Carb Fix

I was bread-shopping yesterday at the Co-op Foodstore in Hanover and spent a good amount of time trying to decide which loaf to buy. Sourdough? Rye? Multi-grain?

When I was in Michigan, one of the second-year writers in my first-year section worked at a bakery (curiously enough, not Zingerman's, but Great Harvest, I think). Anyway, every class he brought a loaf of bread to share, usually the 9-grain bread. It was heavenly. We'd tear off pieces and hand them to each other if someone forgot the knife. I was especially fond of the small round millet, which I think made the bread taste so buttery! Yum. Bread and writing. (Incidentally, my first short story for that class was about nuns baking bread.)

Fond memories of that bread have since stayed with me. And yesterday, I was thinking of buying something similar to that substantial loaf to make sandwiches for our lunches for the week.

I usually stop by King Arthur's, our New England version of Zingerman's, on the way home, but they closed early at 6 o'clock. The Co-op has a nice selection of breads from different Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire bakeries, including The Baker's Studio, Klinger's Bread, and the Three Little Birds Bakery. I recently found out that Roger is not particularly fond of sourdough, at least not for sandwiches, so I was looking for something that was wheaty or multi-grain. Eventually, I settled on a nice, dark, weighty loaf, a Multi-grain Anadama bread from When Pigs Fly. We've had the loaf before -- it's a nice chewy bread that goes well with sweet and savory toppings. I like the way they dust it with cornmeal, like the best pizza doughs, to give the crust some crunch.

It turns out Anadama bread is a bread particular to New England. The story goes that a local fisherman had a lazy wife who only gave him steamed cornmeal mush and molasses for dinner. One day when he came in from fishing, he found the same cornmeal mush and molasses for dinner and, being quite fed up with it, he decided to mix it with bread flour and yeast. He baked it, saying, "Anna Damn Her" -- or, given the local accent, "Anadama!"

Perhaps this will be the signature bread for our stay here (Vermont). In Boston, I used to go to Bova Bakery at 6am to get a Semolina Loaf. I'd toast in the oven in my small studio apartment in the North End. In Michigan, there was Zingerman's and its 8-grain, 3-seed bread -- a good substitute for the writing class bread. I think we were hard-pressed to find a favorite bakery while we were in Chicago. Red Hen was okay, when it finally moved into the neighborhood. Eventually we found Letizia's, but that was so far away.

Anyway, I'm without bread for lunch today, as I am meeting friends for pizza. Roger is the lucky one, as we packed a leftover hamburger patty for him, sandwiched between two dense slices of Anadama, of course!