I 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.

I 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.

Well, this is exciting, and a little bit scary. Proposal for the book of Our Daily Bread is on its way to publisher. Now to wait. Fortunately, baking with natural leavens teaches patience.

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.

Terrific. FB Just banned a friend's link to my latest podcast episode (Brown v. White; Our Daily Bread 23). Twice, for reasons unspoken that I can only imagine. They did not ban my link to the same post.

After enjoying a lovely day off yesterday, I've been paying for it today. Haven’t been away from the desk for more than about half an hour at a time. Mind you, most of that was to make a bread, and now that I’m done, I think I’ll go for a walk while the microbes do their thing.

Episode 01 of my contribution to Dog Days of Podcasting is up. [The Abundance of Nature](https://www.eatthispodcast.com/our-daily-bread-01/)

I'm going to be exploring the history of wheat and bread every day in August.