The real bread project
Are you gluten intolerant..and/or a human who eats food? If so, this bread is for you.
Hey! Welcome. I’m Carrie, a longtime author and Substacker. (Love this platform!)
The Liberated Grain is a new Substack I’ve just started, which will be all about rediscovering a pretty exciting form of old-new slowfood:
Ultra-long fermentation sourdough bread. (It will also feature other relevant wheatgrain-related topics—which are totally unboring and hardly geeky at all, I promise!)
Anyway, this bread, this moderately miraculous oldschool kind of bread, is what it’s really all about. It’s game changing. Even life changing for some. But funnily enough, hardly anybody seems to know about it.
I aim to change all that.
Because this is bread like it was made for thousands of years. Bread that sustains and nourishes. Bread that’s seriously tasty. And here’s the kicker: Bread that’s so digestible, even the gluten intolerant can probably eat it.
And that’s what started it all…
Most of my friends (along with around 40% of the general population) have trouble eating gluten. To one degree or another.
I myself am not one of them. I can eat what I like. But I was trying to find ways of feeding my friends nice things (as you do). At first I was messing around with creating gluten free cakes and tarts, things like that. And as gluten free recipes go, it all worked out pretty well. Mostly. Considering.
Emboldened by my small successes, I then turned my attention to gluten free bread. And that’s where I got stuck.
The recipes I tried were just...not nice. And not really bread, either. Weird loaves full of nonfood ingredients like xanthan gum and psyllium husk; texturally peculiar dough lumps that refused to brown in the oven.
If you have gluten issues, you probably know what I’m talking about.
I gave up on it.
The Gift of Bread
But then someone told me about a local-ish man, a local-ish coeliac man, who teaches local-ish classes on making real proper bread, from real proper ingredients—real bread that’s so digestible, even he can eat it.
I know. Hard to believe, right? But it’s true.
Wholesome, simple bread made of organic stoneground wheat, salt and water...and lots of fermentation time. Bread the way it was made for millennia, before industrialization killed off that slower way of life.
I took that class, and it was amazing. Beautiful bread: Dense but not stodgy; satisfying and wholesome; complex yet mild in flavor, and not at all sour—just ever so slightly tangy. Extremely yummy in just about every way, in other words.
Surely most humans of earth, once they know about it, will want to make (or at least eat) this gorgeous bread. Right? That’s what I figure, anyway.
And if you’re gluten intolerant? So long, xanthan gum. See ya, psyllium husk.
This man reckons he’s taught around a thousand people over the years. And according to his testing, virtually 100% of those who are gluten intolerant,* and approximately 94% of coeliacs can eat his bread. Which is amazing.
He himself thrives on it.
His name is Michael Storey, and it’s been his life’s mission to spread the word (slowly, one baker at a time) about this life-changing bread, and to empower people to learn how to make it for themselves.
In my own way, I want to help him do that. Because it seems alittle nuts to me, that this Real Bread info hasn’t yet gone viral.
Because this bread (this almost unheard-of kind of bread, which almost nobody makes anymore) is phenomenal. It’s real food—the kind your body actually says THANK YOU for, after you’ve eaten it. So I, too, want everyone to know about it, and to see how simple it is to make. And eat.
So that’s why I’ve started this Liberated Grain Substack. Because there’s so much to say about this kind of bread—and plenty to say about everything else that currently passes for bread these days. (Including everything that currently passes for sourdough!)
And for those who are into baking their own? I’ll also be doing some show ‘n tell about the different results you can get, depending on what kind of oven you’re using:
Convection oven (the kind that most people have); woodfired oven—that’s what I use when I bake at home; or a pro oven specifically designed for sourdough. Which is the kind of oven I’ll be using in my soon-to-be microbakery.
I’ll be showing you each type, and talking about the tweaks that bring the breads baked in the first 2 kinds of ovens, closer to the awesomeness of that pro oven.
Another reason I want to help Michael spread the word about this bread, is because it’s my dream to revitalize our local foodways, not only here in the UK, but all around the world.
I dream of small scale independent farmers, growing healthy fields of local organic grain. Which is then stoneground by local millers. For local bakers, who bake fantastic local bread for local humans to eat.
I myself am lucky enough to have all of that right here, in my own local-ish neighborhood. And lemme tell ya, it’s a beautiful thing. A rare gift. And the bread that comes from it is incredible.
Bottom line: I dream of empowering people everywhere, to bake their own beautiful nutritious, delicious, extremely digestible bread. Because I dream of real food. For real people. And real honest nourishment in every loaf.
Crazy, I know. But it’s a good dream, right?
I hope you’ll stick around and help me dream. It’s always more fun together.
PS Don’t you just hate asterisks? Like when I said above: Virtually 100% of those who are gluten intolerant*...can eat this bread.
I’ll tell you why that asterisk is there. The scientific research, and Michael’s realworld tests suggest that ALL those who are gluten intolerant should be able to digest this bread.
HOWEVER, every so often we run across a person who self-identifies as being gluten intolerant, when in fact they are allergic to wheat. Very different thing.
This bread is NOT for those with wheat allergies.
Superlong fermentation does NOT remove the wheat! It just transforms the gluten into something extremely digestible by almost everybody. So if eating wheat causes you to suffer symptoms that aren’t primarily digestive in nature...it’s back to the gluten free aisle for you. Sorry about that.
Michael Storey’s website is thegiftofbread.org. I highly recommend his live, in person breadmaking class if you’re local-ish to his (Southwest UK) neighborhood: You’ll get the history and the science behind it all, plus a bellyfull of gorgeous bread straight out of the oven. And armloads of bread to take home with you. Yum.
If you check out Michael’s website? Please consider donating while you’re there, to help him keep his beautiful bread education project going. He does great work.
My website (still being developed and not yet live), is liberatedgrain.com. I’ll be offering online breadmaking classes, videos, recipes (don’t throw that excess starter away!)—and lots of other useful info. Plus the startup micro-bakery! Its breads will be featured there on the website, along with (local-ish) ordering information.
Stay tuned, and subscribe to this here newsletter for updates.
Thanks for reading, and please share widely if you know anyone who needs magnificent oldschool bread in their life.
~ Carrie