White Bread (31 page)

In sum, these five big dreams of food and society roused Americans to change their diets and food system, but often at great cost. At root, each one of the five gave us the idea that good eating was a form of combat. We manned the barricades against impurity and contagion and fought to defend the borders of an imagined state of natural harmony. We mobilized science to conquer and tame that same nature, used food to arm ourselves against bodily decay, and rallied to defend the nation by eating right. We fought this combat in the name of protecting our health and the health of society—good things. But our alimentary trench war often had grave consequences for people on the margins or excluded from society. The urgency of defending purity against contagion, nature against artifice, health against weakness, and us against them helped proliferate other social divides.

This is why I like fermentation. Unruly to its core, fermentation defies boundary making and combat mentality. It blurs lines between nature and society and suggests that true security may lie in conscientious impurity, not coerced purity. And it does this from a moral low ground: dreams of purity, naturalness, control, perfect health, and security evoke precise borders and confident certainties, but fermentation can't. It requires acceptance of constant flux and perpetual reconsidering.

Let me explain. The dominant strain in my cracked bowl is probably
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
, the planet's most common baking and brewing yeast. One of its ancestors may have been the first living species domesticated by humanity, our first biotechnology.
3
Of course, by helping humans produce beer, bread, and cheese—the first manufactured foods and the foundations of settled life—yeasts domesticated us as much as we domesticated them.

Although contemporary bioscience hotly debates the origins and ecology of
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
, baking yeasts have not been “wild” or “natural” in any meaningful way for as long as humans have made food. Contrary to popular belief,
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
exists in relatively low levels in the so-called natural environment—even if we include orchards and vineyards in this category. The “natural” habitat of this creature culture is not fields or forests, but rather the artisanal-industrial environment of wineries, breweries, and bakeries. It is the crack in my bowl, the countertop where I knead, the walls of the hundred-plus wineries in my town, the world under my fingernails.
4

For a long time, I prized an heirloom starter inoculated with the must of some particularly prestigious organic tempranillo grapes. The romantic in me—the part of me that would have been at home in Grahamism or the 1960s counterculture—clung to the idea of “wild” yeast. Like artisan bakers around the world, I coveted the powdery must coating grapes, apples, and certain other fruits as a source of wild yeast, and imagined that making a bread starter was something like hunting untamed beasts. There is something comforting about these natural origin stories. Who really wants to hear that the microbes rising in their
pain au levain
come from underneath someone's fingernails? But the natural origin story probably has it backwards: the life forms colonizing my tempranillo grape starter almost certainly came
from
the nooks and crannies of a winery, carried
to
the surface of the fruit on the tools, hands, and containers of the people who handled it. The ecology of
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
is a human ecology, just as certainly as human civilization is, in turn, very much a product of fermentation.

Despite the mystique ascribed to old heirloom starters with noble bloodlines, yeasts also defy human nostalgia.
Saccharomyces
are famed for their genetic volatility, swapping DNA with abandon, constantly morphing and changing. Whether we like it or not, the ecology of old starters is constantly changing.
5
A group of microbiologists has shown that even “pure” commercial strains employed by industrial beer makers are riddled with genetic material from different species, the result of enthusiastic promiscuity in the brewing environment.
6

The dream of naturalness runs strong in food movements, and many avid fermenters cling to visions of authentic connection to nature and the past. Slow Food writer Dominique Fournier concludes, “Whether in domestic rituals or public codes, people use fermented foods to maintain a harmonious relationship with Nature and, more generally, all that is transcendental.”
7
From this perspective, fermentation offers a pathway back to “authentic” and “natural” life. What I see instead is a more complex companion-species relationship, continually remade in the present.
8
This is not a warm fuzzy relationship. When I gaze affectionately at jars of
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
imprisoned in my fridge,
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
does not wag its ascospores at me. Sometimes it refuses to help me bake bread when I need to, and I am aware that any ideas of control or conquest I might have are illusions. I negotiate with the invisible world, trying to cultivate an advantageous ecology; but I don't control it. Even when a batch of starter gets too weak or too sour and I flush it down the toilet, irrepressible
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
has already begun to recolonize my kitchen. It is an agent in my life.

In a similar way, fermentation breeds acceptance of compromise and contradiction. Fermentation rebels against an ultra-pasteurized food system and our culture's obsession with anti-bacterial, hand-sanitizing, border-guarding purity.
9
As a growing body of research on probiotic foods suggests, cultivating a diverse and beneficial bodily ecology may protect our health as much as building ever-tougher barriers against all microbial life. Fermentation teaches us to live with impurity, not against it. But it also teaches the importance of hygiene and cleanliness. Nothing tastes worse than an off-fermented item, and fermentation frequently reminds me that sometimes I
do
need bleach, not to mention clean water, antibiotics, and protection from food-borne pathogens—the fruits of humanity's combat approach to microbes.

In other words, fermentation requires openness to ambiguity, acceptance of impurity, and the courage to redefine preconceived boundaries between “good” and “bad.” This is a dream of good food, and thus loaded with unintended assumptions and complicities that I can't yet see. But unlike the other dreams of good bread presented here, fermentation is not a utopian end state like purity or naturalness. It is a utopian process of intelligent action followed by constant self-questioning, reassessment, revision, and more action. Always negotiated, relational, and changing, fermentation contains an appealing built-in safeguard against hubris.

To be clear, I am not suggesting, like some counterculture guru, that just by making fermented foods we undermine social domination and nurture a more inclusive world. Rather, since it's so apparent that people and social movements think politically through metaphors of good food, I'm offering my own: how would adopting the mindset of fermentation change the way we view the social world, the way we think about food politics?

At the very least it would undermine unhelpful dreams of purity and naturalness. Perhaps it would change the way we relate with one another across seemingly dangerous borders. Certainly it would ask us to abandon the false clarity of moral high grounds and find footing on the harsher slopes of open dialogue. To return to a metaphor used at the beginning of the book, an orientation toward fermentation tells food reformers to begin not by generously inviting others to sit at a table they have already laid according to their vision of “good food,” but by courageously inviting others to join a discussion of how the table should be set in the first place.

All this discussion of critical self-questioning and acceptance of ambiguity might sound terribly risky and impractical. Indeed, it may well be more effective to stick with familiar dreams of purity, naturalness, scientific control, perfect health, and national security. In the end, I'm inclined to feel generous toward any effort to change the food system using whatever dream, as long as it strains against injustices in the status quo more than it reinforces them. Nevertheless, I fear that the combat-minded dreams outlined in this history mostly lead back to the mistakes of the past. Perhaps trying a new dream—fermentation or something else—would help, although it too would have to be examined carefully. The important thing is that food movements keep in mind the recurring paradox of efforts to produce “good bread.” Whether in their early twentieth-century high-modern aspirations or their late twentieth-century anti-modern guises, they both reflect incisive social critique—desires for purer foods and promises of social improvement—and reinforce social hierarchies by (to hearken back to Diana Vreeland) separating those who dream from those who don't. In a time when open disdain for “unhealthy” eaters and discrimination on the basis of dietary habits grow increasingly acceptable, we might do well to spend more time thinking about how we relate to others through food and less about what exactly to eat.

A long time ago I realized that I wanted to write a book about U.S. bread politics. As someone trained in subjects like Latin American history and anthropology and the political economy of Third World agriculture, however, I had no idea what that might mean. Figuring it out has taken lots of help from many people.

Special thanks go to Melanie DuPuis, Susanne Freidberg, and Julie Guthman. My thoughts about food politics emerged out of numerous conversations with them, and all three offered valuable comments on parts of the book at different stages. I also owe a great debt to Paul Apostolidis, Jennifer Boyden, Rachel Hope Cleves, and Johanna Stoberock. Their critiques of an early version of the manuscript proved to be a turning point in the process of writing this book.

Many other people offered comments, suggestions, support, and inspiration along the way. I'd particularly like to thank Warren Belasco, Charlotte Biltekoff, Carolyn de la Peña, Julia Ireland, Jake Kosek, Heather Paxson, Jason Pribilsky, Gary Rollefson, William Rubel, Nathan Sayre, Lynn Sharp, Kyla Wazana Tompkins, Helen Veit, Dan Vernon, and Robert Weis. Members of several groups provided useful feedback on portions of the book: the BFP Collective; the University of California at Irvine Humanities Research Institute Working Group on Food and Race; the University of California Multicampus Research Program on Food and the Body; the University of Minnesota Agrifood Group; and the Yale Agrarian Studies Seminar.

I'm also grateful to folks who extended a hand in my many far-flung research sites: Jon Davis at La Brea Bakeries; Tom Lehman, Kirk O'Donnell, Tim Sieloff, and especially Tammy Popejoy at the American Institute of Baking; Catherine Stortz-Ripley at the
Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune;
and Monica Bretón Salazar at Grupo Bimbo. I wrote much of this book at the Colville Street Patisserie in Walla Walla and am grateful to David, Tiffany, and their staff for keeping me going with encouragement and cookies.

At Whitman College, Robin Lewis, Rhadika McCormick, and Justine Pope provided exceptional research assistance. Several generations of students in my “Whitman in the Global Food System” course served as sounding boards for the ideas that became this book. Generous funding from the Dean of Faculty's Office, Abshire Research Scholar Award, Louis B. Perry Research Award, and Robert Y. Fluno Research Fellowship made the project possible. At the Penrose Library, Jen Johnson waved her magic wand and made even the most obscure sources appear almost overnight. Lee Keane came up with a key piece of reference assistance. Finally, my colleagues in the politics department offered unwavering support, even if they secretly wondered why their Latin Americanist was writing a book about white bread.

I'm grateful to Sam Stoloff for seeing something in white bread and to Matt McGowan for helping me turn that something into a book. Matt has been an adept guide to the world of writing and publishing outside academia. Likewise, getting to work with Alexis Rizzuto at Beacon made the final stages of the project pleasurable. She understood the tensions inherent in writing for academic and nonacademic audiences, and knew how to keep me on track with a deft editorial touch.

Finally, I owe a tremendous debt to my family. My parents, Charles R. Strain and Dianne Hanau-Strain, beautifully mixed unqualified enthusiasm with critical feedback. As early civil rights and antiwar activists, they also shared insights into the 1960s and 1970s counterculture. My brother, Daniel Strain, offered a science writer's critical ear, particularly on matters relating to yeast microbiology. My grandmother Ruth F. Strain and uncle Paul F. Strain helped out with Farrell family lore. Carol Blue and Ken Bobrow, my in-laws, also deserve significant credit: I wouldn't have been able to write this book without their willingness to help with child care. And to the “We demand baguettes” crew itself, I send much love and many thanks: Hana and Sam appreciated even my worst bread experiments and endured many absences as I researched this book. Nine-year-old Hana's great questions ended up influencing
chapters 1
and
2
, while reading “chapter books” aloud to Sam for hours and hours undoubtedly improved my writing.

I dedicate this book to Kate Bobrow-Strain, my companion, bread of my existence, who has walked with me in food politics since Tucson and the days of Red the cow. Thank you for your unstinting support, and for always trying to make me explain myself more clearly.

1
.  Eleanor Bang, “World in a Loaf of Bread,”
Independent Woman
, October 1951, 287.

1
.  The phrase “the bread question” was widely employed by journalists and pundits in the nineteenth century. Depending on the context, it referred to debates about the production of bread, to literal bread supplies or prices, to the state of food supplies more generally, to cost of living, or to workers' wages. Particularly before the decline of bread consumption in the late twentieth century, bread (as in loaves) and bread (as in sustenance) were so connected that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between literal and figurative uses.