Description
The Happy Monk Approachable Loaf was designed for the grocery shelf but with honest-to-god artisan credentials. You’ll recognize the ingredients: sourdough, whole wheat flour, salt, a bit of honey and oil for flavour and a tender crumb. It’s baked in a bread tin, makes great toast and fantastic sandwiches.
It’s our version of the Approachable Loaf, a formula developed by “The Bread Lab Collective,” a group of bakers affiliated with The Bread Lab of Washington State University in Mount Vernon Washington. Our blog post about the loaf explains a little about its appeal. We also published the recipe for Happy Monk people to try it out on their own.
The Happy Monk Approachable Loaf highlights Metchosin-grown red wheat at Stillmeadow Farm, located just down the road from our miller and grain source, Nootka Rose Mill. Almost all the flour used in Happy Monk breads are milled on our premises, and the Approachable is no exception.
When it was introduced a few years ago, the Approachable Loaf was an exciting bread trend. Many artisan bakeries continue to bake the Approachable Loaf using local varieties of wheat to highlight the best of what North American regional grain -producers have to offer — a sign that the artisan bread world has achieved a critical mass. And the confidence to present a viable challenge to the industrial bread makers: healthy, wholesome bread that is really tasty!
One caveat for Happy Monk customers is that this loaf contains a small amount of commercial yeast to assist in leavening the whole-grain ingredients — less than half a percent of total flour weight. Wild-yeast sourdough does most of the heavy lifting, though, with nearly 21%.