Grain Gathering 2015: Josey Baker and Jonathan Bethany on whole-grain artisan bread for the home baker

Bread made with 100% Sonora wheat grown within two hours from San Francisco

Unlike many of the classes and demos at the Grain Gathering, the whole-grain for the home baker workshop took place in the lobby kitchen of WSU Extension, a place well-suited for a demo but hardly the perfect stage for a dance. Yet a choreographed performance is what Josey and Jonathan opened with, arguing that were no better introduction to the five golden principles of whole-grain baking than the W.W.W. S. B. pas de deux. Keep in mind the dancing bakers when you bake at home and you'll get a loaf that tastes good, looks beautiful, nourishes the body and consists of sustainable ingredients :

1. Whole grain
2. Wild yeast
3. Wet dough
4. Slow fermentation
5. Bold bake

According to the two Js, baking is a subtle thing; the more you do it, the more fulfilling and interesting it becomes. "Even when we practice a lot, it is hard to get exactly the loaf we dream of but it isn't hard to make a very good loaf of bread."

• Josey Baker started baking in his San Francisco Mission apartment about five years ago when a friend gave him a sourdough starter. Two and a half years later, he opened his own bakery, The Mill. Today he works with a team of ten people and bakes about 350 loaves a day. He is also the author of Josey Baker Bread: Get Baking - Make Awesome Bread - Share the Loaves, a book for novice bakers. Cool writing (surfer dude style), great recipes and lots of useful tips. A great learning tool!
• Jonathan Bethony is the resident baker at the Bread Lab in Mt Vernon, Washington. He too started as a home baker. He later attended the Professional Training Program at the San Francisco Baking Institute. After graduating he baked with local and legendary bakers in the Bay Area and was introduced by Craig Ponsford to the latest and greatest trends in whole-grain milling and baking. Today he is at the forefront of research and testing and continues to bake with the stars. What a job!

Note: Josey kindly gave me permission to quote directly from his blog for more details about the W.W.W. S. B.  principles. What isn't in green and between quotation marks comes from my notes. Thank you, Josey!

Whole grain
 "i’m definitely not tied to all breads being all whole grain (there’s a different bread for every occasion, and many of our breads are 50% whole grain), but the more bread i make, the more bread that i eat, the more i am drawn to breads that are mostly whole grain. i find these breads both more interesting to make, and more interesting to eat. we’ve been working with a bunch of different grains lately (einkorn, rye, spelt, khorasan, corn, oats, buckwheat, a bunch of different wheats such as Sonora, Cabernet, Cristalo, Bolero, Merica, etc) and i’ve been elated by how much i’ve grown as a baker, and all of the flavors, textures and aromas we’re getting. and we’re just scratching the surface. we’ve got a stone mill in the bakery so that we can control the granulation and then use the flour immediately in whatever fashion we dream up – mixing it directly into dough, or soaking it overnight, or toasting it and mixing with boiling water, or cooking it into a porridge… new possibilities present themselves everyday."

Camas Country Mill whole wheat flour

Milling is a subtle process which Josey learned from Dave Miller. Whole-grain flour has the potential for more flavor and aroma. At the bakery, he has baked loaves with flours milled at different dates: all flours performed almost exactly the same but the aromas were much stronger with the freshly milled flours (they drop after two days). He buys Sonora grain at $1.20 lb. Buying the flour would be more affordable. But the quality wouldn't be the same.

Wild yeast
"a sourdough starter is a magical little beast. it’s a combination of flour and water, along with wild yeast and bacteria that are naturally found on flour and in the environment. starters can be tricky to work with, as you need to constantly monitor their development and characteristics in order to make the bread you’re after. in order to keep your sourdough starter alive, you have to “feed” it regularly with flour and water, and by doing this you can coax the wild yeast and bacteria into the proportions that are good for bread baking. most bread is made with yeast that’s made in a factory, and this yeast is created in order to make bread rise quickly and dependably. but it wasn’t always this way – the first breads ever were most definitely “sourdough” – made with a mixture of flour and water that was allowed to ferment by the power of the wild yeast that was lucky enough to find its way into the mixture. the best breads that i’ve ever had have been made using a sourdough culture. if used properly, a sourdough culture yields bread that tastes better, lasts longer, and is healthier for you."
A sourdough starter is very easy to keep alive: leave behind a spoonful, mix in half-a-cup of water, half-a-cup of flour and leave it alone. The starter Josey and Joanathan are using for the demo has sat at room temperature for 16 hours. It has a strong funky aroma.

Levain

• A levain is a sourdough preferment. 
• Josey's levain is at 100% hydration.
• Take ripe starter, mix in  mix in half-a-cup of water and half-a-cup of flour and leave it sit for 8 to 12 hours. It will show visible signs of activity but it will be very young.
• When taking the starter straight out of the fridge, it is safer to do two feedings. 
• If you keep your starter out on the counter, feed it everyday.

Final dough

• Take some of the levain (size of a big orange), fold in some water at 75 or 80°F to break it up, add whole wheat flour and salt
• Percentage of levain in final dough: for most whole-wheat doughs, between 8 and 10% by flour weight is good. For rye breads, 30 to 40% levain is what works best (the dough needs to be way more prefermented because you need much more acidity in rye doughs).
• If you want to cut down on bulk fermentation, adding more preferment is the way to go. That's where a skilled baker can make bread work into his or her schedule.
• You can do an autolyse (they always do at the bakery).  It helps minimize oxidation by reducing dough manipulation. To do an autolyse, mix flour and water. No salt. Reserve some of the water. Let sit a while. The autolyse can be done overnight. (Beginning home bakers can skip this step if they find it confusing).
• Twenty minutes after mixing by hand, dip your hands in water and stretch and fold inside the bowl. Rotate the bowl and do it again. Make sure you go all around. Repeat twice at 20-minute intervals.
• At this stage you can also stick the dough in the fridge overnight.

Wet dough

"it’s a lot easier to end up with moist bread if you start out with moist dough. why don’t more people put more water in their bread doughs? because it makes for a dough that is very sticky and tricky to handle, and well, that’s a pain in the ass now isn’t it? this is especially true if machines are dividing the dough, or shaping it into loaves. only the sensitive human hand can handle dough like this, and even then, it takes hundreds, thousands of loaves to get the hang of shaping “high hydration” dough consistently. most breads out there have 60-70g of water for every 100g of flour. our breads have between 75-125g of water for every 100g of flour, and this totally depends on the particular flour of a given bread. we aim for a dough that is fully hydrated and yields a bread that has a moist and supple crumb."
Fully hydrating the flour is the goal: not using much water makes the dough easier to handle but it doesn't make for good bread. You have to try and find for yourself how much water to use. At the bakery, they hydrate the Sonora flour at 110%. They started off hydrating the einkorn at 85% but it was too much. They now hydrate it at 75%. Hydration varies for every gain. Trial and error is key!

• A wet dough is going to be tricky and sticky, difficult to work with. A very wet dough wants to spread out. Sometimes it needs the support of a pan. 
• If using heavily chlorinated water, let the water sit a bit before mixing so that the chlorine has a chance to evaporate.

Slow fermentation

"good things take time, didn’t your gramma teach you that? the flavors and textures of a long-fermented loaf are just flat out better than those of a short-fermented one. the life cycle for most of our breads goes something like this: our sourdough culture hangs out for 20-24 hours before being mixed into dough, our dough relaxes for 3-4 hours before being shaped into loaves, our loaves chill out for 14-18 hours before being baked into bread. so our bread dough has matured over a couple of days before it’s baked into bread, which gives the yeast and bacteria of our sourdough culture time to perform their magic: producing the perfect mix of acid, alcohol and gas to make good bread."
With rye bread you can go faster (there is more preferment in the dough). All other breads at the ferment for a total of 36 to 48 hours (most of that time in the fridge): at the bakery, they don't use a starter but old dough kept in the fridge for 24 hours.

• With commercial yeast, it is even more important to slow down the fermentation: use a tiny pinch of yeast and let the dough sit at room temperature
• Rye flour has a higher enzymatic activity: if you add 5 to 10% of rye to your dough, it speeds up things.

Bold bake

"when a loaf goes into the oven it is the moment of truth – did we make the right decisions over the last 48 hours? and so begins the waiting game for that loaf to complete its transformation. you can’t rush this phase of the process, just like every other one. we bake our breads anywhere from 30-120 minutes, depending on the size and type. regardless, we bake each loaf till it’s crust is dark and substantial and its insides are fully cooked. folks occasionally point out that we burnt our bread. while i admit that our loaves are significantly darker than those from most bakeries, i also stand by the flavors and textures created by the bold bake, and encourage critics to employ their taste buds."

• It is best for the home baker to bake in a Dutch oven
• Pre-heat the Dutch oven at 475°F for 45 minutes
• Slash the loaf
• Bake for 20 min with the lid on. If you leave the lid on for too long, you won't get the same color and crust and the crust might be leathery.
• Bake uncovered for another 25 minutes. Check the bread and if not dark enough, give it another few minutes.
• The best spot in the oven is usually the middle.

Further tips for the home baker:

Shaping

• Go nice and gentle on the shaping (go for air-shaping if there is no space to work).
• Let the bulk-fermented dough sit 20 to 30 minutes at room temperature. If cold, let it rest one hour.
• Lightly flour the top of the dough so that it isn't sticky and dust the bench (at the bakery, Josey uses only water on the bench because the dough is a really nice mixture of flour and water and all that flour has fermented and he doesn't want unfermented flour in his dough.)
  
• Flip the dough upside down. Gently grab the side nearest to you, lift the dough off the table. You are not pulling, just lengthening. Put it back on the table and fold the dough in your hands two-thirds of the way up the loaf. Grab the top, stretch it upward and fold it about two thirds down the loaf.
• Rotate 90° and fold the dough down half-way, then fold it half-way again. 
• Seal with the heel of your hands.
• Flour the basket. If the basket isn't lined, dredge the bread in rice flour. 

Proofing

• At this point, you can stick the bread in the fridge after one hour and let it sit there for 6 hours, then bake it straight out of the fridge.
• If you don't need to use the fridge, let it rest about 3 hours at room temperature.

Slashing

• If the dough is over-hydrated or over-fermented, then slashing is challenging. It feels violent. You have to commit to it. If not, you are not going to get the loaf's full potential.

That's it, readers! The two Js didn't give out any formula. They know that as long as we bake WHOLE, WILD, WET, SLOW and BOLD, we'll end up with good bread.

After 20 minutes

Dave Miller's formulas for einkorn, Renan & Sonora breads (Grain Gathering 2015)

Related posts:

• The Grain Gathering 2015
• The Grain Gathering 2015: Dave Miller on milling and baking

After the Grain Gathering, Dave Miller very kindly sent me the formulas he used in class. Please remember that he dries his levain from one bake to the next (see Meet the Baker: Dave Miller).

Process for levain (for all three breads)

First feeding

• Sieve out dried sourdough bits
• Add water to soften, create a mush, let sit 1 hour
• Add back sifted-out flour, should make stiff ball (DDT: 78°F)
• Ferment for 10 to 12 hours

Second feeding

• Ferment for 4 hours (DDT still 78°F)

Third feeding

• Ferment for 3 hours (DDT still 78°F)

My heartfelt thanks to Jacqueline Colussi for her help with inputting the formulas into BreadStorm.

Einkorn Bread

Renan Bread

Sonora Bread

Whidbey Bread: Whole Grains for the Home Baker, a Bread Lab workshop

Organized jointly by Washington State University (WSU) Extension-Island County, WSU Mt Vernon Research and Extension Center and the Grain Gathering, Whidbey Bread took place over a day and a half in early September on the bucolic grounds of the Pacific Rim Institute in Coupeville, Washington, drawing participants from thirty-five cities, four States and British Columbia. If you have never been to Whidbey Island, then it's time to go. Come with me and not only will you get a glimpse of a lovely corner of our beautiful Earth but you will get some tips from The Bread Lab on how to bake with local flours.

From Clinton where the Mukilteo ferry lands (Mukilteo is about one hour north of Seattle) to Coupeville where we are headed, the island is a blur of water, forests, prairies, small lakes, fields and farms, not to mention sleepy homes and minuscule villages. On good days, mountain views are everywhere. The occasional deer stares as you drive by then goes back to methodically eating a gardener's tastiest flowers, ferries and other boats glide in and out of the landscape, the air is rich with the smell of the sea.

Once you reach the Institute though, all traces of the ocean vanish and, looking at the tiny test fields, all you can think of is how landscape evolves as men come and go.

First on the land were the Salish Indians who had established permanent homes on Whidbey as early as in the early fourteenth century, living off natural resources such as fish,  shellfish, game, fowl, roots, hazelnuts and berries. Tragically they were decimated in the late eighteenth century by the smallpox and syphilis Euro-American explorers, sailors, hunters and missionaries brought with them when they arrived on the island. Entire villages were wiped out. Tensions were high. There were acts of violence. Many of the Salish survivors moved (were moved?) to a reservation off island in nearby La Conner. (For more on the history of Whidbey Island, you may want to check out this document,  my source for the above info).

 

White settlers farmed the land, rejoicing in the fertility of the prairie. In 1919, a farmer in nearby Ebey's Prairie set a world record by producing one hundred and seventeen bushels of wheat per acre, using horse-powered machinery. To give you an idea of the magnitude of such yield, according to Dr. Stephen Jones, wheat breeder, professor and Director of WSU extension in Mt Vernon (Steve Jones also runs The Bread Lab), the average yield today in heavily mechanized Kansas is thirty-four bushels. And yet, yet, wheat steadily migrated to the Midwest and although it is trickling back East and West thanks to the efforts of  breeders such as Dr. Jones, of farmers anxious to get more value out of their rotation crops, of bakers working with millers and growers to bring back forgotten local flavors, of consumers choosing to eschew industrial bread, of the sixty millions acres of wheat grown in this country today, only two and a half millions are grown in Washington (all the figures are from Dr. Jones) and Ebey's Landing is now part of the National Historical Reserve for the State of Washington.

One hundred years ago, one hundred thousand acres of wheat were grown across the Sound in nearby Skagit Valley. "That knowledge is gone, the area has lost its grain culture," Dr. Jones says (more on this here). But the Research Center in Mt Vernon is testing more than forty thousand varieties of wheat and The Bread Lab is doing its part to reverse the trend by helping farmers identify varieties that do well under local conditions and whose flavor and functional properties are appealing to bakers.

Steve Lyon, Senior Scientific Assistant at WSU-Research Center in Mt Vernon, took us on a tour of the test plots, demonstrating combine-harvesting...

...and discussing wheat breeding as well as the differences from one variety from another. It was strangely moving to be reminded that the flavors we love and nutrition we crave originate with the humble seed.

 

As Steve Lyon explained though, all grain isn't created equal and working with local wheats can be a challenge, one that Dr. Jones is happy to take on: "The way we breed wheat now in this country is that we breed for white endosperm and throw the germ away." He has banned white flour - which he calls "dead flour" - from The Bread Lab and advocates using whole-grain across the board, from bread to pastry. "The average plastic bag bread contains twenty to twenty-five ingredients (and almost always vital gluten). Twenty-one of these ingredients are not needed. All you need to make bread is freshly milled flour, salt, water and a starter of some sort." The Bread Lab attracts bakers from all over the country anxious to hone their baking skills on sometimes unpredictable flours that deliver unique flavors and plenty of nutrition. The goal of the workshop is to help home bakers use these flours as well, both in bread and in pastries.
The bread section of the workshop was taught by Jonathan Bethony-McDowell, baker-in-residence at The Bread Lab...

...the pastry section by Wendy Scherer, head baker for Tom Douglas' restaurants in Seattle. Since I am not really a pastry baker, this post covers only bread. Hopefully another blogger will post about Wendy's excellent demo. Wendy was using whole-grain flour from a Washington State hard spring white wheat called Edison.

I didn't get to taste Wendy's pastries or even to see all of them as we left a bit early on Saturday afternoon but judging from my glimpse of the cinnamon rolls, I am pretty sure they were a big hit.

Wendy Scherer's whole-grain cinnamon rolls

Jonathan starts off his talk by paying tribute to the home bakers who, according to him, often show more enthusiasm and thirst for deep knowledge than professional ones. Indeed, he says, it was Dave Miller, whom he calls "the ultimate home baker," who introduced him to whole grains. The "hidden master" who bakes from his house in the golden hills near Chico, California, was his first big inspiration. Very open, hospitable and knowledgeable, Dave freely shared his method and techniques. His doughs are highly hydrated and the single most important piece of information the young baker took home from his visit is that when baking with whole grain you need to use ten to fifteen percent more water because of the higher fiber content. It is impossible to say with precision how much water a baker is going to need for a specific formula: no two whole-wheat flours are identical. Each has its own flavors and functional properties, depending not only on the variety but also on how the wheat was grown, in what type of soil, etc. The baker has to roll with the challenges. "Watch the dough and adjust for hydration: this is where the journey begins," says Jonathan.

Jonathan likes to mix everything by hand. For the purpose of the workshop, he is making two identical doughs using different whole wheat flours: commercial flour bought in a bag from Camas Country Mills in Oregon and flour that is being milled as he speaks (from Renan wheat - a French cultivar - grown in nearby Skagit Valley.) He will bake both boules and pan bread.

Process
(Formula yields two large loaves)

• Mix the levain by hand and place in a warm area for 2-3 hrs. It should appear active and bubbly, though on the young side. You may want to increase this if you plan on saving some to perpetuate your culture.
• Mix all of the flour and 800 grams of the water together in a large bowl until well incorporated.
• Let rest for 45 minutes to hydrate.
• Then add all of the levain, all of the salt and 100 grams more of water to the dough and mix well by squeezing and folding it in on itself.
• After moderate development, let rest for a 5 - 10 minutes and return to mixing.
• As you develop more strength into the dough, you can add the rest of the water (up to 250 grams) in two additions, mixing and developing the dough in between. Mix time should take around 20-30 minutes by hand.
• Let the dough ferment in the bowl for 3 hours. Every 45 minutes, fold the dough in on itself evenly in order to strengthen. Dough should be wet, yet supple and tenacious.
• Divide in half and shape into boules. Let rest 10 -20 minutes.
• Final shape into boules or blunt batards and then proof seam side up in well-dusted, linen-lined baskets for 1 hour.
• Then place into a refrigerator for 8 -14 hrs.
• Remove from refrigerator and let sit room temp for about a half an hour.
• Remove from baskets by turning them upside down onto a well dusted peel. You may need to gently loosen the edges before removing.
• Slash with a sharp razor and bake in hot (500 deg.) hearth oven for around 45 minutes until dark and 212 degrees F in the center.
• If baking in a non-hearth oven you can also use a pre-heated dutch oven, or any heavy baking container with a lid. Remove the lid in the last 10 minutes of the bake.
• Let cool for a minimum of 1 hour before slicing. 4 -24 hours is better…

What follows are the notes and photos I took during the demo.

Levain

• Jonathan uses a 100% hydration, 100% whole-wheat starter fed with freshly milled flour and refreshed two or three hours before mixing in order to get a milder taste (as yeast populates before bacteria). 
• He feeds his starter everyday, sometimes three or four times a day (but you don't have to): "The more regular you are, the more your starter will adjust to you (it is a question of survival for the organisms that live in it)."
• A white starter goes a lot slower than a whole-grain one, so it is good at slowing things down.
• All you need to start a starter is flour and water on a one-to-one ratio. Freshly milled whole-grain flour provides more food for the starter than white flour. You can also use whole rye flour (that’s what goes the fastest).
• A pH between 3.8 and 4.5 is where your levain will be (neutral pH = 7.) The lower the number, the more acidic the starter. Once the pH is below 4.5, yeast and bacteria start to work it out.

Autolyse
Refers to a period of rest after the initial mixing of flour and water (no salt). Gives gluten a chance to develop on its own, cutting down on mixing time, which means the dough heats up less and doesn't oxidize as much.

• Very important with whole gains because of the bran. The bran needs to get supple and for that, it needs water and time. "But then the best breads need time."
• When mixing, you need a certain amount of friction to develop strength, so don’t add water all at once. Assess the dough as the flour hydrates, add some of the held back water, let it rest, go back, assess again, etc. 
• Once water and flour are incorporated, let the dough rest.
• You can autolyse for a day if you like: more sugars become available, there is more enzymatic activity. The dough will be slacker though. Experiment and see what you like best.
• Flour out of the bag is really dry and soaks up the water. Moisture contents varies considerably though. Each flour has its own hydration. There is a big difference between fresh flour and stone-milled commercial flour in terms of water absorption: bagged flour takes way more water to yield same consistency as the Renan. In this case,  Jonathan had to up the hydration on the Camas bagged flour dough to close to 100%.
• Putting levain in the autolyse is optional. It helps with the breakdown even more but the drawback is that you are then on a time frame because fermentation starts.

Mixing

• When done with the autolyse, add levain and salt.
• Jonathan keeps his hands wet when mixing. "Do not add flour. If your hands get sticky, rinse them off."
• There is no one way to mix. Squeezing works. "It is important to evenly squeeze and make bonds happen."
• With wetter doughs, more squeezing. "At the beginning, you can also use old school kneading to develop strength."
• Keep folding dough over on itself before starting to add water.
• Let it rest for a while, then go back to it. It will have changed.
• When a dough is very wet, roll and push, then rotate.
• "You don’t want to be rough with the dough. "Think of it as giving it a massage."
• Freshly milled dough is way coarser, yielding heartier bread. Finer flour yields a more open crumb.

Fermenting

• The idea behind folding is to strengthen the dough while it is fermenting. The number of folds depends on the dough.
• Do not use flour on the table.
• Do a letter-fold.
• If folding in bowl, watch out for tearing. Use flat hands, not claws. Make sure the tension remains even over the four sides.
• If not retarding in the fridge, do a three-hour bulk fermentation at room temperature, followed by a ninety-minute to two-hour proofing. 
• A short bulk fermentation at room temperature, then a long proof at room temperature make for a tighter crumb.
• You will get a more irregular crumb by doing a long bulk fermentation followed by a short proof.
• Sourdough likes 78 to 80 degrees for fermentation (favors both yeast and bacteria equally),
• If room temperature is colder, use warmer water when mixing or give fermentation more time. Using warm water gives fermentation a little boost.

Pre-shaping and shaping

• Pre-shaping gives you another chance to tighten a slack dough. By contrast, if the dough is strong, be very gentle and help it relax.
• If the dough is not very gassy, let it rest in the pre-shape longer whereas if it looks very active, move on to shaping quicker.
• To shape wet dough, fold it four ways as you do when strengthening it (see Fermenting), then roll it.
• Once you are done, just drag the loaf slighlty with your pinkies underneath. Do not wind it on the table (it makes for a denser crumb).
• Let it rest a moment on the table before putting it in a basket.
• Dredge it in flour.
• Use a scraper to pick up the shaped dough.
• For really wet dough, best to use a linen-lined wicker basket. Dust the basket with flour (Jonathan sticks to whole wheat flour). Try not to get too much flour at bottom of basket, mostly flour the sides. At this stage it is better to err on the side of too much flour than not enough. Also dredge the loaf in flour before putting it in basket.
• If using a pan, spray it with oil. If using semolina to dust baskets, mix it with fifty-percent whole wheat flour.
• When putting your loaf in the pan, don’t fill the pan till the ends. A wet dough will expand. (Different from drier dough).
• Pay attention to details. The more you pay attention, the more you learn. Bread baking eaches patience and handling skills. "It is a holistic system: it teaches you how to handle those whom you care about."

 

Scoring

• For a boule, make a parcel, flip it over so that the weak spot is at the bottom and there will be no need to score.
• For a pan bread, dust the shaped pullman with a little flour, then score.
• As it is easier to cut when the dough is tauter, you can do more ornate cuts when you score after shaping and before proofing. 
• You want a deep cut (¼ to ⅓ of an inch)
• Another good technique is to take scissors and go down the middle (after proofing)
• If you want an ear to form, score at a 45° angle to get a flap. If you cut straight in, the scoring will open wide.
• Wet dough: use the fridge to chill it just before you bake it (after proofing it almost all the way for about 30 min at room temperature or cold overnight): it makes it easier to score and easier to get out of the basket.

Baking

• A good technique for home bakers is to use a Dutch oven.
• Or use steam: Bob Bryan, a serious home baker who lives on Whidbey and is Jonathan's assistant for the workshop, uses a steam machine, covering the glass in the door of the oven with a towel when he sprays the water into a restaurant pan holding lava stones.
• Use whatever steaming technique works for you.
• For whole-grain bread, bake 20 min at 500°F  (white bread at 75% hydration should be baked at 460°F).
• Remove the top of the Dutch oven after the first twenty minutes. Bake another thirty minutes. Check for doneness by tapping the bottom of the loaf with your knuckles. It should make a hollow sound. If it doesn't, put it back in the oven for another few minutes.

The bread came out beautiful. The taste of the grain shone through. I wish I had written down the difference in flavor (if any) between the bagged flour from Oregon and the freshly milled one because to save my live, I can't remember if one bread was tastier than the other. What I do remember clearly however is thinking that no matter how interesting the workshop and demos were, in practical terms, they weren't much help to the home baker if access to local wheat was an issue. And for most of us, it is.
In Washington State, I lived close to a chain of natural food stores that carried local flours and within easy driving distance from a mill and farms selling flours milled from the grains they grew. Where I am now in California, my options are pretty much limited to supermarket flours unless I order online or travel to a big city where more choices are available, albeit at a price that makes home baking an expensive proposition. Even on Whidbey Island, close to grain-growing Skagit Valley, a show of hands makes it clear that access to most of the wheats Jonathan is talking about remains very limited. The closest most of us can get to a local wheat is by ordering online from Camas Country Mills. So I would say the first order of business is to get local flours out to the home baker! One possibility for us home bakers across the country could be to follow the example of the Los Angeles Bread Bakers, to get organized geographically and to bulk-order from farmers or millers in our state or region. Meetup anyone? Let's start the ball rolling! Until then, to quote Steve Jones, we might be be stuck to baking with roller-milled "soul-less, nameless wheat."
I couldn't possibly close the post without mentioning that, on the second day of the workshop, Gerry Betz and Larry Lowary, my friends from Tree-Top Baking down in South Whidbey, brought in an amazing array of whole-grain breakfast treats. These pastries were a most persuasive introduction to Wendy's demo if it needed one!

Tree-Top Baking's Spelt-Apricot Scones (100% whole-grain)

Tree-Top Baking's Cardamom Rolls (50% whole-grain)

Even though I do not have much of a sweet tooth, I fell really hard for the spelt-apricot scones and Larry kindly gave me permission to post the formula. Thanks, Larry!

Process

1. Combine dry ingredients.
2. Cut in butter.
3. Add water. 
4. When baked 3/4 way, remove from oven, create indent and fill with jam/filling of choice.
5. Bake in pre-heated 400° F oven.