Our Daily Bread, Podcasts

Crumbs; the oldest bread Our Daily Bread 03

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:41 — 4.6MB)

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Maybe you heard about the oldest crumbs of burnt toast in the world. But have you stopped to wonder how the archaeologists found those crumbs? The bread they came from was a fine, mixed grain loaf that might well have been a special dish at a feast. It is even possible that bread was the first elite food that became affordable thanks to industrial technology — agriculture.

Our Daily Bread, Podcasts

Boil in the Bag Our Daily Bread 02

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:14 — 4.3MB)

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When did people start to eat wheat? The date keeps getting pushed back, and is now around 35,000 to 45,000 years ago. That is long before the dawn of intentional agriculture. How do we know? Because a man who died in a cave hadn’t cleaned his teeth, and stuck in the tartar were grains of boiled starch. Which raises another set of problems that seem to have been solved by wilderness survival experts.

Our Daily Bread, Podcasts

The Abundance of Nature Our Daily Bread 01

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:00 — 4.9MB)

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In the 1960s, using the most primitive of tools, an American plant scientist demonstrated that a small family, working not all that hard for about three weeks, could gather enough wild cereal seeds to last them easily for a year or more. Jack Harlan’s experiments on the slopes of the Karacadağ mountains in Turkey offer a perfect gateway to this exploration of the history of bread and wheat.

Photo of Wild einkorn, wild emmer and Aegilops species in Karacadag mountain range by H. Özkan.

Our Daily Bread, Podcasts

Our Daily Bread 00 Introducing a series on the history of wheat and bread

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:33 — 1.3MB)

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It’s magic, I know. First a pretty ordinary grass becomes the main source of sustenance for most of the people alive on Earth. Then they learn how to turn the seeds of that grass into the food of the gods. Join me, every day in August, as I dig into Our Daily Bread for the Dog Days of Podcasting with short episodes on the history of wheat and bread.

Extra Matter

Eat This Newsletter 082 A day late, a dollar short

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  1. Katherine Preston, aka The Botanist in the Kitchen, goes to town on a self-serving, bullshit-peddling soy milk manufacturer and finds several teaching moments in her rant of the month. My one complaint; why not name and shame Silk and it’s owners, DanoneWave?
  2. What’s behind the USA’s efforts to torpedo global efforts to encourage breast-feeding. What did you think?
  3. The most food secure country in the world? Hint: it isn’t the USA any more.
  4. Way, way more than you’ll ever need to know to refuse a bottle of corked wine. Just remind that sniffy sommelier that you’re grateful to chlorophenol O-methyltransferase for protecting us from evil.
  5. A move away from rice could save water and improve nutrition in India. Just one thing: “would [people] be willing to incorporate more of these alternative cereals into their diets”?
  6. The US discovers that an Argentinian beef carcass cut into steaks can be labelled “Product of U.S.A.” The EU has been wrestling with all this for decades.
  7. If a picture were worth 1000 words, Kay at Big Picture Agriculture would have written 6,000 words on corn (maize) in global trade.