Bread Culture is a rye bakery out Yangpyeong way. They deal mostly in healthy breads and run a YouTube channel, and you can really feel their passion for rye bread, so I trusted them and placed an order. Getting out there and back isn’t exactly easy, either.

Bread like this

It was quite large, and well matured too. On top of that, unlike ordinary wheat bread, rye bread holds a lot of moisture, so it keeps for a long time and doesn’t dry out. Which means there’s no great difference in taste even when it arrives by courier. Come to think of it, in old Europe they baked only once a week, on Sunday, and ate ordinary wheat bread Monday to Wednesday, rye bread Thursday through Sunday. That’s how well it keeps. (Though that doesn’t mean you can leave it lying around anywhere when the weather is warm..)

Bread like this

It has nuts in it too, which makes it delicious.

Something I’ve noticed going around the rye bakeries everyone talks about lately and eating all sorts of bread: rye really doesn’t push your blood sugar up much. Not that it doesn’t rise at all — it rises, just not that steeply, and even that much is impressive. When blood sugar climbs too fast it gets in the way of work.. But here’s something I didn’t know: rye bread has no gluten, so it doesn’t puff up much. That makes it heavier and more filling than it looks. With ordinary wheat bread you can polish off a big loaf and still not feel that full, because there’s so much air inside, but eat rye bread the same way and you’re stuffed in no time.. What struck me eating Bread Culture’s rye bread this time is that this place makes rye without the sourness, tuned to Korean tastes.. That’s an advanced technique, of course, one only possible if you really know how to work a sourdough.. but it goes down so easily that it’s genuinely hard to ration how much you eat in one go.. Which makes me think rye bread ought to have a bit of sourness to it, like 395 Bakery’s, so that it keeps your appetite in check and you eat a sensible amount. Tasting too good is a problem of its own, is what it comes down to..

I’ve confirmed that Bread Culture’s bread is delicious, but I also learned that isn’t the whole story. My own feeling is that it takes a properly sour, European-style loaf to keep your portions reasonable, and that that’s what really gets you closer to health.. I’ll be eating bread for a long time yet, so this seems worth knowing.. (A few more places and the rye bread tour will be done.)

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