Our Bread

Simply Better Bread

By Jocelyn LeRoy, Owner

The rising bread used to stick to the curtains in my mother’s living room. Yeasty, gummy, fascinating to poke at. When I did this, it collapsed in a wrinkled heap in the pan. I hid behind a big chair and watched the dough slowly rise again. I hoped mother wouldn’t find out I’d interfered with her carefully timed out bread baking.

I loved learning to make bread. It was so much fun punching the dough, rolling it around, shaping it into loaves or rounds. And oh, the aroma that filled the house on bread baking day! The best part, of course, was biting into the freshly baked loaf.

Today, the pleasure is just as intense.

Here at Trillium, we bake our bread by hand. The “progress” in the bread baking industry has marched right by us.

We feel that we don’t need additives to make the bread more squeezable, to last for weeks, to kill bacteria, to flavour the flour, or to “enrich” the bread itself.

Mass production causes bread to be less expensive. For a few more pennies, having real ingredients in our loaves of bread really does make a difference. Just like in the olden days.

Ever since the day I was trapped in an airplane, seated beside the late Robert Cook, former manager of Upper Canada Village in Morrisburg, Ontario, our flour has been ground on the stone mill in the Village. This was a good step backward in time for our bread-making dreams. Our sky-high negotiations created an agreement that has kept us both in business for nearly three decades, and fulfilled my vision to have our bread flour ground on an authentic stone mill.

They at Upper Canada Village grind our grain for us – “Marquis” brand, a direct derivative of premium Red Fife flour, and non-GMO – on the big stone mill. No nuts and bolts falling into the flour here. (Occasionally commercial bags of flour contain a little prize buried in the flour – a broken metal part from the machinery.)

The grinding process gives it its unique character and texture. The flour has flavour on its own. Not burned. Not scorched. Nothing added to mask its natural essence.

You only need enriched flour when you’ve taken the bran and germ of the wheat away – to put back some portion of the nutrition that’s been removed.

We add lots of interesting ingredients to our basic wholegrain bread – sunflower seeds, flax, currants, sesame seeds, oats, a touch of sea salt.

We choose to leave out:

  • preservatives
  • dough conditioners
  • emulsifiers
  • mold retardants
  • stabilizers
  • pesticides
  • caramel colour
  • modified milk ingredients
  • excessive sugar and salt

One blustery winter night we put a dozen or so large buckets filled with rising bread dough into our warmed up truck and drove across town to our friends’ bakery – “Ami des Gourmets.”

Our part of town had a power outage. Theirs did not. They kindly invited us over for a very fun evening. Our one and only crack at trying to make bread the automated “modern” way A series of machinery did all the work – dividing the dough, shaping the loaves, dropping them into strap pans (several attached pans in a row), sending them down a chute, into rotating ovens for a perfectly even baking. We were so excited! A taste of technology!

Well, the loaves got baked. They came out quite heavy. Disappointingly dense – nice little uniform bricks. Was it a draft in the truck? Was it the lack of touch by a human hand? Maybe the “dough conditioners” would have helped?

Another memorable evening of excitement left a sooty mark all over the walls. Our famous implosion due to “negative air” caused our bread to shoot out of the oven like missiles. Even without additives, the bread survived the flight and crash landing.

When it comes to baking the old-fashioned way, we do not loaf around! It’s work of the most satisfying kind. And, for relief from modern technology, knotted gut due to fear of additives or good old constipation, take forward motion – go backwards in time with natural, whole, real bread!

Types of Bread

— 100% Wholewheat            

— 100% Wholewheat with added

  • Sunflower Seeds
  • Sesame Seeds
  • Flax, Poppy and Sesame seeds
  • Oatmeal
  • Oat Bran
  • Cornmeal
  • Raisin Cinnamon
  • Protein (high)
  • Upper Canada Harvest Loaf
  • Upper Canada Old-Fashioned
  • Maritime Molasses Brown Bread
  • Maritime Molasses Brown Bread with Raisins
  • Light Rye
  • Carrot Currant
  • Black Russian
  • Mediterranean
  • Pumpkin
  • Buckwheat Barley and Chia

— 100% Organic Spelt

— 100% Organic Spelt with added

  • Flax, Poppy and Sesame Seeds
  • Sunflower Seeds
  • Sesame Seeds
  • Plain Spelt
  • Raisins

— 100% Spelt Sourdough

— 100% Sourdough with added

  • Flax, Poppy and Sesame Seeds
  • Sunflower Seeds
  • Sesame Seeds
  • Plain Spelt Sourdough
  • Raisin

— 100% Rye (by special order)

— Barley-buckwheat-chia     

Bread Slicing 

  • Take a deep breath. Relax.
  • Give your arms and hands a little shake.
  • Grasp the loaf in your non-slicing hand. Feel it. It’s pretty defenseless. Turn it on its side if you’re a really bad slicer.
  • Firmly, but gently, saw a slice off the end of the bread. Take another deep breath. Eyeball the loaf steadily. Saw another slice.

A sharp bread knife is a must-have. This is your key to success. A little practice is all you need, once you have your good knife. There are several shops in the neighborhood that sell bread knives. Chef’s Paradis has the traditional long-bladed bread knife. It’s a pleasure to use.