Friday Bread Basket 9/3/21
Back to school edition
Welcome to the first post-summer-hiatus edition of the Wordloaf Friday Bread Basket, a weekly roundup of links and news relating to bread, grain, and baking. After a month away, I’ve got a huge backlog of links to share, so I’m going to keep the items short this week and mostly let them speak for themselves.
But first, an announcement and a request:
I’m really honored to have been invited to contribute to Zoe Adjonyoh’s upcoming book of essays, Serving Up, an anthology of essays intended to spark vital conversations on the politics behind the foods we eat.
Zoe is a powerhouse Ghanian-British chef, cookbook author, and thinker about food, politics, and identity (if you don’t know her already, this Ruby Tandoh interview is a great introduction to her life and work). And the diverse group of 25 writers she’s assembled is just as impressive, among them Reem Assil, Yasmin Khan, Preeti Mistry, Nic Miller, and Klancy Miller, to name but a few.
I’m not sure what I’m going to write about yet, but I have some ideas, and I know it will at least touch upon bread in some way.
Zoe’s decided to crowdfund this book, which means it won’t happen unless it get enough support from people just like you. I hope you’ll consider pledging, I know it’s going to be great.
You can find out all the details and make a donation here.
Over at the King Arthur blog, my pal Martin Philip helps you gain “dough hands” for handling sticky high-hydration doughs.
Also at King Arthur, Rossi Anastopoulo wrote a love letter to one of my favorite and most-used baking trapezoids, the humble plastic bench scraper.
Scientists at Oregon State have discovered that bread can serve as a non-toxic, cheap, and highly effective bait for controlling slugs and snails, some of the most damaging pests on food crops and garden plants.
I loved this story from Kae Lani Palmisano about how her family found some joy and nourishment in her food-scarce childhood by dumpster diving behind the local Entenmann’s outlet.
Finally, there is this amazing stop motion pizza-making video from animator Andrea Love, whose feeds are chock full of astounding videos, many of them involving food.
That’s it for this week’s Bread Basket. I hope you all have a peaceful (and safe) long weekend.
—Andrew