Yesterday and today I tried Artisan Bread Organic’s buckwheat loaf.
Here is the ingredients list:
Revitalised filtered water, freshly milled (on our in-house gluten free mill) organic buckwheat flour and whole buckwheat (37%), freshly milled demeter wholegrain rice flour (17%), natural leaven (gluten free)*, sea salt, organic caraway seeds. Contents Naturally gluten free. May contain Sesame seeds, gluten.
So here are a few things that spring to mind immediately: it’s a little over-the-top isn’t it? “revitalised filtered water”? Sorry, this sort of marketing bull leaves me cold. As this over-hyped water is the first thing in the list, it means that there is more water than anything else. And it costs over £4 a loaf including delivery.
The most worrying thing is the last entry: “May contain… gluten”. This is in spite of the fact that it’s sold as gluten free, and one has no chance to read the ingredients until AFTER delivery. But it may account for something that occurred to me yesterday, more further on.
As you can see from the picture, the loaf is about 3.5 inches or 9cm on a side. It has the weighty feel of a black German rye loaf, so I decided to slice it as thinly as possible, in the same way that type of bread is generally served.
The inside of the loaf is densely packed with few or no air bubbles. I cut 2 thin slices and buttered them, then took a taste. As I found it quite sour and strongly flavored, I decided that I would put a little raspberry preserve on to make it nicer. Unfortunately, the thin smear I usually go for was nowhere near enough to mask the taste, so I ended up putting it on really thickly, and even then, I could still taste the bread through it. I think this bread either has to be eaten on its own and savored for itself (if you like it) or maybe Marmite or Gentleman’s Relish would be strong enough not to be completely swamped by it.
I would like to be able to tell you how moist the bread was, but with that much jam on the top, it wasn’t possible to tell. It did seem quite dry, but like I said, the jam kinda made up for that. It was very filling.
A couple of hours later I had to rush to the toilet – and as this is the only thing I can pin it on, I have to assume it was the bread – especially now I have checked the details on the label (which I’ve only just done).
Just to check whether it was the bread or something else, I ate another couple of slices a few minutes ago. I’ll edit this post with my final conclusion on that aspect.
When I ate it this morning, I was finding it hard going, because it was just so unpleasant tasting, and I had difficulty in finishing the 2 slices. I binned the rest of the loaf, which is something I very rarely do, but there is no way I’m going to eat any more of it. Suffice to say, I will not be buying this again.
Tomorrow I’m going to try the linseed loaf. Wish me better luck with this one!
UPDATE: There was no repeat of the incident mentioned, which means (a) it was something else or (b) the first couple of slices had brushed up against a non-gluten free loaf in the factory and I’m getting more sensitive than I realized. I guess a is more likely, but seems strange, as I have a gluten free kitchen and have not eaten anything from “outside” that wasn’t carefully checked first.
