Slow Rise Bakery

The Irish government has determined that Subway sandwich bread contains too much sugar to legally be considered bread. A subway franchisee had claimed that it should not have to pay VAT because its bread was a staple. The five-judge court ruled that Subway's 10 percent ratio of fat to flour was too high to qualify as bread. I love it.

Sadly we made our last delivery to Darrenkamps last Friday. They were supportive customers over the years, looking out for us with good shelf space and willingness to try another product. We will miss them.

Thank you Darrenkamp Family.

Brian

We recently started using non-GMO oil in everything except our Four Seed Cookies. I'm not sure whether there's a problem with GMOs and I don't think the science is in yet. But I do have a problem with Roundup and I think many products that are genetically modified have been so altered to tolerate Roundup. The price of the non-GMO oil finally came down and now it's about twice the price of the GMO canola oil. It used to be six times as much. We can eat a few dollars without raising prices right now. But the four seed cookies have thin margins and we can't afford a ten-15 cent increase. The honey crisp granola bars, granola, etc. will have non-GMO oil for as long as we can afford it. It'll take a while to get the labels changed. b*h

INGREDIENTS

During her winter school break last year, my daughter took the family car on a trip down south. Of course I loaded her up with my Four Seed Cookies to eat on the way. But, shortly after she came back, I noticed a half eaten box of Little Debbie’s Creme Filled Oatmeal Cookies on the kitchen counter. I tried one of course and it was pretty disgusting. When I noticed that someone else in the house was eating them too, I trashed them.

There are 166 words in the ingredient list on the Little Debbie box, many of them five syllables or more and meaningless to me. My favorite is the abbreviation tbhq; it means tert-butylhydroquinone and like many of my favorite foods it increases tumors in rats. In contrast, our Four Seed Cookies’ ingredients list uses 25 words so I’m feeling pretty pious.

At about the same time as our Little Debbie home invasion, I was confronted with a decision to either change my bread labels - which in some cases say “organic” in the title line - or pay for organic certification. Little Debbie convinced me that the real battle is not with certification and the fine points of labeling but with the social pressures against eating well. Paying for organic certification won’t make my breads any more healthy. In fact my four seed cookies only have one organic ingredient - that’s why they’re so cheap - but lots of seeds and oats.

So we’ll continue to use organic ingredients when doing so doesn’t make the product too expensive. But more to the point we’ll continue to find ways to use more whole grains in appetizing ways. Case in point, my daughter now asks for our Peanut Butter Oat Cookies (fresh ground peanut butter, organic oats, not too sweet) when she’s leaving on a trip.

Recently the Church World Service Bulletin wrote a nice article that featured our bakery. See it athttp://www.cwsglobal.org/newsroom/local-stories/ingredients-for-a-good-employee.html

Ingredients for a Good Employee The CWS Employment Program works hard to place refugees into jobs and many employers have opened their doors to give them a chance.