The bread company used to have a small bakery cafe in Santa Cruz, which is where I was first introduced to the rye bread. The cafe has since closed, and now Beckmann's is pretty much the wholesale bakery that stocks many of the shelves in local grocery stores and market places. And I just discovered that you can buy Beckmann's bread online at their website!
Yesterday, I was delighted to find several loaves of their pure rye bread stocked on the shelves at the New Leaf Market, since it is not always there — probably because other people get there before me and snatch them all up! Beckmann's Bakery makes many other varieties of bread, which are also delicious, but none as great in my opinion as the one-hundred percent rye bread.
The loaf is rectangular and shaped like a fruitcake or a brick of pure gold. The bread tastes the best when slices or chunks of it are steamed, and second-best when very thin slices of it are toasted or grilled. It can dry out quicker than other breads, but steaming always seems to revitalize it!
Did you know that rye flour is the original source for sourdough starter? (Someone from the San Francisco sourdough bread company, Boudin told me that on the museum tour at the wharf.) Natural yeasts in the air seem to love it! It makes perfect sense, once you've tasted the slightly sour quality of Beckmann's rye bread. Wikipedia has a long article about the history of sourdough. I also found an interesting pdf article written online by Robin Donovan on The Story Of Sourdough Bread.
But where San Francisco Sourdough Bread is made of white flour, Beckmann's Pure Rye bread is made of 100% whole rye flour. I see from their website that since the acquisition of the Whole Grain Natural Bread Company, Beckmann's flour is now freshly milled each day, thus retaining most of the vital minerals and nutrients of the rye and making the bread less acid-forming. Beckmann's also uses organic grains, ensuring that no harmful chemicals, pesticides, or GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) are in the bread.
By definition, bread that is made from flour is not a whole food. The process of making flour from the rye berries separates the components and some get lost, like important alkalyzing minerals and metals, thus making the bread more yin and more acid-forming than the whole grain. The more the grain is milled and the longer the flour is moved from place to place, the more that gets lost. Therefore, making your own bread from your own freshly milled flour is going to be the closest to whole foods, and Beckmann's Pure Rye bread is the next closest!
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