[Video] From the seed to the peasant bakery with Nicolas Supiot

When you think of the bread or when buying a bread, what comes to your mind first? Is it the smell, the look or the moment of enjoying its taste? Do you think of the baker who made it? Are you interested in the story behing the bread and how long did it take to make the bread? Are you wondering where your baker sourced his/her flour from? Or where did the grain grow? Is it local or imported from the other part of the world?  How did the farmer treat the crop while growing? Did he used pesticides? Where were the grains stored after harvest?

I try to think of bread as a journey. It has a story. It starts and ends somewhere. The end destination is important (that’s us eating it), but it’s the actions and decisions on the way to the goal that make the goal – well, even better.

It’s the selection of seeds, the way of cultivating grains, the sense and awareness of the environment, understanding of the plants’ behavior, the choice of cleaning and storing grain berries, the milling process, and the bread making process. It’s about making things CLEAR.

“And it’s also about the chain from the farmer to the miller and to the baker. However, not as a one way street, but as a crossroads of knowledge and experience sharing, all of them understanding each others needs and expanding each others horizons. “

Nicolas Supiot, French, is all in one. He is farmer, he grows heritage varieties of wheat, he mills his own flour, he makes and bakes traditional sourdough bread. He is a peasant baker.

And he also prepares workshops to share his knowledge forward to all the people interested in such way of farming and baking. I visited his workshop From the seed to the peasant bakery in June and below I present the (first!) video about our 5-day experience. Hope you enjoy the video and feel the good energy present at the workshop as much as we did.

I clearly remember reading about Nicolas’ bread baking three years ago. His way of handling the dough was somehow magical and that feeling stayed inside of me through all these years, until finally this year all planets alligned and led me and my friend Alessandro from Clear Sicily to France. The 5-day workshop was held at the beautiful old Nicolas’ farm in the Brittany, NW France, near Rennes, at the Ecosite Les Jardins de Siloe.

The purpose of the workshop was to guide us through the bread journey and to understand decisions, consequences and outcomes in the field, within the mill and in the bakery.

The workshop was more than just a technical way of providing knowledge. It was about the metaphores of our lives in many many levels. What kept coming through out the week and through the words and experience exchanges, was the idea of reflectance or mirroring. All that you see, experience and feel, is in a way a reflection of your own being, your actions and your state and you cannot separate yourself from that reality. Let’s think about that for a second. In bread terms, this sounds as Nicolas would point out:

” You are the bread you make. “

I will write more about the bread journey, clear flour and clear bread in the next posts and months, so stay tuned.

If you have any question regarding the workshop, leave a comment below or drop me an e-mail to [email protected].

And below are some photo impressions.

Field of mixed seeding of heritage wheat and fava beans.

Happy me.

Talk soon!

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SAVEUR BLOG AWARDS

PS: Remember the last year’s surprise when My Daily Sourdough Bread blog was nominated as the finalist in the Annual Saveur Blog Awards? This year, the awards are back! The last year has been an interesting journey of meeting new inspiring people in New York and elsewhere and discovering the beauty of bread baking around the world. Thank you for your support.

I would be grateful to the Moon and back if you took a second to nominate my blog in Best Food Obsessive Award or Best Photography category (or in any other) – click HERE.