Category: Food
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Bread Baking, Summer 2022
Bread Machine Broken The mixer seized up My bread machine, a Zojirushi Virtuoso model BB-PAC20, stopped working on Monday June 27. The pan would not even seat on the drive connectors in the machine. One of the drive shafts was seized. The pan was already loaded with unmixed ingredients for a light rye bread. I […]
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Spoon-Fed by Tim Spector
Spoon-Fed discusses the diets of people in developed countries. Spoon-Fed puts a great deal of information into a short book. It fails to reconcile some inconsistencies. It discusses a number of “myths” about food and nutrition. A myth is a story that many people have learned to believe, but not a scientifically proved factual story. […]
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The Diet Myth
The title of Tim Spector’s 2015 book The Diet Myth refers to one “myth”. The book begans with an Introduction that discusses the author’s midlife health crisis when his blood pressure rose suddenly, and present an overview of his research into the modern diet. The Introduction identifies the problems of deciding “what is good or […]
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Bread, Pizza & Salt
Pizza is a leavened flatbread, usually leavened with yeast. Like other bread, it is made with salt A pizza made from scratch at a restaurant or at home can have more salt, processed cheese and processed meats than a person should eat. Making pizza dough is similiar to making bread. A pizza crust can be […]
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The Way We Eat Now
The Way We Eat Now, a 2019 book by British writer Bee Wilson discusses paradoxes of food in the modern world: the success of farmers in growing enough food to feed the world, the inequalities of access to food, and the prevalence of unhealthy eating. Ms. Wilson does not identify herself as a chef, biologist, […]
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Curry in England
The London Review of Books (“LRB”) published “Too Specific and Too Vague“, a review by the English culinary writer Bee Wilson of two recent books that refer to the ways that Asian cooking met tastes in England. One book is about the work of 7 women presenting immigrant dishes in British and American restaurants and […]
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Breadboxes – dry or humid
Bread is … an intermediate-moisture food product that is prone to mould spoilage. Normally bread is eaten fresh or preserved using additives or modified atmosphere packaging. Stanley P. Cauvain, Breadmaking, 2nd ed. 2012 Most bread is made of grain that has been harvested, milled,to be hydrated, kneaded, and baked. Agricultural, industrial and culinary art have […]
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Chiles and Chillies
Chile (Chili) Peppers The chile is the fruit of a plant in the genus capsicum, that grows in Mexico, Central America, and northern South America. Most cultivars produce the alkaloid capsaicin. Most capsicums, including jalapenos, serranos, cayennes and Thai (Bird’s Eye) peppers are “hot”; new spicier cultivars have been developed. Capsaicin is an irritant whnich […]
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Bread
Introduction Bread is made by mixing flour and water into a dough, introducing a rising agent (historically, yeast), kneading the dough, and baking the dough. The Bakepedia site describes it: Bread is a combination of flour and water that has been baked. Over the years, its production has become increasingly more complex with a multitude […]
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Potassium
I had been taking prescribed hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ) 12.5 mg per day, a diuretic – to control (reduce) blood pressure, since 2011. It was not effective to counteract edema, which was a side effect of another medication. It has side effects that interfere with digestion and absorbing potassium. I was hospitalized for 2 days in June […]