Here’s what you should do with a good piece of bread–like a baguette: Assault it. And I mean open it with your hands, stick your nose inside, and then inhale.

Unless you live near a grain mill that grows small batch wheat, sadly, you may not find the aromatic complexity and flavor that makes that piece of bread the best bread of your life.

Really good bread comes from good flour. If we could make and eat good bread everyday, the flour would come from small batch farmers who valued its freshness.

Conventional flour production, like the sprawling farms in the American Midwest–have tricks to accelerate wheat growth. And the problem is the way they manipulate the soil, as if the soil itself was produced in a chemistry lab. The modern, corporate wheat we consume will render the right texture in bread, but it doesn’t have the taste or the flavor.

Like honey, it might be true that flour takes on the essence of its environment. And why wouldn’t it? Isn’t that true of everything? There’s a flour made in France that is grown near savage nature–cliffs, and forests and boars–also mountains and extinct volcanoes–and bread made from the wheat grown in that region is said to make some of the best bread in France.

And if someone has been growing wheat for seven generations on their farm, isn’t that experience conveyed to the wheat, then conveyed to the bread? In an era of corporate farming, corporate eating, and processed food, we’ve forgotten how good food can really taste when it is made locally at the hands of people who have been growing food for a long time.

Every bite tells a story about its producers and where their farm is, whether there is a river nearby or a field of flowers or a herd of goats.

We have forgotten this, forgotten what food really tastes like. We don’t nurture ourselves any longer with ingredients that tell a story and fortify us.

The modern way of making wheat is to produce as much flour as possible for as little as possible. Many in the farm industry believe that business model is no longer sustainable. And these farmers believe the answer is in the soil.

Protecting the health of the soil is imperative, they say. Soil actually decays in industrial settings. Regenerating the soil comes from a process of diversification, using natural, rather than chemical fertilizers, implementing complex crop rotation and reduced ploughing. The improved health of the farm’s soils produces high quality crops, increased wildlife habitation, and better retention of carbon in the soil–key to good soil because carbon helps retain moisture.

Soil health is big news these days. The United Nations considers soil degregation a threat to human health. Maybe seeing topsoil as a living thing itself will help to create needed change in the farming industry.

Although, not surprisingly, federal policies encourage farmers to stick to the same old farming approach that led to soil degregation in the first place. As government gets bigger and controls more aspects of our lives, people are less healthy, in my humble opinion. Federal farming policies encourage the use of liquid fertilizers and pesticides. We’re not getting enough nutrients from our soil any longer.

Here’s a statistic that drives this home: more than 50 percent of America’s topsoil has eroded away by modern farming techniques. Fifty percent!

While farmers pride themselves on the stewardship of the land, many have been farming the same way for years, and old habits die hard. Farms have had to get bigger to stay competitive, making it harder for growers to be able to pay attention to the needs of each acre. The majority of farmers in the United States grow the same thing year after year due to a mix of government incentives, habit and ease, according to studies.

If you can do one thing in your life to improve your day-to-day living, try to incorporate something basic and fundamental into your day. Grow a pot of herbs, order some small batch ancient grain flour online to make bread, shop locally-grown foods when possible. Living in Chautauqua County gives us all kinds of possibilities, from organic meats to honey to cider.

And listen, there is nothing better than homemade bread. Never made a loaf? It’s not that hard. Like anything, the longer you do it, the more you experiment, the better it is.

Let’s find out what real bread tastes like, maybe for the first time in our lives.

Google ancient flours from small farms. There’s a grower in Batavia, New York and several in Vermont. They ship.