Parmesan Pepper Bread

We ship our breads using two business day service. Each of our breads comes wrapped in a paper bread bag. If you’ll be eating it within a few days, store it on the counter. You can also wrap it in plastic and freeze it for longer storage (up to three months). 

Do not be alarmed if the bread seems hard or dry… our crust is the best (and only!) preservative in our bread. It’s almost magical how well it returns to that “fresh-baked” status with a little time in the oven. Crispy, thick crust; soft, chewy crumb inside.

The “bread revival” instructions are written on that paper bread bag for the best and most flavorful results. We suggest putting in a 350 degree oven for approximately 15 minutes. When it’s ready it tastes like it just came out of our Bakehouse oven!

1. Do keep it on the counter for short term storage

Paper bag, wax bag, a bread box (remember those?), all are good. Doesn’t the bread dry out a little when you leave it exposed?. Yeah, a little. But just a little. Because Zingerman’s breads are made with so much less yeast than most you’ll find that they hold up much, much longer in their natural state.

Now, I’m not saying that your loaf will be exactly the same after three days of sitting on your counter. Bread made without the addition of preservatives is going to get drier as it ages. Certainly, the crust gets harder. But that’s what crust is there for. To protect the bread. Inside that exposed surface you’ll find that the bread itself is fine. Still pretty soft, just as flavorful as ever.

2. Don’t put it in plastic

What’s wrong with bread in plastic? Real bread needs to breathe. Sealed in a plastic bag, bread breathes about as well as you or I would if we were sealed in plastic. In other words, it doesn’t. While the bread continues to exhale, it can’t inhale. Moisture is trapped in the bag. Moisture which will turn even the crispest crust soft. Crust is meant to protect the bread. Just like the rind on a natural cheese, real bread has very real crust to protect the inside of the loaf from drying out. But when it’s been sealed in plastic the crust is losing it’s magic, losing it’s texture.

Some folks put it in plastic, they’ve come to like it, and that’s OK. (If you do put it in plastic, a bit of heat can bring it back to life, toasting it or putting it in the oven.) There are two more exceptions to the plastic rule: sliced bread and to-be-frozen bread. We recommend you slice loaves as you go. It keeps the mother loaf solid which protects it from drying. If you get on a roll and slice the whole loaf—or more than your guests eat—store slices in a plastic bag at room temperature. Without protection from the crust, the slices will dry out faster if they are not stored in plastic.

3. Do put it in the freezer for longer storage 

If you want to keep a loaf of Zingerman’s bread for more than a few days your best bet is to freeze it. Double bag the loaf—or part of it—in plastic and freeze for up to three months.

4. Don’t put it in the refrigerator

The only thing worse than putting bread in plastic is putting it in plastic first and then putting it in the refrigerator. Everything that’s bad about plastic in the first place is still true in the refrigerator. Except that the cold, moist environment of the fridge is bound to create even more moisture inside the plastic, and… well, it’s just not a good place to store good bread.

Our breads are completely baked, heating is not necessary.  But you might want to. It makes magic happen, like they just came out of the Bakehouse oven.

Starting with frozen bread? Let it defrost on the counter for 30 minutes then follow these instructions.

Here’s how:

1. Heat your oven to 350 degrees

2. Take the bread out of the bag

3. Throw the whole, half, or part of the loaf on the oven rack naked

4. Leave it until it’s hot the whole way through — about 15-20 minutes

5. Take time to smell the roses, or, better, the amazing aroma coming out of your oven

6. Eat!

In my book The Guide to Good Leading, I write about our definition of local food. It is less about geography and mostly about having a positive relationship with those from whom we buy, and to those we sell. Since black peppercorns don’t grow in Michigan, that means we buy it from someone with whom we can have a long-lasting connection and conversation.

Someone like the de Vienne family.

They run Montreal’s Épices de Cru, and they’ve given us the opportunity for connection and conversation in spades over the last several years. Spices generally arrive at most business’s doors from distributors. There is no connection to the farmers who grow them or the people who go out into the wild to gather them. Now we have access to real people and real communities with whom we can communicate on almost every spice front. By switching over our pepper purchase, not only are we raising the quality of what we’re buying and improving the flavor of nearly all our food, but we now have begun a direct connection with the folks in India whose diligent work has made all this possible!

That connection is named Sudheer.

Sudheer has made it his life’s mission to master the pepper trade. His story started with his grandmother, who was a supervisor for a cardamom plantation. As a kid, he would visit his grandmother and wander between the rows of cardamom and pepper. Today he’s a spice sourcer in Kerala, down at the bottom of the Indian subcontinent along the west coast. It’s long been known as the “spice garden of India.” It’s also a beautiful region, one that draws many tourists each year. Unlike many agricultural products in the modern world, pepper in Kerala is grown still on a very small scale. “The small farmers here, they have one or two hectares,” Sudheer told me. Of equal importance, Sudheer has a direct relationship with each farmer. “We never buy through traders,” he told me. “Only directly from the farmer.”

That was the old the way the old time spice traders did it centuries ago. Back then spice trading was mostly about extracting as much from the producing regions in Asia and making as much money as possible in the process. That old model was, as many historians have described, mostly a violent and horrible way to work in which farmers and growers suffered and Europeans traders became wealthy.

Sudheer’s approach is the opposite. To raise people up and share the wealth, rather than taking it all half-way around the world. It’s all about working with the farmers to help get them to grow higher quality, paying them more for it, and in the process, making the lives of everyone involved better. Since most people in the world know only “black pepper” as if it were a singular entity, Sudheer is determined to teach people the differences between one black pepper and the next. He explains, “My place is a wildlife sanctuary. If you drive 30 or 40 kilometers from a farm, the pepper will taste totally different.”

From farmer to table: developing a Zingerman’s exclusive pepper blend.

Sudheer and the team at Épices de Cru spent months testing different combinations before settling on three finalists which they brought us to taste. Then we spent three more weeks grinding, cracking, smelling and tasting here before settling on this fantastic blend of five black peppers. All five come from southwest India, the pepper capital of the world.

In a world seasoned with anonymous large-scale production peppers, this blend of whole peppercorns is something special and we’re working to put it to use throughout our organization—even in some of our breads. It’s on my table at home. I hope it will soon be on your table too!