 A Practical Ballet of Bread Baking
It's precise. It's practical. It even verges on the balletic. It also has given Montana a competitive advantage in world wheat marketing, or at least that is one implication that can be drawn from an international study of millers and bakers. "It" is Montana State University's Cereal Quality Lab, where Mom's intuitive plummeling of bread dough becomes bread baking with an "attitude." The goal of the lab is to make sure all Montana-bred wheat flours are precisely tested to ensure that they make good bread and noodles. That way, the wheat breeders know exactly how their creations compare to those developed by other states and nations. Jackie Kennedy and Harvey Teslaa, technicians with years of experience in the Cereal Quality Lab, take consistency of testing the flours to an incredible level, or, more correctly, to a very credible level. Whereas Mom might have a 20-line recipe, the lab follows eight pages of precise guidelines. The guidelines dictate a rapid choreography of movements and measurements sometimes accurate to 0.0001 grams. The work flows from one station to another with quick measurements, notations of findings, precise mixing, precision shaping before second rise. . . and on and on. The work on noodles proceeds similarly, but with tests for firmness, springiness, cohesiveness and several other characteristics all leading up to noodle scores. If Jackie and Harvey didn't love the work (and have the aroma of baking bread to comfort them), the pace would be daunting. Deb Habernicht, who manages the lab, puts all the results together for us as well as U.S. and foreign buyers. "Millers have a specification they want. We need to make sure the wheats we develop for Montana don't just grow well, but also produce the desired end product. It's a challenge trying to relate experimental methods to commercial applications," says Habernicht, who grew up on a Jerome, Idaho wheat farm. She and her predecessor Charles McGuire seem to have met that challenge, as evidenced by the prevalence of MSU-bred wheats grown in Montana, the high ranking by international millers and scientists outside Montana of some of those wheats, and special value-added shipments that have begun between Montana wheat producers and both domestic and foreign buyers. "The lab deals with all the agencies that work with world wheat marketing," says Luther Talbert, MSU spring wheat breeder, "but probably more important than that, there are buyers from Asia who come here several times a year, and the first thing on their list is to visit the Cereal Quality Lab." When prospective wheat buyers are on campus, the interaction with the Cereal Quality Lab can be anything from looking at bread wheat mixograms to eating noodles from a big frothing pot. That makes the lab very popular with the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, a marketing group funded by producers wheat and barley check-off funds. "We are probably the biggest fans in the state of Montana of the Cereal Quality Lab," says Jim Christianson of the committee. "What Luther Talbert and Phil Bruckner (the winter wheat breeder) demonstrate are the characteristics that mean everything to a grower, but only the Cereal Quality Lab can demonstrate what that wheat is worth to a miller, a baker and ultimately to a consumer." MP3 sound file of Jim Christianson's comments. Basically, the goal of the breeding and testing programs is to make sure that MSU produces dual quality wheats, those useful for both bread and noodles. "We're closer to that now than we ever have been because of that laboratory," adds Christianson. "The one thing that has been constant with the Cereal Quality Laboratory for the last three decades in the state is that end-use quality is an integral part of any MSU wheat release, and that is really important to us all." To see a version of this same story with more larger photos, click here.
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