Jeremy Cherfas

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.

Our Daily Bread 11 - It's not natural http://ow.ly/dVGu30lkIs3 Wheat has a hugely diverse genetic background, being made up of three different species, and genetic diversity is what allows breeders to find the traits they need to produce wheats that can cope with changing conditions. But because the accidents that created wheat might have happened just the once, plenty of diversity that is missing from modern wheats is still in wheat's ancestors. Trouble is, crossing a wild wheat with a modern wheat is almost impossible. Solution: remake modern wheat.

Our Daily Bread 10 - Dwarf wheat: On the shoulders of a giant http://ow.ly/GMGm30lkIm5 Norman Borlaug created the wheats that created the Green Revolution. They had short stems that could carry heavy ears of wheat, engorged by loads of fertiliser. They were resistant to devastating rust diseases. And they were insensitive to daylength, meaning they could be grown almost anywhere. All three traits had been bred into wheat 40 years before Borlaug got going, by the Italian pioneer Nazareno Strampelli.

Our Daily Bread 09 - Red Fife http://ow.ly/U7aJ30liK2e �For more than 40 years, one wheat variety dominated the Canadian prairies. Red Fife -- the red-seeded wheat grown by David Fife, a Scottish immigrant -- gave the highest yields of the best quality. It almost didn't happen, if you believe the stories. And then, having set the standard, Red Fife was eclipsed by its own offspring and slowly slid into oblivion. Until, in 1986, Sharon Rempel set about rescuing it.

Our Daily Bread 08 - Nikolay Ivanovich Vavilov http://ow.ly/nxbJ30liJUz This short episode fails to do justice to the man who, more than anyone, first grasped the importance of knowing where and how wheat arose. It does, however, explain why Vavilov wanted to collect the 'building blocks' of future food security, for wheat and many other crops. In more than 60 countries, Vavilov and his colleagues gathered diversity from farmers' fields; they died protecting their collections.

Our Daily Bread 07 - Bake like an Egyptian http://ow.ly/6CJ430lfJ7K Kamut® is a modern wheat -- registered and trademarked in 1990 -- with an ancient lineage. The word is ancient Egyptian, and the hieroglyphics may literally mean "Soul of the Earth". More prosaically, "bread". The story of its discovery and growing popularity says a lot about our hunger for stories. It is also quite capable of leading hard-nosed molecular biologists astray

Our Daily Bread 06 - Hulled wheats http://ow.ly/hjYO30lfIYw Farro is not spelt. It isn't einkorn or emmer either. Farro "is an Italian ethnobotanical concept".

Our Daily Bread 05 - At last: agriculture http://ow.ly/tA7x30lfEr1 Very quick or slightly slower, in just a few hundred years, domesticated wheat spreads all over the Fertile Crescent.

Our Daily Bread 04 - What exactly is wheat? http://ow.ly/XhGe30lfEid How, and when, did modern wheat arise from its the wild ancestors?

Continuing my daily podcast series, Our Daily Bread 03 - Crumbs; the oldest bread http://ow.ly/krTX30lfEc5 Bread, the archaeologists suggest, is not the product of a “civilized society” but perhaps a precursor to it.

A thousand little suns.

Our Daily Bread 02; Boil in the Bag http://ow.ly/WIsU30leAFe When did we start to eat wheat? "There's no proof yet that the Neanderthal in Shanidar actually swallowed the porridge, but he definitely put it in his mouth."

My contribution to the Dog Days of Podcasting, every day in August. http://ow.ly/luL830leqsV Our Daily Bread 01; The Abundance of Nature Jack Harlan's experiments on the slopes of the Karacadağ mountains in Turkey offer a perfect gateway to this exploration of the history of bread and wheat.

More than tripled in six hours. It really is hot.

Santa Costanza; impossible to do it justice.

Just part of this morning’s fun. Yvette Klein reflects on technicians restoring? Pino Pascali’s 32 mq di mare circa. The restoration and show @lagallerianazionale really is exciting and stimulating.

Heading past the baker’s tomb on the way to have some fun.

Solid tidying on the terrace. Not that you can tell ...

Threshing machine.

Happy student bread bakers means I am happy.

Serious show and tell from @clinklucy with @candicesmithcorby and @williampettit72 and their super bunch of students

Not just any old tomato. Story to follow, eventually, when they ripen fully.

If only it were that easy.

Still not our hotel.

Not our hotel.

Duck breast with “salty sour cherry pie” and it was very fine.

Toy soldiers on parade.