DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

A few weeks ago a friend asked what makes French bread into “country” French bread. It seems to me, from having baked a few hundred loaves of it, that “country French” bread is white bread with a handful of whole grain thrown in. The result is a loaf of white bread with little specs of dark stuff. Depending on the coarseness of the whole grain, the specs can actually look like dirt.

This strikes me as appropriate, because when I think of “country” the main image is of the land — farms, fields, dirt roads. Soil is so central to country living, it seems, the residents even put it into their bread. If you ever see a loaf that advertises itself as providing a “taste of the country,” be aware that this may be more literal a promise than you expect.

Germans have taken this concept to an extreme. They favor heavy breads which reverse the “country” proportion — they contain perhaps a handful of refined flour amid several pounds of whole grain berries and seeds. The result, “Vollkornbrot,” is so dense it must be sliced thinly lest the slab implode from its own mass. Connoisseurs claim they chew the bread slowly to savor the layers of subtle flavor brought on by the wild-yeast starter, the slow fermentation, and the organic grains. But, really, they’re chewing slowly so they don’t bite down hard on an under-hydrated rye berry to end up sending several hundred dollars worth of dental appliances back to the bodyshop for a frame-straightening and a new coat of paint.

Whenever I make Vollkornbrot I am shocked anew at how dense and leaden it is. I call it “brick bread,” based on the assertion that a loaf of it makes a suitable replacement for foundation material, e.g. if you’re building a bomb shelter or, say, town, and you end up short one cinderblock, you could just mortar in a loaf of this stuff and no one would ever know the difference.