This Fresh Bread and Pasta Subscription is a Carb Lovers Dream

Carb lovers, rejoice! Among the multitude of food products to which you can subscribe for monthly delivery directly to your door: meal kits, wine, cheese, seafood, and so on — you can now also get bread. Consider frozen and pre-baked sourdough breads and other carbolic dishes that you can bake to perfection at home, delivering bakery-quality goodness straight from your own oven. (With the added benefit of not having to worry about your own sourdough starter.)

Wild grain is not the first monthly bread subscription on the market, but it has a specific point of view — and an almost Parisian pedigree — with an interface that makes it easy to make your own monthly choices and stock up on breads, buns. , pastries and Pasta you want the most.

What is Wildgrain?

Wildgrain is a subscription service specifically for sourdough bread (and bread-adjacent) founded by husband-and-wife team and former Parisians, Ismail Salhi and Johanna Hartzheim. Boxes ship monthly and include six or 12 items across four different themes, which you can either choose to select yourself or simply let the platform curate a surprise selection from bestsellers.

Wildgrain’s various offerings are categorized into breads – which include both loaves and rolls – pastas, pastries and seasonal specialties. The loaves are heavily composed of sourdough or “slow-fermented” selections, and are par-baked, meaning they have been baked just enough to establish and maintain their structure and shape. The home baking step not only warms the bread (while flavoring your cooking) but finishes the crust.

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Wildgrain is not necessarily a bread producer, but a subscription (and test kitchen) platform which offers its subscribers around thirty different breads and bread-related items each month. Wildgrain provides recipes and partners with small bakeries and producers across the country to supply its artisan breads, rolls, pastries and doughs. The small business element here is a nice touch.

How does Wildgrain work?

Subscribers receive notification four days before they are billed each month and can choose not only which selections to receive, but also whether or not they want to unsubscribe from that month’s box altogether. In my experience with other subscription models, this prompt is convenient, so you don’t need to remember to skip a month if necessary, whether you’re out of town or out of space. freezing.

Items arrive fully frozen and packed with dry ice in eco-friendly, recyclable packaging, to be transferred straight to your freezer. I also appreciated some helpful, no-nonsense tips included in the packaged box on what to do if the dry ice runs out upon arrival.

None of Wildgrain’s products require thawing, and nothing takes more than 25 minutes to cook (or boil, in the case of pasta). With this timing, you could even have freshly baked bread for breakfast. Loaves of bread and rolls are fully risen and pre-baked, and they’re ready to go straight into the oven from the freezer. You can place them directly on your oven rack and you don’t even need a baking sheet.

The deal with sourdough

Sourdough is what happens when flour and water ferment using ambient yeast in the air. Carbohydrates are not the enemy, but highly processed foods such as industrial bread are definitely not your best source of energy-giving carbohydrates. These sourdough options are a major point in Wildgrain’s favor here, especially for people who don’t live near an artisan bakery or who lack the time or motivation to shop there, given the length of relatively short shelf life of most artisanal breads.

Many of us only know sourdough as something worthwhile that helped pass the time during the pandemic. But like many fermented foods, it also has nutritional benefits. According to information available on the Wildgrain website, growing naturally fermented sourdough has the following benefits:

• It digests most of the gluten in bread.
• It contains lactic acid, helping your body absorb more nutrients.
• It also contains prebiotics, which keep your gut biome healthy.

Something to keep subscribers interested

Since it’s all about high-quality bread, pasta, and pastries, Wildgrain’s selection isn’t endless, but it’s nonetheless comprehensive enough to offer a variety of items that you’d be slow to tire of, if novelty is part of what you are looking for. in a monthly subscription. The currently available box offers 15 baked goods to choose from, five pasta selections – including stuffed pasta, gnocchi and even marinara sauce – five pastries and six seasonal specialties including macaroons and strawberry-rhubarb turnovers.

A word on quality: I appreciated the short ingredient lists for each of the Wildgrain products, which were helpfully printed on the front label, in large font. This type of transparency is hard to find in industrial food culture, and Wildgrain clearly takes pride in what it sells.

When my package arrived, I made the signature sourdough bread. I was blown away by how perfect the crust was, even in my three-quarter-sized apartment oven, which tends to run 50 degrees cooler than advertised. (I even managed to bake just one of six packages of giant chocolate chip cookies in my toaster oven with reasonable results.) The flavor and texture were both excellent. Wildgrain’s rigorous recipe testing process produces excellent results.

Cost and price of wild grains

Wildgrain offers four different participation themes:

• a varied box including bread and pastries
• a bread box only
• a box of pastries only
• a plant-based box, which includes only vegan selections

The plant-based box excludes most pasta and pastry options, but still offers a dozen breads and rolls to choose from. All boxes include free shipping and pricing breaks down as follows:

Wildgrain’s prices are certainly higher than what you’d pay to buy these individual items at most local bakeries, but the price includes shipping and the convenience of not having to shop around. If you’re actively trying to eat better bread regularly, the service may be worth it, and its no-commitment model makes it easy to try it for a month or two to see if it’s right for you. Wildgrain is also currently offering a “free croissants for life” promotion with the Variety Box and Pastry Box for a little added value.

A bit of observational math: If you have freezer space, the 12-item selection offers better value across the board. That’s double the product, for only about 60% of the cost.

If I were plant-based, to get the most bang for my buck, I’d probably opt for the bread box only and choose carefully from those selections. (As far as I know, only three selections appear on the menu between the bread box and the herbal box.) I don’t understand why the herbal box costs $30 more per month, while the options available are mainly bread. .

An added feel-good bonus beyond the goodness of eating great bread, Wildgrain donates four meals to the Greater Boston Food Bank for every new subscriber.

Who is Wildgrain for?

Wildgrain is perfect for bread fanatics who love freshly baked breads and pastries, but who can’t justify the time to purchase these items with the frequency that their short shelf life demands, or who don’t have access to these kinds of local bakeries. If you’ve already spent any significant time in Europe and lament the lack of access to these high-quality items, give Wildgrain a try. Wildgrain is also great for those who miss the sourdough days of the pandemic, but also suffer from PTSD from staying sourdough.

Who is Wildgrain not good for?

If your bread budget is limited, Wildgrain may not be the best choice, as it is priced significantly higher than most local bakeries for similar products. The program requires a certain amount of freezer space when your box arrives, so ask yourself if that’s something you can handle. Although they are currently testing recipes and committed to only providing products that can be pre-cooked, frozen, and shipped, Wildgrain does not currently offer any gluten-free options.

Final verdict on Wildgrain

Wild grain offers high-quality breads, pastas and pastries with short ingredient lists and a high convenience factor, in an interface that makes it easy to participate month by month as you wish. If the quality and convenience are worth paying a little extra, Wildgrain is a great service for bread lovers. Now who has a monthly butter and jam subscription?