Jeremy Cherfas

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.

The Main Squeeze.

Shut out.

Art is exhausting.

Alas all the little bunches that held so much promise a couple of months ago shrivelled and browned. Maybe the flowers need cross-pollinating? But the vine continues to give great pleasure.

Delicious - but a little small, surely.

How not to do a social media stream

How not to do a social media stream

Glory be. The dark-leaved canna has bloomed.

Because I can.

Magic light this evening.

Community supply of water, fizzy and natural. So sensible, and much cheaper than branded.

Stranded.

Fishies.

Just reward after scaling Monte Epemeo from sea level.

This’ll do nicely.

Nearly there.

And continues

So it begins.

Thank you, Ottolenghi

Two perfect fillets of ricciola, which may or may not be a kind of amberjack, centre of a really good meal last night.

Might be time to come out early tomorrow to harvest caper buds.

Ecce Roma. The only city I know of in which public shared bicycles were a total failure demonstrates that private shared bicycles don’t stand much of a chance either. Dickwads.

Result!