Just What Kind of Person Works in a Wholesale Gluten Free Bakery Anyway?

We're located right near the banks of the Connecticut River in Brattleboro, VT, and Amtrak trundles by twice a day!

Starting our own business from scratch (with zero experience in the food industry) and hiring and developing a staff we can trust has been an amazing experience. Everything we bake is made in small batches with fresh ingredients, and there is a lot of our staff in every bag we sell. (Of course, I’m not referring to their hair or anything like that--joke.) Much thought goes into what we bake, and there is considerable team interaction involved before our products land on the shelves of a retail store or a food service counter. Our products most definitely reflect the personalities behind them.

The only commonality at Against The Grain seems to be that everyone is an intelligent foodie in some way. They are master problem-solvers, and they get giddy when we work on new product development. One could say that everyone’s input is “baked into” the final product. We work really hard, show tremendous respect for what we bake, and even find time to goof around.

Among our staff, we have someone who was an opera composer and is a performing pianist. We have a philosophy major, who is an expert in healing herbs and is currently working on a master’s degree in nutrition. There’s a professional puppeteer, and an ethnomusicologist, who is also a reggae drummer, a glass blower, and has his own radio show. Then there is an environmental ecologist, who is also a fine arts painter. We also have our own mini-version of Donald Trump (well, he’s a lot nicer than “the Donald,”) who has a black belt in Taekwondo and is on his way to becoming a real estate mogul. There’s a comparative religion major, someone with a doctorate in animal behavior, and a single mom who has lived in a kibbutz in Israel and on a Hare Krishna dairy farm. We also employ a young man who attends a local school for autism; he’s a train fanatic and a master storyteller. Chester, the office Golden, scares away salesmen, jumps all over ornery truck drivers, and has been known to chase bankers back to their car.

What do all these people have to do with gluten free bread? They are some of the most creative people you’ll find, and all of us that eat gluten free know that it takes a lot of creativity to make a premium product.

"Good Food Costs Less" Really?

The other day, as I was walking along the highway near work, an 18-wheeler from a regional grocery store chain whizzed by. Boldly plastered on its side was the slogan, “Good Food Costs Less.” I thought about that a minute. What exactly does that mean? It can’t be a thinly-veiled advertisement for health care, as in, if you eat “good” food, you will be healthier, and your medical costs will be less. But if I interpreted it literally: the better the quality of the food, the cheaper it is, then it made no sense at all. Good food, pure and simple, costs more, and there is a reason for it.


Good food relies on wholesome ingredients, and fresh ingredients are even better. Good food is minimally processed and preservative free. And good food is made by people who care about their jobs. All of those things come at a cost. Flavor chemistry is cheap. Dried, powdered, processed, and modified ingredients are a lot cheaper than their fresh counterparts. Adding preservatives is cheaper in the long run as well, since it increases the shelf life of products. Paying food processing personnel minimum wage is cheap; so is letting them fend for themselves when it comes to health insurance.

Who comes up with those slogans anyway? Then again, who is going to patronize a grocery store with the slogan “Good Food Costs More?” It’s true, but not a Madison Avenue slogan that is going to give you an edge on the competition.

BUSTED!!

The other day, I needed to set up a pizza photo shoot, so I announced that I was going to the store to pick up some fresh items like tomatoes, a basil plant, and some garlic. Dan, our online media guy, suggested that I take some pictures since the produce displays might be good for a rich backdrop.

I thought that was a pretty good idea, so I grabbed my pocket-sized Canon and headed for the grocery store. The door opened into the produce section, and right there in front of me was a huge display of vine-ripened tomatoes. The color, shapes, and texture all were very appealing. So, I whipped out my camera, started to focus, and then realized that there were these annoying stickers on practically every darn tomato. I scanned the pile for a shot where there were the least stickers, and “click” took my first photo. Not thinking, I forgot to turn off the flash, which with the overly-lit store gave my photo a greenish-gray tint not unlike the way a dog is thought to perceive color. I quickly switched to manual mode, and just as I snapped the second picture, a manager appeared next to me. You would have thought that I was trying to smoke in an airplane bathroom from the way he swooped down on me. At first, I thought he was going to try to confiscate my camera. Mind you, this is a store where you never see a manager (even when I rounded a corner one day and slipped in a split open container of yogurt on the floor and went flying.) He very calmly informed me that I was violating store policy, and when I pleaded ignorance, he said that a notice was posted in the lobby. Guess I wasn’t looking for that one. Although he did his best to be polite and avoid a scene, I felt like a criminal and was terribly paranoid that I was being watched as I went through the store picking out the items I needed.

I guess what I found kind of strange about the incident was why a store would have a policy like that. Did they think I was a terrorist casing out a place to plant a bomb? Or perhaps working for a competitor and trying to unlock the secret of how to create a tower of tomatoes? Or was I some kind of investigative journalist looking for evidence of mislabeled country of origin or (horrors) a wilted tomato vine? Just last summer, NOFA (Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont) invited customers to photograph produce at Vermont Farmer’s markets and make a video. They even had the videos posted on youtube for the whole world to see. So, on the one hand, we had food producers/sellers who were proud of their produce, and on the other, a grocery store whose policy it was to prevent photographs. What gives there? And why do I still think that manager perks up behind his two-way mirror every time I walk in the door and watches to see that I’m shopping for produce, not images?

And besides all that, I still have the photo, and here it is for the world to see. If I could only get rid of those unsightly stickers!

Gluten Free Bread Art--Signs of Spring

Sometimes our bloopers are like a Rorschach's test, and we all suggest the image that comes to mind.  Sometimes, our bloopers are unmistakably a figure or animal.  Here's a rosemary baguette from yesterday that looked like the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland.  It is finally Spring here in Vermont, so we gave her some blooper sesame bagel wings today, and she was transformed into a butterfly.

Speaking of Spring, here are some hollow rolls that became bird nests after we stuffed them with end-of-the-day dough balls.  Stay tuned for baby bird gluten free bread art.  Gluten free baking should be fun...and it is!

Bloopers...What's a Blooper?

Bloopers, or rejects, are an inevitable part of our baking process. We bake with fresh ingredients, and as we have come to realize, cows have good and bad days, so do laying hens. Fresh ingredients are never exactly the same and are an interesting variable in the baking process. And then there is tapioca starch. Made from a tuber, it has different properties depending on the rain cycle of the season in which it is grown. Like many other flours, including gluten free ones, tapioca also behaves differently depending on the weather outside. Our manufacturing facility is in Vermont. Need I say more? But this is what artisan baking, as opposed to industrialized baking, is all about.

We could more precisely control our ingredients by using powdered milk, boxed or powdered eggs, and cheese chock full of natamycin, a questionable anti-fungicide, and milk protein concentrates. We also could employ all sorts of dough conditioners and stablizers to make the dough behave. We don’t. All of these stabilized ingredients would make our products a lot cheaper, to both us and consumers. But, we are committed to baking honest products using the freshest possible ingredients. It is not only about taste, but it is also about doing the “right” thing. We care deeply about the animals and people behind our ingredients.

What does all of this have to do with bloopers? Well, we have a lot of them. Instead of scooping them up and filling landfills with our rejects, we donate them to local food banks and shelters. On a typical week, we donate over 200 pounds of bread, that go to all sorts of people, not just gluten intolerant ones. We’re proud of the nutritional quality of our products and glad to add them to the diets of those less unfortunate.

What constitutes a blooper? It just doesn’t meet our quality standards. Among other things, it can be too artisan (read: ugly) or it can rise too much or too little. We entertain ourselves with all sorts of names for the bloopers like “volcanoes,” “puffers,” “baked potatoes,” and “tennis balls.” And of course, some of the bloopers end up in the home kitchens of our staff, including us. Volcanoes (aka known as rolls) are, in fact, great for stuffing with tons of veggies and humus—ugly, but oh so utilitarian.

Gluten Free Meatball Hoagie

Rosemary baguettes are not only tasty bread, but they make the most flavorful, moist meatballs and stuffing mixtures. One of our favorite simple meals is a rosemary meatball hoagie made with extra sharp Vermont Cabot cheddar cheese.

Ingredients:
1 rosemary baguette
1 medium onion
1 egg
1 pound very lean ground beef or bison
1 Tbsp worcestershire sauce.
15 oz organic tomato sauce
2 slices cheddar cheese

1. Defrost baguette on counter for ½ hour or in microwave, following the directions on the package.
2. Cut baguette in two and save half for hoagie.
3. Finely chop ½ baguette and onion.
4. Mix thoroughly with hands all ingredients.
5. Form into balls a little larger than golf balls (makes 12+/-)
6. Brown meatballs in skillet.

7. Add tomato sauce, cover, and allow to simmer for about 15 minutes

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8. Meanwhile, cover open-sliced baguette with cheese slice and place in 300 degree oven to melt.

9. Make sure you accidentally drop something for Chester, who is watching intently.

10. Spoon as many meatballs as you can fit on open-faced baguette.

ENJOY!!

Don't Eat Anything Your Great-grandmother Wouldn't Recognize as Food

I’ve always been a health-conscious person, mostly from the perspective of eating a balanced diet and getting plenty of exercise. But it wasn’t until our family of four had to begin eating gluten free almost six years ago that I became a compulsive label reader. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stood in the grocery store, reading a label, and had someone come up and say “you don’t want to know what’s in there!” Actually, it happened only several days ago, when my son needed to buy some beef jerky for a college event, and I was looking for a gluten free variety. The guy was right; I did not want to know what was in the jerky. I also needed to have a Blackberry with me to look up half the ingredients on Wikipedia to truly understand what was in it.

On the plus side of eating gluten free (and, yes, there are some plusses,) we eat far less processed food than we once did. I make almost all of our meals from fresh ingredients these days, including our baked goods and snack items. One would think with all the improvements in gluten free products and the sheer number of them, this would not be the case. But as the gluten free marketplace has grown, so have the additives in gluten free foods. There are additives to extend shelf life, additives to retard mold growth, flavor enhancers, and all kinds of engineered compounds that act as dough conditioners, binders, and texture-enhancers. Makes me wish I had paid better attention in high school chemistry class. As a wholesale baker, we are bombarded with all kinds of ingredients manufacturers peddling their wares. Perhaps the scariest of all are the chemically modified food starches—tapioca, potato, corn and rice.

Cultured dextrose, glucono-delta-lactone, sodium alginate, modified cellulose, monocalcium phosphate, ascorbic acid, sodium carboxy methylcellulose, sodium stearayl lactylate, microbial enzyme, poly dextrose, mono and diglycerides, tapioca dextrin, methyl-cellulose, and agar-agar. These are some of the additives commonly found in gluten free food. Why? Some will argue that they improve taste, others texture, and shelf life. But, gluten free food doesn’t need these additives to be great tasting. In the words of Michael Pollan, "...There's a lot of money in the Western diet. The more you process any food, the more profitable it becomes.”

At Against The Grain, we subscribe to another piece of Michael Pollan’s advice:"Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food."