flour

Week 2: Bread

This week we baked bread, which I was really excited about because I'm really into baking cakes. I've only made bread once before and it was Hokkaido Milk Bread, so the process was very different from the no-knead method. I mixed flour, salt, yeast, and water together and left it out overnight to rise.

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Week2: Bread & Butter

As I mentioned in class, Mark Bittman's bread recipe was a staple in the immunology lab I worked for. I remember by boss would pick me up in the morning, we were neighbors, and we would drive into the city together. Every Wednesday, her husband Karl would wake up early and make two loaves. One for his family, and one for our lab family. I remember sitting in the passenger seat of her car, the warm bread nestled in a woven basket under a gingham kitchen towel keeping my lap warm. 

Week 2: Grain

This week we sat down together and enjoyed some proper bread as we watched Cooked. It made me think how simple and amazing it is that food can bring people together. Throughout the episode, I was indulged by facts and information of food, and I realized how little I knew about food.

Week 02: Grain

After watching Cooked, the Netflix documentary series, I found it interesting that sourdough (yay) was THE bread for most of human history up until a hundred or so years ago. But then we discovered that white flour had the best commercial value, at the cost of stripping away all its nutrients. Rather than reverse this mistake, industries convinced the US to lax the guidelines of what constituted bread so that they could artificially add in the supposedly missing nutrients. This then leads to a culture in which we demonized certain nutrients like fat, carbohydrates, and gluton.

Week 2 GRAIN

The first time watching Cooked, the line about eating flour and water vs bread made with just flour and water blew my mind. I find it amazing that humans are able to comprehend the complexity of the food we consume and how those foods affect our health. It's equally if not more incredible that nature holds latent secrets like this. Just like art and science are very similar pursuits, cooking also shares incredible similarities with these fields.

GRAIN | Triggering Memories/Culture with Grain

The top staple crops for most countries around the world include grains such as wheat or maize. Another top contender is rice, a grain that is deeply integrated in my culture and my life. I grew up eating rice in every meal in the Philippines and I continue this custom here in America. However, when I grew accustomed to the food culture in America, I realized how frequently the food culture romanticizes ingredients and staple crops.

GRAIN: Bread of Life | Week 2

During class on January 16th, we watched clips of a Netflix show called Cooked. The episode discussed the role of air in bread. Pockets of air formed inside the bread we eat contain gas that we can taste in the back of our throats, affecting the flavor. I found it very intriguing that flour and water can not sustain a human being for long. However, after baking the two into bread, it is able to keep someone alive. Some part of the baking process contains an element of life. This revelation was astonishing to me.

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