I think this is pretty cool: local bread company Naturebake just released a new kind of bread that's made almost entirely of ingredients sourced from within 100 miles of their factory in Milwaukie.
Ninety-five percent of each loaf's ingredients are from Oregon: 55 percent of each loaf is wheat, oats, and flax grains from Corvallis's A2R Farms, 33 percent is water from Clackamas County, and seven percent is honey from Albany's Olsen Honey Farm. The non-local five percent is out-of-state yeast, sea salt, and gluten. I took a loaf home this weekend and ate a couple slices. It's tastes like… bread. Good bread. I'm not too great at describing foods, but Naturebake is company run by relatives of Dave Dahl (of Dave's Killer Bread fame), and the Oregon Grains loaf tastes like one of Dave's Killer Bread multigrain loaves.
This is a good example of mainstreaming of local foods. I think it's great that you can now go to Fred Meyer and buy a bag of normal-looking, sliced bread that costs just as much as other nice bread but that's almost all made in Oregon. Foods with lower-carbon footprints don't have to be in-season, Portland-grown root vegetables. I hope more big companies follow Naturebake's lead and realize it makes sense to source ingredients locally.
To read the rest of this story please go to: The Portland Mercury
