Great British Food Awards – Danish Rugbrød
The rye’s the limit – The story behind our award-winning Danish Rugbrød
It’s our hard-working hero, our super-charged stalwart, our small-but-perfectly-formed loaf of goodness. And now our beloved Danish Rugbrød is having its moment in the spotlight, after being judged the best bread in Britain at the Great British Food Awards. Our bakers are turning somersaults over this one because the award was judged by our absolute bread hero Richard Bertinet – founder of Bertinet Bakery and author of our favourite home-baking books.
As its many fans already know, our Rugbrød is an extraordinary loaf: a rye sourdough that’s dense but not heavy because it’s packed with tasty linseeds and sunflower seeds. Whether you’re snacking on it with peanut butter, making the best eggs and avocado you’ll ever eat, dipping it into olive oil or going full Scandi with a gorgeous open sandwich, you’ll relish its depth and length of flavour.
For that we have to thank our bakers and our millers: we use an exceptional wholegrain stoneground rye flour grown and milled by our friend Dr Andrew Wilkinson at Gilchesters Organics in Northumberland.
Andrew, who’s an authority on these matters, says organic rye is a true superfood. On his 600-acre farm near Hadrian’s Wall, he has pioneered the organic growing in the UK of ancient and ‘minor’ cereals such as rye, spelt, Emmer and Einkorn. He has also been part of a European research project investigating the health benefits of such cereals, particularly their antioxidant properties.
“Our microbiologist colleagues compared the antioxidant capacity of different cereals – that is, their ability, when we eat them, to help us restore damaged cell tissues,” he says of the research, which compared the cereals with a commercially available antioxidant food supplement.
“Rye was off the chart,” Andrew says. “It was phenomenal. This is an unusually special cereal – genuinely a superfood.”
Rye’s awesome ability to supply us with beneficial tocopherols – the immune-boosting compounds better known as Vitamin E, which have been linked to cancer prevention – derives from its natural ability to protect itself from attack by weeds and fungi. “It has a root system that pumps chemicals into the soil around its roots to keep away other competitive plants,” Andrew says. These self-protective properties, he adds, also make rye perfectly suited to the organic farming system, which doesn’t permit the use of herbicide and fungicide sprays.
After years of research in collaboration with other growers, academics and plant breeders across Europe, Andrew has found a variety of rye that thrives on his Northumberland farm as part of a conservation-friendly mixed farming system. “It is a ridiculously tall plant; it can be two metres high,” he says, explaining that ‘tall-straw’ cereals farmed organically in rotation with livestock are integral to his strategy for nurturing healthy soils and nutritious plants.
After harvest, the rye is gently stoneground at Gilchesters’ state-of-the-art stone mill – a method of milling that’s much kinder to the grain than the steel rollers used in industrial-scale flour production. That means more vitamins, more minerals and, crucially, more flavour, going into every supercharged slice of our award-winning Danish Rugbrød.
If you haven’t tried it yet, pop into our in our Kendal and Altrincham Bread Stores for a taste. You can also buy Danish Rugbrød and its cute little sibling Mini Rugbrød – perfect for the cheeseboard! – via nationwide mail order at lovinglyartisan.com
