lifting the soil made of ancient ocean lives from the bare fields in late winter and laying it down on forests to the south and west. The farmers must fertilize what’s left, and irrigate in the spring and summer to make up for the sparse rain. Sixteen inches in a good year, it falls in August and September when the grain should be drying for harvest. Even the nineteen hours of sunlight in June and July doesn’t warm the air enough to make up for the cooling winds off the glaciers and the nearby ocean. It’s not ideal for wheat, but the stubborn farmers grow it nonetheless.

BenVanderWeele's wheat -- the rows in the middle ground (wild grasses in the foreground). Snow on the Chugach Range. September 5, 2015.

heavy brown wheat heads

too wet to harvest this week

snow on the Chugach

today’s Communion

wheat rows in slanting light

of September dusk

                                   

                                        Ben VanderWeele in his wheat fields, July 21, 2015.




Ben VanderWeele photos by TW Carns.

Alaska State Fair, Saturday afternoon

                                                     

crowds running to cars

Ferris wheel turning beyond

gold wheat bent by rain

            The Ferris wheel is halfway to the top when the rain starts. I’m strapped into one of the chairs by myself, dangling, swinging, sulking as the wheel halts, listening to my stomach growl. I was too busy arguing with Dad about something dumb to eat lunch. Down below the carnies are letting people out, but we are just getting started. We’ll be here a long time. I’ll shrivel and float away from starvation probably.

            My hair is dripping down into my eyes, and I’m trying to keep my phone dry beneath my blue jacket. Some girls were screaming, but they must have worn out. The tinny organ carnival music rises up against the rain, up from the bright lights of the corndog vendors and ice cream stands. On the paths, people run to the exhibit halls and to their cars to get dry. Wimps. I am loving the rain. Not, but I can pretend I’m tough until the smell of fried dough drifts up all around me.

            The chair lingers at the top and I look out at our wheat fields on the other side of the road. The ripe golden heads bend beneath the wind’s strokes, beneath its voice, swaying in the lashings of rain. I watch them bowing in the afternoon gloom, wondering if we can finish the harvest. Dad sold most of it to a distillery and it would be cool to have some of the vodka.

            Dozens of quilts hang in the exhibit halls below. My mom’s is there, my aunt’s, Jannie who cuts my hair. Everyone around here quilts. They like the ones with a thousand little pieces that fit together like puzzles, like lives on a farm never fit together. I like the quilts with stories in them, the ones with the Knik River and Pioneer Peak, with the ravens and auroras. People are sentimental about their quilt patterns. Right now I’m thinking about the one with appliques of salmon on it that won the big purple Grand Champion ribbon.

            I can see the barn where the farmers and 4-H kids take their giant pumpkins and cabbages to be admired. My pet zucchini grew fat this year – twenty-five pounds, but all crookedy. No reason to even enter it. The summer was too hot for zukes, but perfect for the wheat. If it doesn’t go all soft, I’ll carve a vampire zucchini for Halloween.

            The rain lessens as the wheel lurches to the bottom. The Saturday afternoon crowd drifts back into the Midway, and the carnies beg them to toss the ball, throw the dart, bet on the racing rats (they’re really gerbils). The sun breaks through the clouds. Dad will be happy when he can run the combine through the wheat, happy when it’s already vodka, happy when he can worry about what kind to plant next year. Then he’ll forget about me.

            I head straight for the fried butter stand, already tasting that crispy brown batter, and feeling the hot butter running down my chin. Then I’ll head over to the big barn to watch the 4-H turkeys being auctioned off.     

too hot for huge squash

and no prize wheat at this Fair           

but fine crop of quilts

Creating Croissants at Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop

Sammy's birthday present was a class on making croissants and Danish pastries at Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop, He's just finished adding the blackberries and raspberries to a pan of cream-filled Danish pastries. 

The Danish pastries, hot from the oven. Note the ways in which they are ideal -- rich brown tones, a slight shine from the whole-egg glaze, lots and lots of flaky layers visible because they were layered and cut correctly, berries still whole and plump.

What's a delicious way to spend a Monday evening? Baking croissants and Danish pastries at Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop comes right at the top of the list. Ten people assembled on October 19 to learn the secrets of Anchorage's best croissants. Rachel Saul taught the class, with April and Lisa assisting. The pay-off, after three hours on our feet, was boxes full of croissants that we'd shaped and baked -- traditional, chocolate-filled, ham and cheese -- and Danish pastries with cream cheese or frangipane and berries.

A perfect chocolate croissant, with crisp egg-glazed crust, too many layers to count, and plenty of chocolate.

There are many magical treats wrapped in wheat flour. One of the most mysterious is the combination of a yeast dough and pure butter, layered together in a "laminated" pastry. It's also called Viennoiserie dough, and is rich with eggs and sugar.Croissants, Danish pastries (which in Denmark are called Viennese bread), and brioches are examples. All are made from a thin slab of butter, wrapped in dough, then folded and rolled, again and again, to make dozens of fine layers. When the pastries are baked, the water in the butter turns to steam and keeps the layers separate. The proteins in the flour and butter, and the egg glaze all combine to create the crisp brown crust.

April pouring drinks for us before class starts.

As we came into the warm bakery, April and Lisa handed us Fire Island aprons, and offered us foccacia, coffee, and drinks. Rachel gave us each a sheaf of recipes and notes, and led us into the back kitchen. We did every step needed for making croissants, from measuring the ingredients to mixing the dough, rolling it and laminating it with the butter, filling and shaping the pastries, baking them, and of course, eating them at the end. 

Rolling a croissant into the classic shape.


The most important thing to know about making croissants is that you are learning a technique for making layers of dough and butter. Butter melts at room temperature (and bakeries tend to be much warmer than most rooms), so the trick to keeping it layered with the dough rather than melting into it is to keep everything cold.

Mixing the dough with the industrial-strength machine.

• The dough gets mixed in two stages, beginning with egg yolks, flour (Fire Island uses a mix of organic all-purpose white flour and some whole wheat), water, and pre-ferment (a chunk of yeasted dough that has been rising for at least a day), and let this rest for twenty minutes. The resting (technical name, "autolyse," which means to take up water by itself) lets the flour soak up some of the water. 

• Add the yeast and salt, and mix thoroughly. Then add the sugar and butter, gradually. Continue mixing until the dough all looks the same.

Window pane test -- this dough has enough gluten development that it can be stretched thin to let the light through without tearing. It's ready to start working with.

• Continue mixing until you can take a piece of dough and stretch it very thin -- called the window pane test. That shows that the gluten is beginning to "develop," that is, to make the chains of gluten proteins that make wheat-based doughs so stretchy. The gluten chains will capture the carbon dioxide bubbles that the yeast is making as it eats the starches in the flours and turns them into sugars.

• Separate the dough (depending on how much you are making) into "pillows" -- somewhat rounded but flat pieces of dough. Cover them tightly with saran wrap or other flexible plastic and put into the freezer for about an hour. The essential steps that make the croissants so flaky mostly have to do with keeping the dough and the butter chilled. Take the pieces of dough out of the freezer and roll out into flat sheets about 4 millimeters (three-eighths of an inch) thick. Wrap and freeze again until solid. 

Slicing the  Plugra butter (very high in butter fat) for the butter layers in the croissants.

• Next, flatten the butter.

Rachel pointing out the thickness of the partially rolled butter. She sliced the butter thin, put it between two sheets of silicone, and used the "sheeter" machine to roll it out to 1/4 inch thick.

A rolling pin works too, and the workout saves you a trip to the gym.

 The 1/4 inch sheet of butter laid onto the dough.

Folding the dough over the butter for the first time.

• Put the layer of butter onto the sheet of dough, and fold it (instructions are here at traceysculinaryadventures.com   -- she has excellent photos and descriptions of the layering, folding, and rolling processes).

Rachel covering the dough with plastic to keep it from drying out, before putting it in the freezer.

• Once the first set of folding and layering is done, the dough goes into the freezer for an hour or so. 

Folding and running the dough through the sheeter -- we did this several times.

• When it comes out, it gets folded and turned and folded again. Then it goes back into the freezer for at least twenty minutes. When it comes out, it's ready to be rolled out, cut and shaped into croissants.   

Class members shaping classic croissants.

• At this point, it's time to pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. A website (traceysculinaryadventures.com) shows one way to cut and shape the croissants; the photos below show the Fire Island way. Rachel emphasized using a very sharp knife or pizza cutter, and taking care to keep the cut edges safe from being crimped or mushed together so that as the dough rises the layers stay separate and can puff up during proofing and baking. 

Partially trimmed dough, with the box of chocolate bars. The trimmings from the pastries, like the piece in front, get tossed with cinnamon and sugar and baked into monkey bread.

 Rachel measures and trims the sheet of dough before using a five-bladed cutter for the chocolate and ham and cheese croissants. Consistency is critical -- the customer (you and me) wants the same wonderful chocolate croissant every time.

The properly rolled chocolate croissant, with two chocolate bars in each one. The seam of the croissant goes flat against the tray (which is lined with parchment paper).

• Set the shaped croissants on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper leaving a couple of inches on all sides. Cover them with a sheet of plastic or plastic wrap, and set them to "proof" in a warm place for twenty to thirty minutes (that is, to rise -- they should get to be about twice the size they were when you first shaped them).

 Danish pastries filled, decorated, and ready to bake. The back two have a cream cheese filling topped with blackberries; the front two are filled with frangipane, a sweet almond mixture.

Into the oven -- note how far apart they are on the baking sheet, to make sure that they have maximum space to rise and brown.

• When you're ready to bake them brush the tops lightly with a pastry brush dipped into a beaten whole egg. Be sure to only brush the tops. If the egg gets onto the cut edges, it will seal them so that they don't spread apart to make the flaky high-puffed desirable croissant.

Finished croissants, ready to savor.

• Bake them for about nine minutes, then turn the pan around to make sure that they are baking evenly, and bake another nine minutes or until dark golden brown. 

Rachel showing the many-layered interiors, and the exteriors that flake onto the pan because the top layers baked just right.

For hours or to contact Fire Island, click here. They have the same hours (7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.) at both their South Addition location (1441 G Street) and their brand new Airport Heights location (16th and Logan, just off Lake Otis).

The new Fire Island on a rainy opening day.

The International Politics of Wheat -- a first glance

Wheat sheaf, La Grassa Pasta, Anchorage, Alaska.

One of the reasons that wheat can be endlessly interesting is that it is one of the world's three or four major food crops, and is constantly affected by events that seem very far removed. I came across an interesting set of side notes about wheat today that illustrated this well.  An article about the Svalbard international seed bank from the Washington Post re-published just recently in the Alaska Dispatch News mentioned that  for the first time some boxes of seeds were being withdrawn :

"But just seven years after the vault's steel doors first opened, admitting contributions from seed banks around the world into the frozen sanctuary, 130 of the boxes are being recalled.

They belong to the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, which until two years ago stored thousands of seeds in a vault in Aleppo, Syria, according to Reuters. The ICARDA center, like so many other important institutions in the civil war-ravaged nation, was displaced by the conflict, and, in the process, 325 boxes of duplicate seeds were sent to Svalbard for safekeeping. Now resettled in Beirut, the organization wants some of its samples back."

The ADN/Washington Post article links to a 2007 New Yorker article about the Svalbard seed bank that says, "During the United States-led invasion of Iraq, in March, 2003, the looting of Iraq’s national archeological museum received considerable attention, but almost no one noted that the country’s national seed bank was destroyed. The bank, in the town of Abu Ghraib, contained seeds of ancient varieties of wheat, lentils, chickpeas, and other crops that once grew in Mesopotamia. Fortunately, several Iraqi scientists had placed samples of the country’s most important crops in a cardboard box and sent them to an international seed bank in Aleppo, Syria. There they sit, on a shelf in a cold room, waiting for a time when Iraq is stable enough to store them again."

Experimental wheat being grown at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

So, rather than Iraq becoming stable enough to retrieve its samples and re-store them in Abu Ghraib [or elsewhere], Aleppo became so unstable that its scientists fled to Beirut in Lebanon (with its own not-so-distant history of war). Who knew, in 2007, that Syria, eight years later, would be deeply enmeshed in one of the worst of the civil wars in the Middle East? Luckily, some of the Syrian wheat seeds (but who knows about the Iraqi wheat?) were sent to Svalbard. Now the Syrian scientists apparently believe that it is a long time before they will be able to return to Aleppo, so they want to take back some of the Syrian seeds from Svalbard and begin experimenting with them in Lebanon. 

Do the seeds belong to the scientists who sent them to Svalbard? Or to the research facility in Syria? Or someone else? Keeping track of wheat's political life turns out to be at least as complex as trying to figure out the connections in the lives of the millions of microbes that make up the biome surrounding each grain.

Bob Van Veldhuizen, small grains research specialist ant University of Alaska Fairbanks, holds some of his experimental wheat seeds.




All photos by Teri White Carns, 2015.

VanderWeele's Wheat, Mat-Su Valley Alaska -- September 2015 Update

Sandhill crane in Ben VanderWeele's wheat fields (September 26, 2015, Photo TWCarns)

'Tis the season for rain and gray days lit by the flaming gold birches along the highways. In late July, we spent a couple of hours with Ben VanderWeele learning about the challenges of growing wheat (see post here) in the Mat-Su Valley. On the last Saturday of September, with rain and fog swathing most of Anchorage and the Mat-Su Valley, we drove to the wheat fields to see them after the harvest. The sandhill cranes arrived before we did, though, and were gleaning the fields in their long-necked leisurely style. Some of the fields have been turned under; the ones that were most recently harvested sill have stubble standing.

By this time, late September, most of Ben VanderWeele's wheat harvest has gone to the Anchorage Distillery for vodka, and to Rise and Shine Breads for its fat and fragrant loaves. His barn probably has numerous large plastic bins filled with wheat for the winter, and for next spring's plantings.

A flock of sandhill cranes fattening before flying south.

Snow-capped Chugach Mountains from Westchester Lagoon in Anchorage (September 23). This is what the mountains beyond VanderWeele's Farm look like beneath today's clouds.


Below are a few photos that we took on September 5, when Ben VanderWeele had harvested about half of the wheat.

In places, some of the unharvested stalks are still bright green, a long way from ripe. Many of these are probably "tillers" -- side stalks that grow up around the main stalk. They also have seed heads, but usually ripen more slowly than the main stalk (which is called the "flag.")

In the foreground of the photo, weeds, and some foxtail grass (lower right corner). Then wheat. At the far edge of the field is fireweed, mostly gone to seed, but still with plenty of red. Beyond are woods.

The cloud-capped Chugach mountains rise beyond the wheat fields in the middle distance.

The harvested sections, before being turned under.

The unharvested rows. Note that sections on the right front side of the photo have many more green tones in them than the more distant rows. They are different strains of wheat, ripening at different times.