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It鈥檚 a drizzly, cold spring day outside, but inside the Washington State University Breadlab in the Skagit Valley, richly scented steam billows out of a toasty commercial oven as baker Mel Darbyshire pulls out a tray of puffy mahogany loaves of bread.
鈥淭hey look excellent,鈥� she says, inhaling and examining their shiny, domed crusts. She pops one out of its tin and cuts into it. The slice looks exactly like the bread emoji 鈥� fluffy-topped and perfectly shaped 鈥� only this bread is a rich, warm brown on the inside.
That鈥檚 because it鈥檚 made from 100% whole wheat flour. And not just any whole wheat: a mix of different types of wheat called a 鈥淐limate Blend,鈥� developed specifically to withstand the increasingly intense weather brought on by human-caused climate change. Both of those factors make this loaf a paragon for the future and a symbol of what bread can be in a climate-changed future.
On top of that, 鈥渋t tastes amazing,鈥� says Darbyshire.
Keeping wheat alive and ready to thrive
The perfect, puffy loaf of bread that came out of the Breadlab oven is the culmination of years of research, both agricultural and baking-centric. Its origins can be traced back to 2009, when wheat breeder and longtime home baker Stephen Jones started the Breadlab in an old, fluorescent-lit office park in the damp, fertile Skagit Valley.
He had worked as a commercial wheat breeder for decades. But he had become disillusioned with the grain industry. In his view, the industry was excessively focused on producing smooth, perfectly consistent white flour that fills bags on grocery store shelves or gets mixed into manufactured foods.
That consistency has a price, says Jones. To produce flour that looks and behaves so consistently, the wheat it comes from has to be relatively uniform. That pushes farmers and wheat breeders to create and plant wheat varieties that are also relatively uniform, genetically selecting over time for plants of a certain height, or kernels a certain color and hardness.
Consistency is good for a product like flour; it helps keep a product like bread predictable. But it can be risky for plants themselves. In a field of plants that are genetically similar to each other 鈥� like siblings instead of two strangers from opposite sides of the world 鈥� a risk to one is a risk to all. A sensitivity to heat could wipe out a whole field, or region, if a heat wave comes along. A susceptibility to disease or pests could ruin a crop.
Jones, and many other crop scientists, have long been concerned that such selection also narrows the biodiversity of crops within a field, a farm, or even a whole region. That could, they think, increase the vulnerability of a crop. There are real-life examples of such disasters: Ireland鈥檚 Great Famine of the 1840s, for example, was driven by a potato blight disease that wiped out fields across the country and led to more than a million deaths.
For wheat, the picture is less clear. Across the U.S., found that wheat diversity has increased since the 1920s, as breeders developed and distributed more types, more quickly.
Philip Pardey, an agricultural economist at the University of Minnesota and an author of the analysis, stresses that climate pressures increase the need for even more diversification, faster. 鈥淲e need more, not less of that, to deal with climate,鈥� he says.
Climate change increases the likelihood of weather whiplash, he points out, as well as the to new regions.
鈥淭hat is the treadmill of plant breeders trying to keep up with pests and diseases,鈥� says Colin Khoury, a biologist at the San Diego Botanic Garden who has studied the changes in crop genetic diversity over time. It鈥檚 a 鈥渃at and mouse game that goes around in circles 鈥� and in theory, with climate change, that gets faster and faster every year and is terrifying to people who really know about it.鈥�
He suspects that despite the nationwide genetic diversity growth Pardey and his colleagues found, at the smaller scale 鈥渋t's likely that our field-level crop diversity is less diverse than 50 years ago.鈥�
These are not theoretical concerns. In the fall of 2022, a drought in the grain belt of the U.S. settled in across states including Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. It was among the worst ever recorded and led to a compared to the long-term average.
At the Breadlab, Jones wanted to test a hypothesis: that field-level diversity, in any number of realms from kernel shape to color to heat resistance, could help fields and farmers weather increasingly extreme climate conditions.
鈥淚f we have a chaotic climate, our strategy is to have genetic chaos in the field,鈥� says Jones. 鈥淭o strike back, to fight chaos with chaos.鈥�
A real-life climate test
In 2021, Jones鈥� hypothesis was tested. An unprecedented heat wave settled over the Pacific Northwest. Temperatures soared well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit and stayed there for days. At the same time, the region slipped into drought. Washington鈥檚 summer rainfall hovered just above . Farms across Washington state saw their wheat yields plummet by compared to previous years. Climate scientists later determined it was because of human-caused climate change.
The ferocity of the heat dome was shocking. But it provided a critical test for Jones' hypothesis: Would the high-diversity wheat mixes he had provided for farmers stand up to the stresses?
Keith Kisler and his wife, Crystie, run Chimacum Valley Grainery in Chimacum, Wash., in a narrow, lush valley on the Olympic Peninsula. They grow 14 different grains on their 150 acres, most sourced from the Breadlab. In 2021, while crops across the region were wilting in the extreme heat, they barely saw a blip.
鈥淔or me it was like, eh, heat dome, whatever,鈥� says Keith Kisler.
One of the seed mixes that succeeded that year, and in seasons since, is called a Climate Blend. It was specifically developed to handle more extreme weather. The mix takes the Kislers' specific weather and climate conditions into account, helping wheat better respond to climate pressures. It鈥檚 also grown using so-called regenerative agricultural techniques, like planting crops between harvests so the fields don鈥檛 lie fallow and reducing the frequency of plowing. Such practices can help keep soils healthy, and there鈥檚 evidence they can help preserve soil carbon.
鈥淕rowing it in the field, it鈥檚 an amazingly stable crop,鈥� says Kisler. It persisted that year through not just the heat dome, but heavy snows, extreme rainfall and other weird weather.
The lab develops similar mixes for other small growers across the region. Each one takes years of fine-tuning and revisions, a process that is labor-intensive and challenging to scale in a way that would serve the of wheat fields draped across the nation.
Every successful growing experience moves the effort forward, says Jones. And it is growing: the Breadlab is working with longtime partner King Arthur Baking to sell regeneratively grown Climate Blend flour. Currently, the commercially available flour is sourced from Montana and North Dakota farms. Still, Janis Abbingsole, chief operating officer at King Arthur Baking Co., says more of their farmers are interested in experimenting with Climate Blend seeds and the flour it produces.
鈥淭here's movement around it,鈥� she says, and a burgeoning number of growers 鈥渢hat are willing to take some of their acres and give it a shot.鈥�
But the best farming practices in the world don鈥檛 matter if the product doesn鈥檛 taste good. That鈥檚 where the Breadlab differs from other science research centers. Its focus is in the name itself: not the Wheat Lab, or the Soil Lab, but the Breadlab.
The whole wheat wonderland
The Breadlab is in Burlington, Wash., a few hours north of Seattle. It鈥檚 next to a pickle factory, and a faint scent of vinegar tinges the air outside. But inside, graduate students slap dough on counters, shaping it into neat loaves. On nearly every surface, there鈥檚 a pile of cookies, a half-loaf of some experimental bread, or a bin of richly colored, sweet-scented flour.
Here, scientists and bakers 鈥� some of whom are professionals in both 鈥� work on solving another challenge: how to make Americans love, and eat, more whole wheat.
A gaggle of them are clustered around Darbyshire as she cuts into the tender brown loaf made from the Climate Blend flour.
Jones picks up a slice to taste it. 鈥淚t鈥檚 buttery and rich,鈥� he says, his mouth full. A few moments later, his eyes light up. 鈥淚t鈥檚 delicious,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he best ever.鈥�
The lab鈥檚 manager, Janine Sanguine, takes a bite. 鈥淚 mean this in the best possible way,鈥� she says, 鈥渂ut it tastes like it鈥檚 made with white flour.鈥� Jones belly-laughs in response.
The bread is called the Approachable Loaf. It鈥檚 a recipe perfected over the years by the lab鈥檚 bakers and scientists. It is made with 100% whole wheat flour, and it is exactly as its name implies: Approachable. It鈥檚 simple, familiar and soft, and it will last several days on the counter before going stale.
They developed the loaf because they repeatedly heard that whole wheat bread tasted bad. That鈥檚 a hangover from the 1970s, says Jones, when many whole wheat products were bad 鈥� including bread he himself baked.
But, he says, better-bred wheat created specifically with the whole wheat in mind and better baking techniques can change people鈥檚 minds.
Simply swapping whole wheat for refined white flour would slice the environmental costs of growing and processing wheat by 20% and quadruple its nutritional impact, says Ema Tanovic, an analyst at Boston Consulting Group. She recently led an analysis on the environmental impact of eating whole grains rather than refined.
鈥淚f you consume the whole grain version, you are getting four times the nutrition with 20% less impact,鈥� Tanovic says.
That鈥檚 because the process of making white flour wastes somewhere between 20% and 30% of the wheat kernel. That鈥檚 food farmers spend time, money, water and other environmental resources to grow.
The wheat kernel has three parts: the endosperm, a pocket of starch that makes up about 80% of the whole kernel; the protective outer coating called the bran; and the tiny, fatty, rich germ, the place from which a kernel sprouts. To produce white flour, the bran and germ get stripped from the starchy bit, which is then ground up. The bran and germ contain most of the nutrients and that gets discarded.
Jones has calculated the gain slightly more generously than Tanovic. As he sees it, 鈥渨e could increase the amount of food we get per wheat acre by 30% if we just eat the whole wheat.鈥�
Wheat鈥檚 losses are on par with the average amount of food waste in the U.S. more broadly. Some 30% to 40% of all edible food ends up in the trash. The annual climate impact of that waste is equivalent to running more than 40 coal-fired power plants for a year. Any shift in that pattern, Jones says, is a step in the right direction.
One spring Saturday, the Breadlab hosts a pop-up bread sale in their parking lot. They light a crackling fire in an old metal buoy, which used to bob in nearby waters, to warm people who come out despite a cold drizzle. Dozens of attendees buy up nearly every loaf and bag of whole wheat flour within a few hours. Three young children walk up to the counter, their mother beside them.
鈥淲hat鈥檚 this kind of bread?鈥� asks Ada Jane.
Her brother, Henry, reads from a sign. 鈥淐limate Blend?鈥� he asks. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 that?鈥�
By the end of the day, they walk away with a loaf of whole-wheat bread, some whole-wheat flour, and instructions for using it in their own baking at home. Jones smiles. That, he says, is how it all starts.
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