Grains are Good
WSU’s grain research unit, the BreadLab, hosted its first “Grain Gathering” in eight years this past weekend. The event, which draws farmers, bakers, milners, poets, nutritionists, teachers, scientists and plant breeders from around the world to exchange information and ideas about grains culminated in a community dinner hosted at the Chuckanut Brewery on Higgins Road. Keynote speaker at the dinner was research scientist Claudia Carter, who discussed working with young people in California schools to teach them how to grow and then cook with grains, emphasizing that feed is “legacy, connection and healing.” To emphasize her points, fresh cooked tortillas were passed around the crowd while she described how students were thrilled to learn to make their own tortillas from the grain they had grown and processed.
The meal served to attendees was an opportunity for the cooks to demonstrate the many types of grains available and the wide variety of ways they can be consumed, from gumbo, to ice rice, to drinkable grains and more traditional breads, cookies and muffins. Some people were rye specialists, some were focused on amaranth and others corn, but the common thread was they all wanted guests to taste what grains can taste like if not overly processed.
The BreadLab hosts different graduate students every few years with different areas of interest. Their stated mission is to “develop novel grain varieties that work well for the farmer, the miller, the baker, the chef and the consumer.” The Grain Gathering was conceived by former BreadLab director Steve Jones to facilitate creative thinking about nutritious whole grains. Ideas such as the Community Loaves program, a collective of home bakers who deliver fresh bread to local foodbanks weekly, have been born at the Grain Gathering. To learn more about their work and the BreadLab Collective, visit their website: breadlab.wsu.edu.
