Eat This Podcast
Talking about anything around food

Wheats and Measures Our Daily Bread 26

26 August 2018 Filed under:

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.

Tradition! Our Daily Bread 25

25 August 2018 Filed under:

Nathan Myhrvold is right: “The best bread the world has ever had is being made today.”

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 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.

Slow, but Exceedingly Fine Our Daily Bread 24

24 August 2018 Filed under:

Bakers who grind their own grain are all utterly in love with the flour they get. I’m jealous.

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.

Brown v. White Our Daily Bread 23

23 August 2018 Filed under:

If you are eating reasonably well, it probably doesn’t matter which you choose. You can get great white bread, and you can get awful brown bread.

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.

Photo from DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.

Sourdough by Any Name Our Daily Bread 22

22 August 2018 Filed under:

It needn’t actually taste sour. In fact, except in a few countries, it need not even make use of a natural leaven.

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.

Photo is one of mine, in both senses.