Jeremy Cherfas

Production line.

I just love the way whole rye kicks my starter into a higher gear.

Fleeting pleasures.

SRO at the Mary Beard lecture.

Golden raisin bread. Natural leaven, 25% wholemeal, about 70% hydration. A definite keeper.

Just like old times.

Roll on winter.

Well, that was good. @jomo23 @clinklucy

Just off to do the grocery shopping.

Avoiding hidden shoals on my afternoon stroll.

A new leaf.

Who thought this was a good idea? What did these plants do to deserve such ill treatment? And, most pressing of all, who would pay good money to have one in their home?

It's about time. That thing I promised a few days back, about time and the business of baking bread, is now published. My basic argument is that cheap bread devalues good bread and good bakers. "If a loaf of pap is available for pennies, how are we to justify an adequate reward for the baker who needs time and space to produce a different kind of loaf? It is the existence of cheap bread that makes a desire for something better into an elitist, privileged foodie pursuit." http://ow.ly/q5DH30lLVr2

Impossible to pick just one image from today’s soul-recharging trip to Edinburgh Botanics, but I forced myself. Will curate properly on a bigger screen.

Mission accomplished.

So many naked ladies.

A whale of a hedge for @nicolakidsbooks

Getting ready for live stream

Kicking off at #foodcommunicationconf

An institution long before I first came here 45 years ago.

Edinburgh I am in you.

After the rain.

Our Daily Bread 31 - Winding Down http://ow.ly/qyup30lBumt What more is there to say? Plenty, of course, but not this time. This is the final episode of this run of Our Daily Bread. I say that as if there will be another, but all I'm really doing is leaving the door slightly ajar. I've had a lot of fun and learned a lot. I hope you have too. For a final thought, I cannot do better than Elizabeth David, from her meticulous chapter on The Cost of Baking Your Own Bread in English Bread and Yeast Cookery. After going through nutrition, prices and all that she writes: "So much for price comparisons. Long before you've finished doing the sums you realise that what counts is the value of decent bread to you and to the people you are responsible for feeding, and what that is, it's up to us to work out for ourselves."

Brutti ma buoni.

Our Daily Bread 30 - A Perennial Dream http://ow.ly/8pcy30lB5vW Wheat is an annual plant; it dies after setting seed. Each year, the farmer has to prepare the land, sow seed, fertilise and protect the plants. When the ground is bare, between crops, wind and water can erode the soil. The shallow root systems of annual plants fail to exploit the resources of the soil and do little to improve it. So although wheat feeds us, it does so at considerable cost to the environment. It isn't sustainable. What if wheat were perennial? Photo by Jerry D. Glover; annual wheat on the left, Kernza™ on the right.

Our Daily Bread 29 - It's a Hard Grain http://ow.ly/3Zvt30lB5rE Durum wheat is only about 5% of the total wheat harvest around the world. For those of us who like our pasta, that's a very important 5%. Different gluten proteins make a durum dough stretchy rather than elastic -- perfect for pasta. The kernels are very hard and need dedicated milling machinery, which produces small granules -- semolina -- rather than flour. That, however, may be about to change.

So excited. And in a few days I may actually have time to sit and read.

Our Daily Bread 28 - Anything but Grim http://ow.ly/MAbj30lz3WQ The one process in the whole business of turning wheat into bread when time is of the essence is the harvest. It's back-breaking work, and the slightest delay can ruin the quality of the grain. In Europe, a ready supply of peasants got the job done. In America, labour, especially in the newly settled midwest, was extremely scarce. Inventors had to come up with machines.

Our Daily Bread 27 - Bread and Political Circuses http://ow.ly/SUG530lz3Uo An enormous amount of wheat, roughly one fifth of the total harvest, is traded internationally between countries and, as might be expected, if the supply falls, prices rise. Given the strategic importance of wheat, countries try to ensure that they have an adequate supply, even when doing so actually makes things worse, at least in the short term. Wheat links a drought in China to the fall of Egypt's government in the Arab Spring of 2011.

Our Daily Bread 26 - Wheats and Measures http://ow.ly/jVLd30lxI4x Eight wheat seeds of silver gets you 5 pounds 10 ounces of bread. The very first English law about food regulated the size of a standard loaf of bread. The Assize of Bread and Ale kept the price constant, but that price bought more or less bread depending on the price of wheat. It never was a very useful system, for bakers or bread buyers, but it survived from at least 1266 until 1836 and provides an opportunity to consider a pound of silver versus a pound of bread.

Ok.

Our Daily Bread 25 - Tradition! http://ow.ly/wCsS30lxHFL The one thing to be thankful for in the rise of fast factory bread is that it prompted the resurgence of small, artisan bakers. They have been goaded to produce breads that are better in every way than even the best breads of years gone by. It may seem at times as if their focus is on traditions from time immemorial. It isn't. Because aside from taking time, what they are doing isn't all that traditional.

For all the satisfaction I get handling a good load of dough and multiple loaves, there is something very pleasant about doing one simple bread.

Our Daily Bread 24 - Slow, but Exceedingly Fine http://ow.ly/W4Ix30lvxpu Without a doubt, the most important trend in the resurgence of baking with care is the increasing use of small mills by keen home bakers and professionals alike. Better nutrition and stunning flavour are the obvious benefits. Less visible, a renewal of local grain growing and closer links between farmers and bakers, all in search of better wheats. Photo by kind permission of Andrew Heyn at New American Stone Mills.

Our Daily Bread 23 - Brown v. White http://ow.ly/Fn5K30lvxlk The fight between brown and white, good for you versus good for us, has been going on for a long time. Brown flour certainly ought to be more nutritious, and these days, even the elites are choosing brown bread over white. Maybe that's why sales of "whole grain bread" have more than tripled in the US over the past few years. The weevil in the loaf: whole grain need be only 51%, and whole grain flour is just white flour with some added bran and germ.

Gettin’ purified.

Our Daily Bread 22 - Sourdough by Any Name http://ow.ly/QLnm30ltLNu Sourdough -- whatever you call it -- is the original leavening agent for breads around the world. At its simplest it is just a piece of the last batch of dough, set aside to ferment the current batch. But it can be so much more than that, a stable little ecosystem of species that support one another while keeping out intruders. It also makes the best bread, although I admit to being biassed. It needn't actually taste sour. In fact, except in a few countries, it need not even make use of a natural leaven.

Our Daily Bread 21 - Breaking Bread http://ow.ly/Z8c730ltLDJ If you bake bread only occasionally, you're probably just grateful to little packets of dried yeast. This episode is not about that. There's just not that much to say. When it comes to Judeo-Christian religious doctrine, however, the role of yeast in human affairs bubbles away below the surface of our cultures.

Working on a new recipe; can’t wait for this beauty to cool.

Our Daily Bread 20 - Back to Basics http://ow.ly/Dbld30lsqGz Flour, water, salt and yeast; the basic ingredients of a loaf of bread. What happens when you mix them up and then heat them is a complex casade of chemistry, biology and physics. Most of the more subtle changes take time and can't really be rushed. That's why slow bread is better than fast bread in so many ways.

Our Daily Bread 19 - The Bread that Ate the World http://ow.ly/kvrk30lsqEj Small bakers couldn't compete with the giants created by Allied Bakeries, so they turned to science. That produced the Chorleywood bread process, which gave them a quicker, cheaper loaf. Unfortunately, the giant bakeries gobbled up the new method too. More and more small bakeries went out of business as a loaf of bread became cheaper and cheaper. Was it worth it? You tell me.

Our Daily Bread 18 - Allied forever http://ow.ly/2vIi30lqICw Size brings benefits to bakeries as much as to flour mills. The episode tells a small part of the story of how George Weston turned a bakery route in Toronto into one of the biggest food companies in the world, responsible for more brands of bread than you can imagine. And not just the bread, but many of the ingredients that make megabakeries possible.

Perfect summer’s evening.

Our Daily Bread 17 - Rollin' rollin' rollin' http://ow.ly/iVOi30lqItG Stone mills served us well in the business of turning grain into flour for thousands of years, but they couldn't keep up with either population growth or new and better wheat. The roller mill came about through a succession of small inventions and deep pockets of a few visionary entrepreneurs. They turned Minneapolis into the flour capital of the world.

Our Daily Bread 16 - Water and Power http://ow.ly/dcKc30loDEM The rotary quern was perhaps the first labour-saving device. Using water power, rather than muscles, to turn the millstone made it even more efficient. Without watermills, it is doubtful whether ancient Romans could have enjoyed their bread and circuses. Because they require capital investment and skilled workers, watermills also set the trend for concentration in the food industry.

Our Daily Bread 15 - Risen http://ow.ly/VVRP30loDzy August 15th is Ferragosto, a big-time holiday in Italy that harks back to the Emperor Augustus and represents a well-earned rest after the harvest. It is also the Feast Day of the Assumption, the day on which, Catholics believe, the Virgin Mary was taken, body and soul, into heaven. Is there a connection between them? And what does it have do with wheat? Apologies to listeners in the southern hemisphere; this may not reflect your experience.

Our Daily Bread 14 - The Daily Grind http://ow.ly/5IbY30ln1TY It has been a long time since anyone who wanted to eat bread had to first grind their wheat. Grinding, however, was absolutely fundamental to agricultural societies, and still is for some. Archaeologists can see how the work left its mark on the skeletons of the women who ground the corn in the valley of the Euphrates. Then, about 2500 years ago, in the area now called Catalonia, an unknown genius invented the first labour-saving device.

Our Daily Bread 13 - Bread from the Dead http://ow.ly/gqAn30ln1Rg It's a good thing the Egyptians believed strongly in an afterlife and wanted to make sure their dead had an ample supply of bread. The bread and the tomb inscriptions tell us something about how grain was grown and bread baked. To really understand the process, however, you need to be a practical-minded archaeologist like Delwen Samuel, who first set out to replicate Egyptian bread.

Our Daily Bread 12 - The inside story http://ow.ly/sT1F30lmWqK That kernel of wheat isn't actually a seed or a berry, at least not to a botanist. I have no intention of getting into the whole pointless is it a fruit or a vegetable debate, so lets just agree that no matter what you call it, the wheat thing is made up of three major parts: bran, endosperm and germ. In this episode, a little about each of those parts and what they do for wheat.