#bread | Jeremy Cherfas

Golden raisin bread. The dough is unsweetened, which makes the raisins even sweeter.

Golden raisin bread. The dough is unsweetened, which makes the raisins even sweeter.

Working on a new bread with kalonji, straight out of the oven after an overnight cold rise. But how to describe the taste of kalonji?

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.

Replied to a post on collect.readwriterespond.com :

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.

Replied to a post on twitter.com :

@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.

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

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

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."

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.