Dr. Stephen S. Jones - How to achieve sustainable food production for increased profit and well-being

Stephen Jones is a wheat breeder and the Director of the The Bread Lab. Stephen has a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of California at Davis and teaches graduate courses in advanced classical genetics and in the history and ethics of genetics. His first wheat crop was on five acres at Chico State University’s student farm in 1977. Together with his graduate students he breeds wheat and other grains for local uses to be grown on small farms in the coastal West, the upper Northeast and other regions of the country. The Bread Lab is a combination think tank and baking laboratory where scientists, bakers, chefs, farmers, maltsters, brewers, distillers and millers experiment with improved flavor, nutrition and functionality of regional and obscure wheats, barley, other small grains and beans.

Contact details:
Dr. Stephen Jones
Director
joness@wsu.edu
360-707-4640

The Bread Lab: http://thebreadlab.wsu.edu/the-bread-lab/

The Bread Lab

“If there’s one thing to say about Western Washington’s Skagit Valley, home to that little Bread Lab that’s smashing everyone’s ideas about wheat….it’s that these people are jacked on farming.”
Cassandra Landry, Editor in Chief, Mise Magazine

When bakers and chefs discovered that wheat varietals number in the tens of thousands, and that flour, milled fresh from the whole grain, brings out distinctive flavors, the Bread Lab was the next logical step. Dr. Stephen Jones, the founder and director of the Bread Lab, designed the mission to combine science, art, curiosity, and innovation to move forward whole grain milling, baking, cooking, malting, brewing and distilling using regionally available grains. “The skilled baker can make the perfect anything with white flour,” commented Dr. Jones. “Whole wheat is more challenging.”[1] To this end, the Bread Lab works with local farmers, millers, and entrepreneurs as well as national corporations such as Chipotle and Patagonia Provisions. The La Conner High School wanted help introducing local whole grains into their biscuits and cookies; Chipotle wanted to remove additives from their tortillas. In both cases the criteria was the same: use whole grain flour and make them taste great.

The task before Dr. Jones, a plant geneticist, Jonathan Bethony, the Lab’s resident baker, and the Plant Breeding Program’s doctoral students is to select from the thousands of wheat varietals (or barley or oat) that are trial tested each year in the WSU Research Center’s experimental fields. They base their choices on how well the varieties perform for the farmer, and then narrow the selection to the ones that work for the producer – the baker, chef, brewer or distiller – and that appeal to the eater, the final judge.

“What sets The Bread Lab apart from almost all other chef-driven labs chipping away at what is possible in the realm of food—the Nordic Food Lab, the Momofuku Culinary Lab—is that they exist, first and foremost, for the farmers, not for culinary advancement. It may appear, based on their passion for bread, that it’s all about reclaiming flavor, but it has to work in terms of yield, in terms of cost, and ability to sell. Nutrition, flavor, everything else gets wrapped up into that package.” Mise Magazine.

The Bread Lab’s areas of focus include the following research and development categories:

Plant Breeding – developing superior regional varieties through traditional breeding methods that focus on flavor and nutrition;
Production – selecting varieties suited for regional climates to maximize yields and grower profitability;
Processing – identifying grain varieties that produce quality flours, and identifying milling and processing techniques that preserve wholegrain nutrients;
Consumption – connecting the consumer back to their local producers through a healthy and flavorful eating experience.

In each step The Bread Lab faculty, doctoral students, and staff provide continuous evaluation through rigorous, scientific assessment; concurrently, the resident baker in the Lab’s bakery conducts hands-on experiments to explore the flavor and performance of each grain line.

Bread Lab research is redefining bread and taking the lead in a national movement to restore whole grain culture and products to America’s mealtime experiences.

[1] Dr. Stephen Jones, The New York Times, June 17^th, 2015.

Videos:

15.04.2020

30.01.2018 Clif Bar is committed to funding five organic endowments (5 organic research chairs) by 2020. This will provide ongoing, lifetime organic research at these five universities—and organic research is historically and dramatically underfunded in the U.S. compared with conventional plant breeding research. This year, CLIF selected The Bread Lab and Prof. Steve Jones at Washington State University, to support the bread lab’s work, and more importantly—and the primary focus for the digital body of work—to address the economic challenges facing rural America.

3.10.2017 ‘Bread is science. It’s physics, it’s chemistry, it’s biology – it’s alive,’ said Dr. Stephen Jones, wheat breeder, home baker, and director of The Washington State University Bread Lab. Since 2011, this place has explored the science of tasty whole grains

10.10.2016 For too long, we’ve bred wheat for yield rather than for taste and nutrition. Dr. Stephen Jones, pioneering head of The Bread Lab at Washington State University, explains how his work is bringing delicious flavor back to wheat. Stephen Jones, PhD, Director of the Bread Lab, Washington State University

8.05.2015 By growing a specialty wheat, and cutting out a bunch of middlemen, the farmer can get a better price for her wheat. The Bread Lab could be an important tool for keeping some mid-size farmers afloat.

Good bread needs no more than four ingredients: flour, yeast, water and salt. Wheats were once regional and adapted to the land; grain was milled locally and often baked as wholegrain flour into dense loaves. In Britain and the US, most of us have not eaten this kind of bread in so many generations there is no longer even a folk memory of what it tasted like. The desire for lighter and whiter bread is steeped in history: finer, paler, sifted flour was more expensive and the province of the rich, and as such has been a enduring trend, even as flour became a bland and cheap commodity, often bleached to make it even whiter
Wendell Steavenson, ‘Flour power: meet the bread heads baking a better loaf’, The Guardian, 10 October, 2019

Additional information on whole grains

7.10.2016 Top chefs are discovering that whole grains open up a new world of textures and flavors to be explored. Cookbook author Maria Speck, winner of the Julia Child Award, offers her sage advice on flavor pairings, and explains why whole grains offer a culinary advantage. Maria Speck, Author of Simply Ancient Grains and Ancient Grains for Modern Meals Recorded at the Whole Grains Away From Home conference, organized in September 2016 by Oldways and the Oldways Whole Grains Council. Please visit http://wholegrainscouncil.org/present… for details about CPE credits for registered dietitians.