Amantee: I love bread

My history with Amantee has always been good.  When they were located off Chaeng Wattana in a beautiful compound of incredible teak houses, I used to occasionally drop by for lunch and then browse their incredible antique collection.  Lunch in the sala or just walking through the traditional style Thai houses made me yearn for traditional Thai living.  Once, friends and I even planned a great party evening in the house, using the rooms for a fun mystery game and then having dinner.

When I heard that Amantee had moved downtown, I thought that the charm of the place might be lost.  Then I heard that they had started baking bread.  Knowing that they had done everything from building a masterful collection of Asian antiques to caring for gorgeous old wooden houses so well, I knew that this was not going to be a whimsical foray into brownies and doughy baguette.  I knew it would be good.

But when I got there, 'good' was not the word to describe what I found.  This was bread as art.  I got there late-ish in the day and was terrified to see that there was a whole shelf of baguette with little 'reserved' tags on them.  I panicked for a moment, but the woman behind the counter found one for me.  Then, like a find cheese shop, she started offering little slices of different breads.  There were Eastern European style ryes, hearty whole wheat loaves, and even some with fruit in them.  Each was fabulous.

And then I saw the einkorn.

Einkorn is, for those of you who are not history nerds, the 'original' wheat.  It is the wild ancestor first gathered by nomadic hunter-gatherers in the Fertile Crescent - probably the Natufians - that over time was domesticated.  Or you could argue that over time einkorn domesticated our ancestors because they eventually stopped being nomadic hunter-gatherers and settled down to farm the miraculous stuff.  Einkorn and its domesticate progeny - edible grass or human, however you look at it - gave rise to the very first urban civilisations of the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys.

Now I had a chance not only to taste a type of bread I had never had, but I felt like I was eating a bit of history.  I practically yelled, "EINKORN!"  My friends turned to look as I jumped and pointed at the loaf.  "Look!  It's einkorn.  Remember?  I've told you about einkorn before."

Blank stares.

"You know, the original wild wheat?  The Natufians?  Mesopotamia?"

A glimmer of recognition.

"Doesn't matter...just taste it."

And they did.  And I did.  And it was good.  I mean, I would still choose a baguette, but this was flavour and history in one bite.

The next day it was the first thing I told my classes.  They either loved the story, or they very kindly humoured me, asking questions about the bread, where they could have gotten the flour (which I will ask next time I am there), what colour the bread was etc.  If the place were closer to school, I would insist on a field trip.

Amantee, I not only love bread, I love your bread.