Wildgrain Makes It, You Bake It, Delivered to Your Door

Thanks to Wildgrain, the tantalizing aroma of baking bread is wafting through my kitchen today.

Wildgrain is a home-delivery membership for bake-from-frozen sourdough breads, fresh pastas, and artisan pastries. Small-batch bakers and pasta makers across the country partner with Wildgrain to provide the breads, pastas, and pastries in a monthly themed subscription box.

All the products can be baked in your oven within 25 minutes — no thawing or waiting for them to rise.

A few weeks ago I was invited to receive a free Bread Subscription Box to try out and offer my honest opinion. Once the order was placed, I got several emails tracking my shipment so I could expect its arrival. Everyitem in the box was individually wrapped, and packed with ice packs. I think there was also some dry ice, which was calculated to dissipate by the time the box arrived.

I put everything else in my freezer, except for the package of four croissants, as they were partially thawed but still very cold. They were the first item to hit the oven.

The directions said to preheat the oven to 380 degrees (which I thought sounded a bit over-precise, but better to be too precise than too lackadaisical when it comes to oven temps). I placed the croissants on a glass baking pan in the middle rack of the oven.

I baked for the recommended 18-22 minutes, and then added a few more minutes so they were dark golden brown, with a shiny, almost lacquered surface. These were crisp and flaky on the outside, and buttery-tender on the inside — the perfect croissant.

My advice if you baking these, don’t get antsy and pull them out when they’re barely browning; or you won’t get the crispy outer texture that makes a croissant so great.

I also used some of the tonnarelli pasta for my chicken marinara. Since there were just two of us for dinner, I used two mounds of the frozen pasta and dropped it in a saucepan of boiling water for a few minutes to al dente. Then I drained off the water and topped the pasta with my homemade chicken marinara. Tonnarelli is an egg pasta that’s similar to spaghetti but a tad thicker, and it seemed to cling really well to the marinara sauce. The box also has fettuccine, and I’m looking forward stirring in a dollop of pesto or Alfredo sauce when I use it.

A few days later, I baked the Maine Blueberry Biscuits for an after-dinner dessert. The six squares were studded with small blueberries, and tasted so rich and buttery that we needed no butter or jam. They reminded me of British scones — the pastries served at tea with clotted cream. NOT the Utah-style scones of huge deep-fried discs of dough served with a melting blob of honey butter. Both types of scones are equally revered by their fans, but very different.

Then we tried the slow-fermented three-seed loaf. It’s made of both whole wheat and white flour, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds, millet and honey.

I’m a fan of breads with seeds — the more seeds the better, to me! One problem I’ve had in making my own whole wheat bread studded with seeds is that they can weigh down the dough, so it doesn’t rise as well. But there didn’t seem to be a problem here; the artisan bakers apparently know what they’re doing. Also, when I make my own bread, there’s more than two hours of mixing, rising and kneading. This was just a pop-in-the-oven-and-wait-20 minutes kind of thing.

I was making a Sunday pot roast for dinner, so I put in the loaf in the oven during the roast’s last 20 minutes of cooking. The directions said to place the bread right on the oven rack, rather than place it on a baking sheet. It turned out pleasantly crusty outside, and soft inside. It made a nice accompaniment to Sunday dinner, with very little work on my part. (After all, Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest.)

Today I baked the round Sourdough Rosemary Garlic loaf. I love the appetizing fragrance of rosemary and garlic. Upon slicing it, I found a few actual cloves of whole garlic in the bread, so it comes by that flavor and fragrance honestly! I love the outside crust and inner chewy texture. This would be a great foundation for a grilled panini sandwich, or with a slice of just about any kind of cheese.

The Wildgrain folks gave me an opportunity to place affililate links for its Bread Subscription Box in this article. So if you click on it and end up subscribing, I get a small commission.

But more importantly, here’s some honest advice from my experience:

If you prefer mass-produced, pre-sliced grocery store bread, this probably isn’t the program for you. The cost is $89 per box, with free shipping and delivery, for about a half-dozen full-size artisan-quality items. For that price, you could buy an awful lot of Wonder Bread.

Also, the products aren’t gluten-free, although some say that sourdough is supposed to be easier to digest if you have gluten sensitivity. But if you’ve got gluten issues, I’d check with your doc before placing an order.

But do you like chewy artisan-style breads made with unbleached wheat flour and natural ingredients?

Did you want to join in the Covid sourdough-baking fad, but felt you didn’t have the time or skills to do it? Well, now you can have it without the work, and without the worry of a pandemic hanging over you.

Do you (or family members) love the aroma of freshly baked bread, still warm from the oven? But do you find you don’t have time to make and bake it?

Would you like to bring something to your friends’ get-together, or to give as a a neighbor gift, with a bit more cachet?

Also, do you usually have a bit of freezer space? Each box comes with about a half-dozen full-size items. But because each item is well-wrapped and kept in your freezer, you don’t have to use it all that day or even that week. The freezer space in a regular-size refrigerator offers plenty of room, unless you’ve already stuffed it completely. (If so, maybe it’s time for a clear- out before your Wildgrain box shows up?)

According to the Wildgrain website, you can stop or reschedule at any time.

And another nice thing: for every member, the company donates six meals to the Greater Boston Food Bank (the company headquarters are in Massachussetts). If you think you might want to try a Bread Subscription Box, the company has offered my readers a special deal. From now until Aug. 31, if you click on the Bread Subscription Box link and use the promo code CHEWANDCHAT when you order your first box, you can get $30 off. After Aug. 31, first-time customers will get $10 off their first order.