Friday Bread Basket 1/31/25

The talking bread

Hello from the Wordloaf Friday Bread Basket, a weekly roundup of links and items relating to bread, baking, and grain.

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Constant companion

The writer and editor Katy Severson is the editor-in-chief of a new publication from the UK-based bakery chain GAIL’s called Companion, and their inaugural issue is—appropriately, given the name—all about bread:

For this first issue, we aimed to dig into every aspect of bread: how it has shaped the world as we know it and how it continues to affect our communities, our environment and our mental and physical health (p8). How does the bread in a country's public institutions—schools, hospitals, prisons—determine its overall food quality (p38)? What does it mean to grow grain and bake bread responsibly in a changing world? When is bread idolised and when is it wasted? What delicious things can be made from the bread we waste (p22)? And why aren't we eating more seasonal sandwiches (p106)?

We sought answers to these questions from experts we trust and the unique voices of contributors both within and outside the brand. Britain's 'Queen of Sourdough', Vanessa Kimbell, teaches us about the digestibility of sourdough and the importance of fibre and diversity for our gut health (p46). We visit one of our wheat farmers in the Cotswolds to experience the plethora of plants growing on a regenerative organic grain farm (p88); and we explore the 'terroir' potential of wheat when it's grown in good soil (p70). We learn how war dissolved the bread quality in the UK and speak to people aiming to reverse that trend (p64); and we delve into the personal and cultural histories that exist in every slice (p36).

In all of our questions and inspirations around bread, one central statement underscored it all: there is power in bread. How we use that power matters.

Katy sent me a copy of the magazine, and it is wonderful/highly recommended. So far it is only available in the UK, but it will be shipping worldwide eventually, so keep an eye out.

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Mark horse

Everyone’s favorite tech genius and free-speech advocate Mark Zuckerberg apparently “loved” the “challah horse,” an AI-generated image of a massive horse made from bread, on a spam Facebook content-farming page:

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg “loved” an AI-generated slop image of a horse made out of bread posted by a spam page on Facebook that also posts AI-generated images of children with amputations and regularly circumvents Facebook’s algorithm to link users offsite to ad-laden AI-generated content farms.

The page, “Faithful,” is verified, operated out of Romania, has 1.1 million followers, and regularly goes mega viral with the exact type of AI slop that I have been writing about over the last year. In that sense, it is the perfect encapsulation of the type of spam page that has become dominant on the platform as Meta continues to lean into AI-generated content and pays people for going viral on the site.

“I made every detail with love, but it seems no one cares,” reads the caption of the image, which has 2.7 million reactions, 193,000 comments, and 98,000 shares as of the time of this writing. Zuckerberg’s interaction with the page was first noticed by Gazpacho Machine, a man who posts reviews of food he eats while taking showers.

Funny story about this post (emphasis mine):

The viral AI-generated bread horse image that Mark Zuckerberg “loved” on Tuesday was originally created as a meme by a Polish news organization to warn about the dangers of AI-generated slop on social media. The image became a viral sensation on the Polish internet but broke containment and began going viral more widely; it was then stolen by a totally unrelated real AI spam farm where it has gone megaviral and was ‘loved’ by the Meta CEO.

I guess this has some connection to Zuck deciding to eliminate fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram, one reason I am not posting on the latter much anymore.

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Breaker bread

Apparently C.W. Call’s “Convoy,” the 1975 novelty song about truckers—which inspired the Kris Kristofferson and Ali MacGraw film of the same name—was created as part of a marketing campaign for a bread company:

The fictional character Fries and musician/producer Chip Davis created at an Omaha, Neb., ad agency was the hit of the year and prompted MGM, the record label for McCall’s plainspoken songs, to ponder a movie based on the song.

A quarter-century after “Convoy” hit No. 1, Fries is perched atop a Colorado mountain. His simple, A-frame log cabin is anchored into stone overlooking Ouray, an old silver-mining town that has turned into a stop for tourists.

“I was never a truck driver, even though people think I must have been,” Fries says. “I wanted to sound authentic. I wanted to talk like people talk. If you want to talk to truckers, you have to sound like a trucker.”

In that search for authenticity, Fries began a story that is now legend. Fries and Davis, the braintrust behind the American Gramaphone record label and leader of new-age band Mannheim Steamroller, created C.W. McCall in 1972 to help market the Old Home Bread brand of the Metz Baking Company.

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That’s it for this week’s bread basket. Have a peaceful, restful weekend. See you next week.

—Andrew