A space for mostly short form stuff and responses to things I see elsewhere.
A new Eat This Newsletter: the other shoe drops on lead in cinnamon; rye in Scandinavia and the recent oldest bread, which requires a small qualifier; doubts about agricultural subsidies that “that when reached will make them redundant”; and a history of British pies https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/etn-233-leavened/
@seyloubakery Has it really been almost five years since I visited? Time flies when you're having fun. I listened again to Jonathan and it is no great surprise that Seylou has gone from strength to strength. https://www.eatthispodcast.com/bread-as-it-ought-to-be/
Just finished putting together the latest Eat This Newsletter, looking at label as a form of truth, ruined bread as a metaphor, tree-planting as a menace, crop-modelling as a pipe-dream and cheese as surplus.
If you want to know more, subscribe at https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas
A little late with the first Eat This Newsletter of the New Year, but my boss says that's OK.
Read it at https://buttondown.email/jeremycherfas/archive/eat-this-newsletter-172-policy-potato-and/ for thoughts on FOPLs, ag and food policy in the US and the UK, potato bread etc
Ave Fornax!
Ave Fornax!
@tavolamediterranea has decreed that today is the start of Fornacalia, which I am celebrating with a very un-Roman bread. At least, I don't think the Romans ever baked with rye. And certainly not sunflower seeds.
This is the 100% rye sourdough with a sunflower seed soaker from @raleighstreetbaker reduced to what is, for me, a more manageable quantity. Link to full recipe in bio.
pesosI have enormous admiration for John F. Appleby, who in the 1870s perfected a machine that would tie a knot in twine, thus enabling a machine to bind sheaves of grain together and setting in motion the giant combine harvesters that enable our daily bread.
#mbnov
Currently reading: Our Daily Bread by Predrag Matvejević, ISBN: 9781912545094
#non-fiction
#food
#history
#mythology
Delighted to learn that Subway bread in Ireland is cake, in the same way that Jaffa Cakes are cake, at least as far as VAT is concerned.
A friend and bread client gave me a bag of Khorasan flour, so not Kamut, but, with a tacit request, later confirmed, that I baker a loaf
A friend and bread client gave me a bag of Khorramshahr flour, so not Kamut, but, with a tacit request, later confirmed, that I baker a loaf.
So, here goes. I fed my 75% wholewheat starter, thinking this would be whole too. It isn’t, but that’s ok. Kneads up oK, with a nice pale yellow cast. Seems a bit weak though, even though the packet said 14% protein. Obviously not that great for gluten. We shall see.
One of the most satisfying things about coming home after a holiday is giving all the microbiology a bit of love so it can return the favour
Starters refreshed and one used to produce a simple white bread with 5% each whole wheat and whole rye. I’ll use the other one in a day or two, and see to the yoghurt tomorrow.
photoI am amazed and saddened by the number of beginner bakers I see in forums saying that their bread tasted fantastic but didn't rise enough, or didn't have giant holes, or didn't a shiny crust, or whatever.
Just eat it.
Bread porn too has a lot to answer for.
2019-03-05
1 min read
There is order in the universe. I know, because on the very day that I finally knuckled down and wrote a pathetic little spreadsheet to do some bread calculations for me, the Gods of Serendipity put in one of my RSS feeds, and my gob is smacked.
22 Brilliant at The Basics - Nicholas Bate
3. Make your own coffee. It's cheaper, it's better and it's therapeutic.
4. Make your own bread. See 3, except it's not cheaper.
Depends how you measure cost, obviously
h/t Matthew Lang
Real bread week, eh? Or, as I like to call it, Bread Week. Every week. 3kg of 50% wholewheat out of the fridge and ready for action.
@jamesksowerby Indeed, Elizabeth David did not think much of the Chorleywood Bread Process from the start. And I think she was the first person I read who suggesting using much less yeast and much more time to get good flavour.
Thanks Aaron for your mention of my wheat and bread podcasts. You raise an interesting question about aboriginal bread in Australia. I've listened to a podcast with Bruce Pascoe and read a general piece that was awfully muddled, but I have not read his book. I have no reason not to take his claims at face value, although I also think that the freight he is adding to those claims owes as much to the general status and recent past history of aboriginal people in Australia as it does to archaeology. I will certainly be including something in the book I am working on.
I could extract quote after quote from Colin Tudge's latest essay on agriculture, at http://www.campaignforrealfarming.org/2018/10/why-wont-the-powers-that-be-take-agriculture-seriously... but it would undermine the whole, just as a steak undermines a whole cow or an organic loaf of bread undermines the fertility-building beans needed to produce it. Just go read.
@journeymanhisto I find it incomprehensible why anyone would write 13 separate little tweets instead of a blog post. Luckily, @threadapp captured the story at https://threader.app/thread/1044577825091514368.
Also a central topic in my podcast series Our Daily Bread, especially episode 13.