NASHOBA BROOK BAKERY HISTORY

Nashoba Brook Bakery opened in early September 1998 in an old warehouse building in West Concord, MA. Two high school friends, Stu and John, together founded a bread company that they hoped would eventually supply a variety of real sourdough breads to communities throughout the greater Boston area. In the years before the bakery opened, Stu trained as the head baker for a successful Burlington VT bakery where he learned the 6,000 year old tradition of making real sourdough. John graduated from law school in 1996 but pivoted and decided to join Stu in building a bread company. As part of their vision, they designed a café wrapping around and looking in on the bread kitchen and out over the Nashoba Brook as it meanders past a cobble stone retaining wall and under an old wooden foot bridge.

Ever since, the bakery has grown slowly but steadily. Along the way, its footprint increased from 5,000 square feet to over 15,000; production grew from a few hundred loaves each day to at times more than 10,000 loaves per day; and the distribution area expanded throughout the Northeast. Over the decades though, one thing has remained constant: hand-made real sourdough is both at the heart in the hearths here at Nashoba Brook Bakery. The Slowrise of each dough is powered only by captured wild yeast, and so every loaf of NBB real sourdough is more nutritious, more delicious and easier to digest.

SLOW RISE BREADS FROM NASHOBA BROOK BAKERY.

ANYTHING WORTH HAVING IS WORTH WAITING FOR.

If you said that Nashoba Brook Bakery was founded on a friendship you would be partly correct. If you added passion, artistry, and a smidgen of vision you would almost have captured the essence of our Bakery. The final ingredient though is a local one: our own homegrown yeast. Yes, that’s right — think of it this way — our breads are powered by “slowrise.”

"Slowrise" is one way of saying that the doughs we mix and the breads we bake owe much of their glossy, web-like texture to the mellow leavening action of the sourdough starter created from local, wild Concord grapes by Stu Witt, Co-founder and Head Baker of Nashoba Brook Bakery. Our breads take almost 24 hours from mixing to cooling, and that long slow development results in delicious, nutritious and easy to digest breads. In simplest terms, the long leavening period enhances the flavor, releases the nutritional value locked in the wheat flour and breaks down the carbohydrate into its more easily digested components. The natural yeast itself also has important health benefits for your digestive tract (the good bacteria survive in the center of the loaves where the internal temperature does not get hot).

Slowrise has another meaning to us though that is less practical and more philosophical. We like to think of slowrise as a symbolic counterpoint to the culture of instant gratification. The old saying that "anything worth having is worth waiting for" resonates with us. In the course of busy days that sometimes overwhelm us all, we try to remember to breathe deeply and not rush always to the next thing. Come sit by the Brook and watch the doughs slowly rise and see if you don’t know what we mean…

Nashoba Brook breads are not appropriate for customers with celiac disease, wheat allergies, or other diagnosed medical conditions. All customers who have been medically advised to maintain a gluten- or wheat-free diet should consult their physicians before considering consuming our products

ADDITIONAL READING

GLUTEN SENSITIVITY? MISS EATING GOOD BREAD?

Bread has been a part of the human diet for more than 6000 years, but until the mid-20th Century all bread was made exclusively with varied strains of naturally occurring yeast captured by resourceful bread bakers around the world. However, after WWII, almost every bakery in the world started using commercial bakers’ yeast. This new form of yeast, manufactured in a laboratory, works much faster than natural yeast. Bread production times were reduced from a minimum of 12 hours to closer to 3 hours, and, driven by the cost savings that resulted, bakers rushed to adapt their recipes. Unconsidered in the yeast revolution though were the health effects of the change.

The new “quick rise” bread is harder to digest. Because the dough does not have time to develop, the result is a mostly un-digestible wheat bomb. Nutrients present in the wheat flour remain essentially locked up and unavailable to your body. On the other hand, when bread is made with natural yeast, the long slow rising times allow for doughs to ferment, and enzymes in the yeast work to break down the complex carbohydrates in wheat flour. This process unlocks nutrients and makes them “bio-available” to your body for uptake. During that “slowrise” other good things happen which result in bread that is more delicious, nutritious and easy to digest than bread made with commercial bakers’ yeast. Much of the gluten present in wheat flour is broken down during the longer leavening time, and so people with gluten sensitivity report being able to eat “slowrise” sourdough breads without symptoms. Also, the pro-biotic effect of the lactobacillus culture present in the yeast is preserved in the cooler center of the loaf. The glycemic index for naturally yeasted sourdough bread is much lower than for most commercially produced breads. In sum, the 6000 year-old way of making bread is good for your health. So all of us at Nashoba Brook Bakery encourage you to enjoy the flavor, savor the health benefits, and know you are treating your body right when you eat our “slowrise” breads.

Nutritionist
David Ingalls, MS, RD
co-founder and co-creator of the Zing nutrition bar