Dancing Spoon

The Simplicity of Bread

Simplified Culinary

by J. Michael Wheeler
Flour, Water, Yeast
Bread: “…the culinary domestication of…hard, bland seeds.” Harold McGee.

There’re a lot of different kinds of bread. There are ashcakes, baguettes, biscuits, bloomers, Boston brown breads, ciabattas, cobs, cottage loaves, crispbreads, granary loaves, harvest loaves, milk breads, potato breads, Vienna bread, white, marble rye, and whole-wheat breads.

There are breads made with wheat, rye, corn, barley, chocolate, fruits and veggies. There are flatbreads, braided breads, round loaves, square loaves, and sticks. There are even breads made just to hold a hot dog. Walk into a boulangerie in France and witness an entire world of breads.

That Staff of Life
But what really is bread? It’s just flour (usually wheat), water, and yeast. You mix, you knead, you let it rise. Shape it. Bake it. You got bread. Simple.

What’s Inside
You really need only three ingredients to make a loaf of bread.

1. Flour Grind up an edible grain fine enough, and you’ve got flour. While bread can be made from many types of flours, the main cereal grain used for bread is wheat because of its high protein (gluten) content.

For a grain to be made into bread, it must be milled (ground) into a flour fine enough to mix into a dough. The most primitive means of milling grain is the mortar and pestle, but the grind is too course for bread and is more suited to porridges and gruels.

2. Leavening You could mix flour and water together, shape it into a thin disk, and bake it; you’ll end up with a flatbread. To make a risen loaf, the “loaf of bread” loaf, you’ll need to add a rising agent such as yeast.

Yeasts are almost magical little single-celled plants. They’re a tiny, little fungus. In fact, one teaspoon contains hundreds of millions of yeast cells. The magic is that they make breads rise, grape juice turn to wine, and grains and water turn to beer.

And here’s the magic that’s important in bread making: yeast breathes air and exhales carbon dioxide, just like we do. Given a lot of air and some food (like flour), yeast grows fast and produces a lot of carbon dioxide. And it’s this gas that makes bread rise.

3. Water And water.

A Chocolate Air Valentine

Beyond Above &

by J. Michael Wheeler
Whiffable Chocolate Powder
A box of chocolates is so last century. This Valentine’s Day you can get her breathable chocolate from Le Whif! Really! Le Whif is a flavor delivery device invented by Harvard University biomedical engineering professor David Edwards at his ArtScience Labs (which has a base at, oddly enough, the cultural center Le Laboratoire, in Paris, France).

And just what is Le Whif?

Le Whif is a new delicious approach to eating by breathing. With Le Whif, we inhale food, like chocolate, into our mouths and taste it, without chewing, an experience of flavor without the calories. Le Whif is a fun new way to experience chocolate without the calories and coffee without the cup. – Le Whif Brochure

Chocolate without chewing? Coffee without, well, coffee? I just hope Professor Edwards and ArtScience Labs haven’t started work on Le Kiss.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

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Got Better Tasting Milk?

Pastures Greener

by J. Michael Wheeler
Got Better Tasting Milk?
Great story/article on NPR Got (Good) Milk? Ask The Dairy Evangelist by John Burnett about  "the Che Guevara of the American dairy industry." Warren Taylor owns and runs Snowville Creamery, and he's trying to make milk the way it was made 40 years ago, when, he insists, it tasted better.

"I built Snowville Creamery to prove to the American dairy industry that the reason our children have had a 30-year continuous decline in their consumption of milk is not entirely Coke and Pepsi's fault, but because the dairy industry has been delivering a continuously declining quality of milk, in terms of its freshness and taste," Taylor says.

Taylor sells most of his milk within 48 hours, he doesn't homogenize it, and his milk is pasteurized at a lower temperature — 165 degrees. The industry standard is 175 degrees, which Taylor believes diminishes taste. Today, the popular "ultrahigh temperature" or "ultrapasteurized" milk is sterilized at 280 degrees, a process that trades flavor for long-distance marketing and long shelf life.

Listen to the Morning Edition Story Got (Good) Milk? Ask The Dairy Evangelist

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Guarded Secrets of Food, Inc.

Food Factory

by J. Michael Wheeler
Where Does Food Come From?
"From the store," most kids answer. They are, of course, wrong. Most food comes from the factory. On the PBS program NOW, (Food, Inc.Behind the food we love—Secrets that giant food companies don't want you to know. Week of 6.5.09) David Brancaccio talks with filmmaker Robert Kenner, the director of "Food, Inc." What goes into the production, packaging, and sales of our foods?

"Food, Inc." takes a hard look at the secretive and surprising journey food takes on the way from processing plants to our dinner tables. The two discuss why contemporary food processing secrets are so closely guarded, their impact on our health, and another surprising fact: how consumers are actually empowered to make a difference.

Here's the trailer for Food, Inc.

Why is factory food so cheap? And is the cost at the supermarket or fast food joint the real cost? How does it affect our personal health and the health of the nation? The modern supermarket has, on average, 47,000 products! Food, Inc. Behind the food we love—Secrets that giant food companies don't want you to know. Watch NOW's David Brancaccio talks with filmmaker Robert Kenner, director of Food, Inc. on PBS.org

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The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food--Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal

Award-winning New York Times–bestselling author Mark Kurlansky takes us back to the food and eating habits of a younger America: Before the national highway system brought the country closer together; before chain restaurants imposed uniformity and low quality; and before the Frigidaire meant frozen food in mass quantities, the nation’s food was seasonal, regional, and traditional. It helped form the distinct character, attitudes, and customs of those who ate it.

Click here to buy The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food--Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal

Hand selected books for foodes are at Foodie's Emporium! Click here.

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Don't Knead Bread?

Trends Food

by J. Michael Wheeler
No Need to Knead: A Simple Way to Bake Bread
All Things Considered, March 22, 2009
National Public Radio's Jacki Lyden talks with Nancy Baggett, author of the new cookbook Kneadlessly Simple: Fabulous, Fuss-Free, No-Knead Breads. Now, with Nancy Baggett's revolutionary new Kneadlessly Simple method, even complete novices can bake bread quickly and easily in their own homes, with no kneading and no kitchen mess. The secret is in Baggett's slow-rise method, which allows the yeast to grow slowly and develop the same full, satisfying flavor of traditional bread, without any kneading at all.

"Kneadless bread, in fact — we think of it as very novel and revolutionary now — kneadless bread is actually the way it was made before people figured out that you could knead bread," Baggett says.

Baggett lives and bakes in the Washington, D.C., area. NPR's Jacki Lyden paid a visit to her kitchen a few weeks ago to learn the secrets of no-knead baking.

Listen to No Need to Knead: A Simple Way to Bake Bread: Click Here. There's even a recipe for Baggett's Crusty White Peasant-Style Pot Bread

Related Links
Bread Simplified What really, is bread?
The Artisan An Artisan Baker Talks of his Craft
Re-Thinking Wheat Food Trends
Weigh In Weigh, Don't Measure

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"Nancy Baggett's technique is simple and virtually fool-proof."

Kneadlessly Simple: Fabulous, Fuss-Free, No-Knead Breads
For years, countless home cooks have shied away from baking their own bread because they were intimidated by all the mess, the experience, and of course, all the kneading required. Now, with Nancy Baggett's revolutionary new Kneadlessly Simple method, even complete novices can bake bread quickly and easily in their own homes, with no kneading and no kitchen mess. The secret is in Baggett's slow-rise method, which allows the yeast to grow slowly and develop the same full, satisfying flavor of traditional bread, without any kneading at all. The technique calls for minimal ingredients, often mixed in one bowl with one spoon, eliminating all the mess of traditional bread recipes, and it can be used to produce a wide variety of breads, from Whole Wheat Boules and English Muffin Loaves to Raisin Bread and Caraway Beer Bread. With this innovative new method, anyone who can read, measure, and stir can now make delicious, fine-textured yeast bread at home.

Hand selected books are at Foodie's Emporium! Click here.

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Bread, Simplified

Simplified Culinary

by J. Michael Wheeler

Bread: “…the culinary domestication of…hard, bland seeds.” Harold McGee.

There’re a lot of different kinds of bread. There are ashcakes, baguettes, biscuits, bloomers, Boston brown breads, ciabattas, cobs, cottage loaves, crispbreads, granary loaves, harvest loaves, milk breads, potato breads, Vienna bread, white, marble rye, and whole-wheat breads.

There are breads made with wheat, rye, corn, barley, chocolate, fruits and veggies. There are flatbreads, braided breads, round loaves, square loaves, and sticks. There are even breads made just to hold a hot dog. Walk into a boulangerie in France and witness an entire world of breads.

That Staff of Life
But what really is bread? It’s just flour (usually wheat), water, and yeast. You mix, you knead, you let it rise. Shape it. Bake it. You got bread. Simple.

Wash Your 'Shrooms

Techniques Tips &

by J. Michael Wheeler
About a million years ago I worked for the restaurant-chain TGI Fridays and I was always amazed at how well they used the same ingredients in many dishes. It seemed, as I remember, that they used mushrooms in just about everything. The thing that I don’t remember is an army of prep cooks with cute little mushroom-shaped brushes delicately cleaning the dirt off of those thousands of mushrooms. They washed them. And so should you.

Pizza: It’s in the Water

Science Food

The real secret to great pizza? Move to Manhattan. According to Wired magazine (Pie in the Sky, Joe Brown, May’08) you’ll be hard pressed to get great pizza if your water isn’t NYC water and your town or city hasn’t had a great pizzeria for generations.

Brown talked to Mario Batali about the superiority of the New Yorker’s pizza. “Water is huge,” Batali told him.  “It’s one of California’s biggest problems with pizza.” Pizza dough has very few ingredients and water is the binder. The minerals and chemicals in the water affect the flavor and consistency of the dough. Manhattan coffee benefits from its water in the same way.

More intriguingly (and definitely more Left Coast) is Mario’s sense of the Zen of NYC Pizza: “New York has a grand tradition of pizza making and holds it dear,” Batali told Brown. The pizzerias that have been around forever have been using the same equipment forever. “An oven captures the gestalt of beautifully cooks pizza. And it imparts that.”

Brown found out that the pizza-ether could, in fact, exist. He talked to David Tisi, a food-development consultant, who says, “As you cook, some ingredients vaporize, and these volatilized particles can attach themselves to the walls of the baking cavity.”  Each time you use the oven some of these particles mingle with the tasty flavors from the burned wood or coal of the oven (much tastier than gas) and are deposited on the food.

If all of this sounds depressing to pizza-lovers who don’t live in New York, I hear that a lot of places deliver.

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