Eat This Podcast

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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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:21 — 6.0MB)

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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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:17 — 5.1MB)

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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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:59 — 6.5MB)

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If you bake bread only occasionally, you’re probably just grateful to little packets of dried yeast. This episode is not about that. There’s just not that much to say.

When it comes to Judeo-Christian religious doctrine, however, the role of yeast in human affairs bubbles away below the surface of our cultures.

Photo from Why Unleavened Bread?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:47 — 4.7MB)

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Flour, water, salt and yeast; the basic ingredients of a loaf of bread. What happens when you mix them up and then heat them is a complex casade of chemistry, biology and physics. Most of the more subtle changes take time and can’t really be rushed. That’s why slow bread is better than fast bread in so many ways.