Joe McNamee: A $60 loaf of bread is the fetishisation of foodstuff

Angela Nöthling with two spiced rye bloomer loaves. Picture: Larry Cummins

In these polarised and fractious times, nothing unites us like an opportunity to pile on the faux outrage at an exorbitantly overpriced foodstuff, a mass- delirium of dopamine-driven ‘hate watching’. I’m recalling Tokyo’s Oak Door steakhouse $900 Golden Giant Burger with gold-dusted bun; Salt Bae’s €2,000 Golden Tomahawk Steak, wrapped in edible 24-carat gold leaf; and LA grocery Erewhon’s $1,000-plus luxury celebrity smoothies.

Egregious overpricing is a near given in the luxury goods market but rarely attracts similar scrutiny. However, almost everyone on the planet eats. Though commonplace to skewer ‘out of touch’ politicians for not knowing the price of a common household staple, none have yet suggested a litre of milk is, say, €30. And when it comes to bread, consumed daily by 80% of the world’s population, even a lump of old concrete will concur that New York City bakery Rye by Martin Auer’s rye bread is extortionate at $60 a loaf. Or is it?

A sliced pan costs between 85c and €2.20 in Irish supermarkets. But what about bread that isn’t industrially produced and laden with hidden additives? That would be a naturally fermented handmade bread (sourdough) using only flour, water, salt and time to ferment, baked in small batches. Every member of Real Bread Ireland (RBI) produces such a loaf.

When RBI was founded in 2016, there were six founding baker members. There are now more than 220 throughout Ireland. These bakers have revolutionised Irish bread consumption, to the point that the multiples began selling sourdough. Actually, it was ‘pseud-dough’, industrially produced with added ‘sourdough flavouring’. But sourdough consumers could discern the difference and divine the lack of comparable nutritional density. Dunnes Stores now sells proper sourdough bread, via the ABC franchise.

Rye bread is another beast again: dark, dense, delicious, it improves after baking and can last up to 10 days. The Germans consume massive quantities of schwarzbrot (100% wholemeal rye) and roggenbrot (a minimum 90% rye). It is daily bread in Poland (the world’s largest grower of rye grain) and Scandinavia. The Finns eat 13kg per capita each year.

Irish rye is grown primarily for fodder. Rye flour is a premium product and RBI members use Dunany Farm Organic Rye, grown in Co Louth. Yet RBI’s baking guru, Joe Fitzmaurice of Riot Rye, though no longer baking commercially, sold a 900g 100% organic rye for €4 last year. Ben Le Bon, of Seeds Bakery in Cork, sells a 700g rye boule for €5. Irish rye bread queen, Angela Nöthling, of Cork-based Ryes & Shine, sells a variety of rye breads, starting at €5.50. Her flagship schwarzbrot (860g) is €10 and lasts up to three weeks. Factor in time, labour, energy, and other costs, and all these superb breads are probably underpriced.

Rye by Martin Auer’s prime NYC 10-year lease location costs $56,000 per annum. They only use premium organic rye flour imported from Austria and their $60 loaf is so large (1,500g) it can be purchased in quarters. OK, their overheads are higher than any RBI member but the €60 loaf, though supposedly delicious, is still hideously overpriced if not quite at the nosebleed level perceived by the digital death squads. (Top sourdough price in Jim Lahey’s Sullivan Street Bakery, also in NYC, is €14.)

Now, having defended them, let me do the opposite. Co-owner Tim Auer stated one of the reasons for the cost was that production is a ‘very technical process’. Joe Fitzmaurice teaches bread baking in his Riot Rye bakery school. One recent ‘graduate’, a Montessori teacher, regularly and successfully bakes with her young pupils. Real bread baking takes time and craft but it is not rocket science.

But it is when you learn Charles Kushner, father of Jared, is the ultimate owner of Rye by Martin Auer: the penny drops — the hidden ingredients in the $60 loaf are the worst excesses of hyper-capitalism. This is nothing more than the fetishisation of a food product, rendering it as a ‘must-have’ exclusive luxury item, food as fashion, rather than to nourish and sustain. I doubt Rye by Martin Auer will see out their 10-year lease. I am fully confident, 10 years from now, Angela Nöthling will still be baking equally delicious rye bread from her tiny micro-bakery, in her Mayfield dining room, in Cork City.

Table Talk

The Gorey Whiskey Festival (November 6-7), the inaugural event run by the Gorey Whiskey Club, will take place in multiple venues around the Wexford town, kicking off on the Friday at the Amber Springs hotel for a dinner and whiskey event featuring JJ Corry.

Other events over the weekend include cocktails and snacks, along with multiple tastings featuring Killowen Distillery and Bonders, Boann Distillery, Teelings and Echlinville Distillery.

• goreywhiskeyclub.ie

Having given it a very positive review in these pages less than a year ago, I was saddened to learn that Soul restaurant, on Cork’s Washington St, is closing, as I was especially taken with chef Dan Relihan’s Southern barbecue food stylings.

However, Relihan is too talented to bid him a permanent farewell and I expect to see him strutting his culinary stuff in another Cork restaurant in the very near future.

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There are always a few gems to be found in each graduating class of the SuperValu Food Academy and I was especially taken with the Spice Atlas Rich & Smoky Tandoori Tikka Marinade (200g jar, €3.95).

Spice Atlas Rich & Smoky Tandoori Tikka Marinade

All you have to do is coat whatever you’re cooking — chicken, meat, seafood, vegetables — in the marinade and then cook.

I found the longer you leave on the marinade, the better the flavour and when I brined both chicken and fish beforehand, it was better again, potent deep flavours, running from sweet to sour to spicy with a fiery undertow courtesy of ginger and smoked chillies.

• spiceatlas.ie