Ari’s Pick: 8-Grain 3-Seed Bread from the Bakehouse

A happy confluence of health and culinary excellence

two halves of a loaf of 8-grain 3-seed bread stacked on top of each other8-Grain 3-Seed is one of the first breads we started making at the Bakehouse nearly 30 years ago now! Dense, and loaded with grains and seeds to make a nutritional dream come true. In a Bakehouse world filled with Pecan RaisinPaesano, and a plethora of other popular offerings, it can get a little bit lost in the culinary shuffle of all those beautiful breads on the shelves in the Bakeshop. It’s worthy of all our attention—it’s a wonderful demonstration of the reality that one can create food that is both healthful and delicious!

The ingredient list is exceptional—hard Red Spring wheat from Michigan that’s freshly milled here at the Bakehouse, cracked wheat, cracked rye, barley, cracked corn, millet, steel-cut oats, flax seeds, poppy seeds, a bit of buckwheat, some sea salt, and a little local honey. The whole thing gets hand-rolled in sunflower (the national flower of Ukraine) seeds and then baked until it has a nice, slightly crisp, gently chewy crust. The loaf is naturally leavened as well (no commercial yeast is added) as nearly every bread was up until the middle of the 19th century, meaning it has about an 18-hour rise time. I look at it almost like a baked off bowl of amazing porridge—it’s not very sweet on its own, and so it’s well-suited to both sweet and savory toppings. I love it toasted and topped with good olive oil. It’s great with cream cheese and some of that smoked herring or octopus. Really good with butter, jam, honey, or the amazing Georgia Grinders Almond Butter.

HUNGRY FOR MORE?

  • Sign up for Ari’s Top 5 enewsletter to hear more from Ari every week!
  • Give us a call to reserve a loaf for pickup at the Bakehouse: 734-761-2095
  • Order 8-Grain 3-Seed for toast at the Roadhouse
  • Ship some from Mail Order to a good friend anywhere in the country with whom you want to make a caring, culinary connection
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Ari Weinzweig
Co-Founding Partner at Zingerman's | + posts

In 1982, Ari Weinzweig, along with his partner Paul Saginaw, founded Zingerman’s Delicatessen with a $20,000 bank loan, a Russian History degree from the University of Michigan, 4 years of experience washing dishes, cooking and managing in restaurant kitchens and chutzpah from his hometown of Chicago. They opened the doors with 2 employees and a small selection of specialty foods and exceptional sandwiches.

Today, Zingerman’s Delicatessen is a nationally renowned food icon and the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses has grown to 10 businesses with over 750 employees and over $55 million in annual revenue. Aside from the Delicatessen, these businesses include Zingerman’s Bakehouse, Coffee Company, Creamery, Roadhouse, Mail Order, ZingTrain, Candy Manufactory, Cornman Farms and a Korean restaurant that is scheduled to open in 2016. No two businesses in the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses are alike but they all share the same Vision and Guiding Principles and deliver “The Zingerman’s Experience” with passion and commitment.

Besides being the Co-Founding Partner and being actively engaged in some aspect of the day-to-day operations and governance of nearly every business in the Zingerman’s Community, Ari Weinzweig is also a prolific writer. His most recent publications are the first 4 of his 6 book series Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading Series: A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Building a Great Business (Part 1), Being a Better Leader (Part 2), Managing Ourselves (Part 3) and the newly-released Part 4, The Power of Beliefs in Business. Earlier books include the Zingerman’s Guides to Giving Great Service, Better Bacon, Good Eating, Good Olive Oil, Good Vinegar and Good Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Ari regularly travels across the country (and world) on behalf of ZingTrain, teaching organizations and businesses about Zingerman’s approach to business. He is a sought-after Keynote speaker, having delivered keynotes for Inc. 500, Microsoft Expo Spring Conference, Great Game of Business Gathering of Games, Positive Business Conference at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, American Society for Quality (ASQ), and the American Cheese Society. Most recently, Ari and Paul Saginaw were invited to address an audience of 50,000 for the University of Michigan 2015 Spring Commencement.

One of Zingerman’s Guiding Principles is being an active part of the community and in 1988, Zingerman’s was instrumental in the founding of Food Gatherers, a food rescue program that delivers over 5 million pounds of food each year to the hungry residents of Washtenaw county. Every year Zingerman’s donates 10% of its previous years profits to local community organizations and non-profits. Ari has served on the board of The Ark, the longest continuously operating folk music venue in America.

Over the decades, the Zingerman’s founding partners have consistently been the recipients of public recognition from a variety of diverse organizations. In April 1995, Ari and Paul were awarded the Jewish Federation of Washtenaw County’s first Humanitarian Award. In 2006, Ari was recognized as one of the “Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America” by the James Beard Foundation. In 2007, Ari and Paul were presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award from Bon Appetit magazine for their work in the food industry. Ari was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Cheese Society in 2014. And Ari’s book, Building a Great Business was on Inc. magazine’s list of Best Books for Business Leaders.

Notwithstanding the awards, being engaged on a daily basis in the work of 10 businesses and 21 partners, writing books on business and in-depth articles on food for the Zingerman’s newsletter, Ari finds time to be a voracious reader. He acquires and reads more books than he can find room for. Ari might soon find himself the owner of the largest collection of Anarchist books in Ann Arbor outside the Labadie collection at the University of Michigan library!

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