Beach BreaD

Meet The Breads

The Country Blonde

A rustic white bread with a hearty crust. The ideal companion for insalata caprese or salade nicoise or to sop up that sauce.

Ingredients: organic wheat flour, filtered water, salt, sourdough.

Price per loaf (ca. 2 lbs) : $6

The Seeded Whole Grain

A delicious whole grain bread with a crackling crust and laced with seeds. Loves to be topped with avocados, cheeses, hams, grilled veggies or just plain butter.

Ingredients are all organic: whole wheat flour, wheat flour, filtered water, salt, sourdough. Sesame seeds, roasted pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds.

Price per loaf (ca 2 lbs): $9

Occasionally, there will be variations available.

The Boule is your classic sop-up-the-sauce bread, made from organic wheat, salt, yeast and filtered water. The same dough could also be shaped into a baguette, if that’s what you fancy.

The Ciabatta same as the boule, but with a hint of olive oil

The German Rye A true winter bread; hearty, nutty, lasts forever. Made from a mix of organic whole wheat, rye, yeast, salt and filtered water.

The Secret Sauce

All of our breads, unless stated otherwise, are made with sourdough that came to life in Italy more than 120 years ago. It was the great great aunt of my best friend’s husband who gave birth to the first batch, supposedly under an olive tree in Tuscany. The farm is still there and when I went to visit, I came home with a little tupperware of that precious stuff. It was so alive, that it burst the lid of the container while we were in the air. Upon my arrival I learned to my great relief that it is totally legal to import yeast and sourdough from Italy to the US. Even though “alive”, they are welcomed by the Department of Agriculture and Dough or whoever is in charge.

There might be only an Atom left of that initial starter in Beachbread’s sourdough, but it makes all the difference. After all, it has been kept alive by being fed water and flour over a century. This sourdough is not as tart as its San Francisco style cousins but more of an European elegance. The je ne sais quoi of beachbread. Can’t replicate it. You’ve got to try it.

How to treat your bread

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Treated with respect, your bread will be tasty for four to five days if you can leave it alone for so long, that is.

Beach Breads are made without any conserving agents, so it is very important to store them properly to keep their crust fresh and their crumb moist.

The best way to store them is in a pot. Yes, any old cooking pot will do, as long as it has a lid. Even better is a container that allows your bread to breathe, like one of them fancy breadboxes. A Römertopf or terra-cotta baking-dish would also be an excellent choice.

If you have no suitable containers, wrap your BB in a cotton or linen towel.

If you do not have a spare towel handy, leave your bread in the paper bag it came in. It will not be as happy as in a pot, but it will still do better than in a plastic bag. Don’t store it in a plastic-bag, unless you like your bread rubbery or plan to toast it.

Beach Bread will turn stale in the fridge faster than you can cool that bottle of Rosé.

But it’s an excellent candidate for freezing – whole, or cut into slices.

Beach Bread is great as toast, likes to be fried, smothered, buttered, crumbled, paired with savory and sweet companions. It really plays well with everything you like.