The Good Vices by Dr. Harry Ofgang & Erik Ofgang

Author:Dr. Harry Ofgang & Erik Ofgang
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-06-03T16:00:00+00:00

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On a summer’s day in New York City, we’re enjoying a slice of pizza at the original Patsy’s Pizzeria in East Harlem. The quintessentially New York pie sold here is a thin-crust slice of paradise. Although the pizza dough is made with white flour, it retains some of the dough-making artistry of old, with the right amount of crispness and chewiness, and of course, it has the delicious and nutritious lycopene-rich tomato sauce.

Farther downtown in New York City at Grand Central Terminal (a short walk from our Park Avenue office), there is Nordic-style rye bread offered for sale at the Great Northern Food Hall. The hall is owned by Claus Meyer, the founder of the legendary restaurant Noma in Copenhagen, whom The New York Times described as a “bread evangelist.” He told the Times that “rugbrod [rye bread] is like wine in France or olive oil in Italy,” and added, “It is more than food. It is history. It is culture, and agriculture.”8

Biting into the rye bread he sells gives one a sense of bread’s history and what it could be again in the future. Dark, dense, and wonderfully chewy, this rugbrod is rich with flavors most of us are not accustomed to in bread, but should become better acquainted with in our diets.

Thanks to the locavore movement, there are artisan bread makers across the country who are producing true whole-wheat bread that is not only more nutritious but more delicious than its white-flour counterparts. If you can’t find a good bread maker near where you live, making your own is also a great option.

While Erik was growing up, our house was filled with the aroma of fresh-made whole-wheat bread, homemade whole-wheat pasta, and other whole-wheat products like cookies, waffles, and pancakes, all made from wheat berries just ground in a small grinder in the kitchen.

The bread was airy and rich with a crisp crust and soft interior, the pasta was as good as we’ve had anywhere, and the pancakes have yet to be equaled and have left us with a permanent dislike of white-flour pancakes.

If you’re not accustomed to whole wheat and whole grains, you may need to retrain your taste buds. Think of it like craft beer versus light beer. Light beer is easier to drink, has less flavor overall and therefore less flavor to dislike, but once you develop a taste for IPAs, sours, stouts, and other craft beers, it’s hard to go back to what then starts to feel like a watered-down beer.

Try to go to bakeries that either grind their own grains or get them freshly ground from local organic suppliers. Better yet, as suggested earlier, grind your own as needed and try baking some naturally fermented sourdough bread. If that’s not possible, still go for 100 percent whole grain.

After visiting the Great Northern Food Hall, we gaze up at the clear, crisp fall sky above Grand Central and can’t help but remember Ralph Waldo Emerson’s words: “The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

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