S-Bread the word! || Forno Strìa brings back the flavor of sourdough bread and ancient grains
/Revolutions (always) start with bread
Industrial production destroyed both the taste and the nutritional value of wheat. Forno Strìa in Reggio Emilia revamps the traditional way of making bread using sourdough and ancient grain flour, with young energies, enthusiasm and tasteful innovation as a plus.
Bread is at the heart of many of the world’s diverse food cultures, think Ancient Fertile Crescent, Egypt, India, Italian Pizza or French Baguettes. However, as a result of industrialisation, the quality has suffered and bread available on our shelves is often a standardised product, poor in nutrients and cultural value. Sadly, bread can be used as a case-study to show how industrial production has ruined one of humanity’s sustaining food.
Let’s start from the flour: most of the bread you can find in commerce is made out of very few, hyper-refined varieties of wheat. In order to increase the use-by date and to ensure the maximum standardisation required by industrial production ( regardless of humidity, energy, craftsmanship…) wheat flours have been selected according to their “reliability”- not taste, and massively strengthened in gluten. Gluten is a protein, that helps working the dough and guarantees better results with less efforts and care when baking. Moreover, most bakers have abandoned sourdough in favor of faster and less nutritious yeast. The peculiarity of sourdough bread is that it ferments, allowing for a much higher digestibility. Fermentation breaks down the peptides in gluten, that give people trouble.
So here's the problem in a nutshell:
Less varieties of wheat, strengthened in gluten + yeast that don’t allow for bread fermentation + hyper-refined “dead” flours = no wonder we’re all having troubles digesting bread, bread makes you fat cause it’s filled with empty sugars and no fibers and no wonder so many people define themselves as “gluten intolerant”.
These are for sure not the sole causes, and bread deserves a much more substantiated discussion but it is just to give you an idea of the actual situation. I will not either speak about the plethora of ingredients, thickeners, gums, preservatives that you can find in a loaf of bread nowadays.
For centuries, bakers made fermented sourdough bread, a slow process that begins with a natural starter of water and flour, which are left to sit together so fermentation can work its magic. Yeast from the air (yes, no need to add anything else!) reacts with the flour, feeding on the starches and multiplying slowly. Eventually, gut-healthy lactobacillus bacteria grow in fermentation.
Stria was born from an idea of Riccardo Astolfi, a true Bread Hero. He is the creator of “Pastamadreday” in Italy, literally sourdough day, and the Sourdough pushers network ( “spacciatori di pasta madre”), a community of bread lovers that share their sourdough yeast with other ( professional or amateur) bakers for free. The idea behind these two initiatives is to help people regain the know-how of how to prepare bread from scratch. It is somehow an act of insubordination. Against taste-less, empty and “dangerous” industrial bread (read the list of ingredients vs. traditional bread only made with flour, salt and water!!), people reconnect with the primordial act of baking a nutritious, tasteful loaf of bread.
Well, baking is enjoyable, but not everybody loves putting his or her hands in the dough, wait patiently for hours, or simply don’t have the time to do so.
As Michael Pollan acknowledges in his acclaimed book and Netflix documentary “Cooked”, it seem hard to find the time to properly bake fermented bread, a process that takes days. Good news is that you can find the same delicious bread, but ready made, at Strìa, Riccardo’s bakery in Reggio Emilia.
Through the rediscovery of the traditional way of making bread with sourdough and ancient grains, Strìa provides its clients with the opportunity to enjoy nutritious and flavorful bread. It is a bakery, but also a centre for education and a bright exemple of a group of people committed to preserve our common culinary cultural heritage. Here you can buy righ-out-the-oven loafs of delicious pumpkin-raisin-hazelnut bread, not too sweet breakfast bread with drops of dark chocolate, farro bread, Strìa loaf with linen and sunflower, focaccia and an array of vegan cakes prepared daily.
My friend Alberto brought me to Strìa one early morning of September.
The usual dizziness I feel each time I wake up too early immediately disappeared, inhaling and exhaling ( bread pranayama ;) ) the incredible smell of bread that was already coming out of the oven.
Youssef, the baker, 23 years-old, was preparing some beautiful loafs of delicious bread, literally caressing the dough in order to, he said, “encourage it” to grow. In the pictures you can see a bright yellow bread made with turmeric and nuts, delicious !
Bakers such as Strìa are guardians of a healthier, more natural way of baking. Ask your baker if he makes sourdough bread ( pasta madre in italian, “mother dough”, which is a lovely expression, or levain naturel if you’re in France) or ask to your friends if they have some sourdough starter to give you. You will be surprised to find unsuspected sourdough pusher amongst your close network! :) That is how I got my own sourdough starter almost a year ago from Daniela, my mum’s friend and an incredible bread baker. The yeast she gave me was the “descendent” of a yeast she received from another friend of hers and that has been thriving and regenerating itself for the past thirty years. Can you imagine? Baking a whole history and descendance of yeasts. I like to think that there’s still some trace of that original first yeast in my loafs of bread.
S-bread the word !
Details:
Strìa
Viale Isonzo, 48, Reggio Emilia RE, Italia
Tel: +39 0522 271250