Free Republic

Not too long ago, Gavin Newsom got caught with his hand in the cookie jar of political cronyism. In response to a draconian law passed raising fast-food worker wages to $20 an hour, known as A.B. 1228, Newsom carved out a little exemption for his friends at Panera Bread on the laughable grounds that these establishments bake bread on the premises. In reality, the owner of several Panera establishments was a high school buddy who was a really good donor to his campaigns. Once caught, Newsom backed off, but right when he thought no one was looking, he went right...

Çatalhöyük is noteworthy because it is one of the first human proto-cities to have been built. Full of densely packed mud brick houses covered in paintings and symbolic decorations, its population hovered around 8,000. That made it one of the biggest settlements of its era, somewhere between an outsized village and a tiny city. People, mud-brick homes through ceiling doors, and they navigated sidewalks that wound around the city’s rooftops.Archaeologists have discovered an oven structure in the area called "Mekan 66”. Around the largely destroyed oven, wheat, barley, pea seeds, and a handful find that could be food were found.Analyses...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ NATIONAL HOMEMADE BREAD DAY On November 17th, homes will fill with warm, comforting aromas reminding us to slow down and enjoy National Homemade Bread Day. #HomemadeBreadDay Yeast bread calls for us to slow down. We need to spend time with each other as we work the dough and let it rest and rise before baking. Quick breads allow a special treat to share and enjoy with coffee or tea. Other homemade breads, such as donuts, pretzels, muffins, and biscuits, add variety to our everyday meals. And making them with friends and family brings joy and an opportunity to exchange...

Last month I attended a meeting of the Virginia Grain Producer’s Association to learn more about how the vast majority of grain is produced. I had the pleasure of being accompanied by three other CGA members, and, inevitably, the topic of scale came up. The VGPA farmers think in thousands of acres; CGA producers may be working with 100 or less. One of the challenges of building up a regional food system of any sort is balancing supply with demand. So the calculators came out and numbers were crunched, and it made me realize I don’t have a good handle...

Not much to say here. The studio version is much better. But it's fun to see this band perform. So good. So polished.

Could a unique loaf of bread be the solution to irritable bowel syndrome? Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop website has lauded a Mayo baker’s €25 ‘miracle loaf’ known as ‘magic poo bread’. The €25 Happy Tummy Loaf, created by the Irish Happy Tummy Company in Westport, Co. Mayo, was praised by Gwyneth Paltrow‘s site on a date not specified. The loaf, also known as ‘2 Day Soaked Wholegrain Chia Teff Loaf’, is made from 15 ingredients including unconventional flours like buckwheat and teff, a grass seed, along with chia seeds, crushed linseed, nuts, eggs, lemon juice, cinnamon, and apple cider vinegar, writes...

Last fall, when researchers unearthed the remains of a 3,000-year-old structure in the western Armenian town of Metsamor, they faced two mysteries: First, they didn’t know what purpose the structure had served. Beyond that, a strange powdery substance covering the area left them stumped...The team assumed, at first, the material was simply ash. After all, charred remnants of the building’s reed roof and wooden beams indicated it had met its end in a fire...The powder wasn’t ash, but wheat flour. They had unearthed an ancient bakery.Archaeologists estimate that the structure could have once held as much as 3.5 tons of...

NATIONAL FRENCH TOAST DAY Each year on November 28th, people across the United States enjoy National French Toast Day. Also known as eggy bread or omelet bread, it makes a great breakfast for guests or part of a brunch. #NationalFrenchToastDay Home cooks and professionals alike whip up a few personal favorites when it comes to french toast recipes. The base consists of eggs and milk whisked together. Bread is dipped into the mixture and fried until golden. Many people also add some sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon to the base. The flavor of French toast can be brightened with a squeeze...

Scientists believe they have made a fascinating discovery which reveals some hidden detail about the diet of Neanderthals around 70,000 years ago. They have unearthed remains of what is believed to be the world's oldest flatbread made by Neanderthals in the foothills of Iraq. The charred remnants were recovered from the Shanidar Cave site - a Neanderthal dwelling around 500 miles north of Baghdad. The archaeologists said the findings, published in the journal Antiquity, show for the first time that bread was part of the diet among these hominid species....

Russian troops have killed at least 10 civilians standing in line for bread in Chernihiv, a city in northern Ukraine, according to a Ukrainian public broadcaster and the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. CGTN America @cgtnamerica China state-affiliated media

Russia may face a domestic bread shortage in certain markets due to massive wheat exports this year as Russia morphs into an international food superpower. Cities such as St. Petersburg may not have sufficient wheat shipments as the transportation capability is being used to get export wheat to ports. +++ The excessive number of carriages allocated for exports is depriving the St. Petersburg milling industry of its own – damaging supply chains, driving up prices and creating a shortage of bakery products, the St. Petersburg governor writes. The letter was sent after St. Petersburg’s most important wheat suppliers, the Orenburg,...

Mark ‏@markito0171 · 2h2 hours ago #Syria #Russia'n airstrikes destroyed 2 medicine-factories, a bread factory & damaged main water pumping station in #Aleppo the past days

Beleaguered Russians rang in the New Year with a special gift from the Kremlin – a cap on the price of their much-beloved vodka. Facing an economy seemingly on the verge of collapse, President Vladimir Putin took steps this past week to ensure that a plummeting ruble would not prevent his country from drowning its sorrows in cheap alcohol. Russians love a drink. Therefore, it is a brave Kremlin leader who stands in the way of his countrymen’s desire for a reliably inexpensive tumbler of vodka. To this day, Mikhail Gorbachev remains a target for abuse and hatred for the...

Prof. Jennifer Bates and her coworkers, Kelly Wilcox Black and Prof. Kathleen Morrison... explore charred lumps from the site of Kadebakele, in southern India... The site dates from around 2,300 BCE to CE 1600 or so, but these data are from the Early Iron Age, about 800 BC. Charred lumps are usually seen as not identifiable, but using high-quality imaging, they were able to show that (some of) these are charred remains of dough or batter; these would have been used to make bread-like dishes. Comparing the data with experimental studies done another lab group, they identified two kinds of...

NATIONAL HOMEMADE BREAD DAY On November 17th, homes will fill with warm, comforting aromas reminding us to slow down and enjoy National Homemade Bread Day. #HomemadeBreadDay Yeast bread calls for us to slow down. We need to spend time with each other as we work the dough and let it rest and rise before baking. Quick breads allow a special treat to share and enjoy with coffee or tea. Other homemade breads, such as donuts, pretzels, muffins, and biscuits, add variety to our everyday meals. And making them with friends and family brings joy and an opportunity to exchange recipes....

Most people are familiar with Swedish cinnamon buns or the Danish “danish” (they’re called weinerbrød in Denmark). But unless you’ve been to Finland, you’ve probably never heard of pullapitko. Pullapitko, or pulla bread, is a cardamom-spiced sweet loaf that can be found from the north to the south of Finland. It’s like if a buttery brioche and a challah had a love-child; it’s mixed with loads of milk and butter (courtesy of a brioche father) and woven like challah (thanks, Mom!). For the record, there does not seem to be a relationship between the three breads but isn’t this the...

It will be the first time wheat created using a gene editing technique known as CRISPR has been grown in fields in the UK or Europe, although it is in use in China and the US. He said acrylamide has been a very serious problem for food manufacturers since it was first discovered in 2002, shown to cause cancer in rodents, and has been considered 'probably carcinogenic' for humans. 'It occurs in bread and increases substantially when the bread is toasted, but is also present in other wheat products and many crop-derived foods that are fried, baked, roasted or toasted,...

No matter the nature of your St. Patrick's Day traditions, great food is an absolute must. From classic (and not-so-classic) soda breads to stout-battered onion rings and corned beef galore, these 19 Irish-inflected dishes and cocktails will keep you well-fed all day long. Breads Real Irish Soda Bread In the olden days, soda bread was baked over hot coals in a skillet, where the bread developed a thick, lovely crust. Now we bake the bread in our oven, but doing so in a Dutch Oven produces the same crusty loaf that we love so much. Irish Brown Bread If you...

Bread is life, but according to new research, it might be even more than that. A group of archeologists in northeastern Jordan have found the oldest bread in the world, and their findings show that this bread predates the invention of agriculture by at least 4,000 years. According to this discovery, the hunt for better bread ingredients may have triggered the agricultural revolution, which would make bread largely responsible for all of civilization as we know it. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen, University College London and University of Cambridge were excavating an archeological site in Jordan when they discovered...

Father Aho will serve 25 months in prison for providing “help to a terrorist organisation”. The clergyman, absent from the courtroom, has always rejected the charges. The trial was held without journalists and public. Anti-Christian repression is growing as evinced by the Assyrian monk’s trial and the fate of Hagia Sophia.Istanbul (AsiaNews) – A Turkish court sentenced Assyrian monk Sefer (Aho) Bileçen to two years and a month in prison after he was convicted of providing “help to a terrorist organisation”. The clergyman found himself up on terrorism charges after he gave a piece of bread to two people who...