
Breaking Bread: The dark and white flours of ideology - lermontov
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/kiosk/rips_nicolaia_21_october_2019.php
======
dig1
As someone who is enjoy eating a lot of bread (part of my Balkan culture), I'm
baffled to see so much hesitation toward bread when I go abroad. I'd
frequently get plenty of food in restaurants, but not so much bread with it.
Even if I get it, either it is something old or "too much white" for my taste
(this means there is nothing in it useful for the body).

Although we have plenty of bakeries with fresh bread 24/7, I recently started
to make my own with bread maker I got as present few years ago (some
Moulinex). It was sitting in a box and I decided to try it before sell it or
give someone.

I can say, this ended up pretty well. I always liked chemistry (mixing and
weighting stuff, calculating compounds) and this happens to be essential part
of bread making. After few failed attempts, my bread finally started to get
desired shape and taste; my family started to like it as well.

The best part is that I know what I'm putting in (I'm not so much fond of
general food industry) and as a geek, I introduced some geekish stuff as well.
Although bread maker automates lot of things, I'm using Emacs and ledger-cli
[1] to track compounds I'm adding, including comments about finished bread.
This way I can always pull what worked the best, what not and total amount of
compounds I spent in a week or month. TBH, this article [2] was inspiration
for tracking with Emacs.

Still tons of stuff to learn, but "the project" ended up funny and very
enjoyful.

[1] [https://www.ledger-cli.org/](https://www.ledger-cli.org/)

[2] [https://bofh.org.uk/2019/02/25/baking-with-
emacs/](https://bofh.org.uk/2019/02/25/baking-with-emacs/)

~~~
ramanshah
Very nice :) As a fellow bread baker/chemist/geek, I wrote this little
command-line tool in Haskell that helps me scale recipes. I've used it to
develop/store/print out recipes and routinely for dinner breads like tortillas
and rotis ("OK so I just dumped 113 g of durum atta into a bowl; how much
water, oil, and salt do I need?")

[https://github.com/ramanshah/bread](https://github.com/ramanshah/bread)

~~~
selimthegrim
Your next task should you choose to accept it is to develop an open source
rival to Rotimatic

------
jhrmnn
I'm still amazed how relatively easy it is to bake your own sourdough bread,
and encourage everyone to at least give it a try. After a few practice rounds,
the total time you need to put in for a loaf is about half an hour (<5 mins
work, 8–12 hours waiting, 20 mins work, 2 hours waiting, 5 mins work, 5–7
hours waiting, <5 mins work, 30 mins baking, done). I'm following this recipe
[1]. Just yesterday I made this one [2], I think my 10th try.

[1]
[https://www.hobbshousebakery.co.uk/blogs/recipes/140081991-s...](https://www.hobbshousebakery.co.uk/blogs/recipes/140081991-sourdough-
bread-recipe)

[2]
[https://pub.hrmnn.net/25/847d8c01/DSCF6085.jpeg](https://pub.hrmnn.net/25/847d8c01/DSCF6085.jpeg)

~~~
namdnay
By "throw a cup of water into the bottom of the oven", is he being literal? as
in literally pour the water onto the oven floor? Is that safe? Or is it "throw
in" in the colloquial sense of "put it in"

~~~
alex_duf
You can poor the water into a baking tray.

Regarding safety, just be careful not to burn yourself

~~~
prpl
It’s best to buy a cheap cast pan, fill it with chain or bolts, and through it
on that. If you want to get fancy you can get a metal colander and fill it
with ice and put it above that.

~~~
eps
Baking tray with lava rocks is a better option, but the simplest option is
just to bake in a dutch oven with a lid on. There's enough moisture in the
dough to create required amount of steam. 20 min with lid, 20 min without gets
the job done very nicely.

~~~
prpl
yes but that doesn't work if it's not a boule

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tallanvor
Question for native German speakers: Are abendbrot and brotzeit regional
terms? I know that when I took German I was taught abendessen and imbiss
respectively.

~~~
ThePadawan
I can only agree with the other responses.

In my personal usage, I would say Abendessen and Snack.

Abendbrot sounds like something a 60+ year old would call it.

I haven't heard it called Brotzeit since I was in elementary school in
Bavaria, so that overlaps with the sibling responses.

Personally, when I hear "Imbiss", a kiosk that sells food is the primary thing
that comes to mind. As in, you can get a hot dog with fries there.

~~~
tallanvor
Regarding Imbiss, it could be that my teacher learned it incorrectly, or it
could be that I'm remembering incorrectly. Or, of course, it could be
technically correct, but not actually used in daily speech. :)

~~~
ThePadawan
It's a 100% reasonable to teach it. The German Wikipedia result right now is a
disambiguation page between the snack and the place to buy the snack ("Imbiss"
always being short for Imbissbude, Imbissstand etc.).

------
emsign
As a German I didn't realize the bad rep white bread has in Germany originated
in Nazi propaganda. But I'm not surprised because a lot of urban myths in
Germany do unfortunately. White bread isn't less healthy than any other bread
by the way, so the author's uncriticial view of German bread myths - and her
inevitable spread by repeating them - is a bit disappointing.

If you really want to eat healthy bread, don't look at the color but look at
the ingredients. If there's added sugar or syrup then it's probably less
healthy. Except if you take into consideration that the added sugars somehow
prevent the bread from getting moldy, since eating moldy bread isn't healthy.

When it comes to ingredients bread really is as simple as it gets, there's not
much that can go wrong healthwise (except the aforementioned sugars and
syrups). It's astonishing how much variety you can achieve with these smallest
number of ingredients by simply changing slightly the way it is prepared and
baked.

And another myth is that industrially produced bread is less healthy or of
lower quality than the one from the bakery or home baked. The one you bake at
home using the off the shelf yeast probably will taste the same if not worse
than the ones you can buy pre-packeged in the same store. Of course I can only
attest this to German mass-baked bread, maybe it's of high quality anyway.

Baking bread is an art. Of course, if you master it you can make bread that
tastes like no other but the best tasting bread will always be the one that's
fresh out of the oven, still slightly warm.

~~~
fractallyte
_White bread isn 't less healthy than any other bread by the way_

That's simply not true. Whole wheat bread retains the bran (fiber) and germ
(vitamins), while the endosperm in white bread is mainly starch.

