Bread made from Kernza to be available at Prairie Festival

For many years, the Land Institute’s pursuit of a new paradigm for agriculture has produced much food for thought.

This weekend, however, there will be something you can really sink your teeth into.

As part of the organization’s annual Prairie Festival, people will have the opportunity to buy bread made partially from Kernza, a perennial wheatgrass being developed at the institute.

The bread is being baked at WheatFields Bakery and Cafe in Lawrence with assistance from WheatFields’ founder Thom Leonard, who now lives in Athens, Ga.

Leonard previously operated Great Plains Bread, a bakery in Salina. He also worked at the Land Institute, as a gardener and as part of a seed exchange that was intended to help preserve older strains of various grains.

Leonard said he’d been experimenting with Kernza flour at home, “making little batches, 4 pounds of dough at a time, and I thought it was great.”

That experimentation led him to suggest baking a larger batch for the Prairie Festival; the bread is being baked today, and Leonard is bringing it to the Land Institute Saturday.

Kernza “is not wheat as we know it now,” Leonard said, and its characteristics — such as lower gluten — mean it has to be treated differently.

Leonard’s recipe blends the Kernza with organic, unbleached wheat flour, using 30 percent Kernza.

“At the level we’re using it, 30 percent, it makes very little difference” in making the bread, Leonard said. “At this level, you don’t do anything different.”

After working with the dough Thursday, Leonard said, the baker at WheatFields described the dough as “stickier, but smooth and extensible.”

While 30 percent Kernza might not make much difference in the dough, the fact that it can be used in such a high ratio could make a difference to the planet.

“If you took just 30 percent of the most erodible land out of annual wheat production, and put it into a perennial cover (such as Kernza) instead, that would be huge,” Leonard said.

He added that Priti Cox, wife of Land Institute scientist Stan Cox, has great success using 100 percent Kernza to make Indian flatbread, and it’s also a good substitute for wheat flour in tortillas.

– Reporter Mike Strand can be reached at 822-1418 or by email at [email protected].