Welcome to Saturday's Potluck
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Pablo Picasso
Rules, regulations and the price of bread are part of our Anglo/Saxon legal traditions. Laws formulated to control the price of bread and limit the profit of baker appeared during the time of of King John, thirteen years prior to the Magna Carta. In 1266 The Assize of Bread and Ale regulated the price, weight and quality of the bread and beer manufactured and sold in towns, villages and hamlets in high medieval England. The law was modified periodically and not replaced until 1863.
The History of Bread – From Ancient Flatbread to Sliced Bread
Early Regulation of Bread and Organizing of Baker's Guilds
After the further rise of commercial banking and the collapse of the traditional home bakery, new milestones in the history of bread came about through two types of regulation:
Self-regulatory efforts by bakers themselves—usually through baker's guilds.
Assize laws issued by the governing authorities.Bread & Baker's Guilds in Europe
Guilds were joint organizations that obliged their members to obey specific regulations, and, in return, would offer some protection in the form of trade restrictions.
For example, members of a guild could ensure access to cost-efficient raw materials, safety, and financial assistance whenever their business incurred a loss. In other words, the guilds served as insurance coverage for the bakers' society. Around the 8th Century CE, we saw the first emergence of Baker's Guilds in Western and Northern Europe.
England and the Assize of Bread and Ale
While the guilds were the baker's guarantee of safety and support, assize laws assured low-priced and good-quality products for customers. Like the Edict of Diocletian in 301 AD, the famous 13th Century England Assize of Bread and Ale put maximum prices on wheat products.
This law – and others like it – worked against guild monopolies to prevent bakers from misusing their power – and consequently, overcharging the poor. Based on the assize laws, a baker who breached these regulations or sold expensive bread was condemned to predetermined fines or even whipping.
The regulation of food safety has much shorter history in the United States.
In 1902, Dr. Harvey W. Riley—originally appointed as head of the Division of Chemistry in 1883—created a volunteer “poison squad” of men who tested foods treated with measured amounts of chemical preservatives in order to demonstrate whether or not they were dangerous for consumer health. They were fed borax, benzoic acid, and formaldehyde, among many other dangerous chemicals, and the experiments went on for five years.
At the same time, muckraking journalists like Upton Sinclair were working to expose the exploitation of food industry workers, as well as the health risks of food produced with unsafe and unregulated methods. Eventually, public opinion and support for legislation culminated with the Pure Food and Drugs act of 1906, signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt.
Under the new law, it was illegal to misbrand or adulterate foods, drugs, and drinks in interstate commerce. However, producers did not have to submit any information to the FDA (then still the Bureau of Chemistry) before marketing their product; in fact, the burden of proving that a food was mislabeled or adulterated fell on the government.
Regulation of profit for common good is not part of American business culture. Not even all our states protect have price gouging protection.
Thirty-four states, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia have statutes or regulations that define price gouging during a time of disaster or emergency. In most states, price gouging is set as a violation of unfair or deceptive trade practices law. Most of these laws provide for civil penalties, as enforced by the state attorney general, while some state laws also enforce criminal penalties for price gouging violations.
What is on your mind today?
Comments
Sourcing ingredients for bread baking
The flour products I use the most are from Bob's Red Mill a regional, employee owned company. The best prices I have found are at another regional, employee owned company Bi Mart Pharmacy. Other products I will order on-line. I have no connection with either company other than a regular customer. As economic times seem to keep getting more difficult thought it is time to share some resources used to stretch my dollars for quality products.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
Good morning soe. Thanks for the OT and the information
on bread regulation, US food regulation, and US price gouging regulations.
We use Bob's Red Mill whole wheat flour in our bread, as well as King Arthur Bread Blour. Our usual bread is 1c WW to 2.5c bread flour, so we use both. Due to availability issues, we sometimes will wind up with Bob's Red Mill Bret Flour too, and once or twice King Arthur Whole Wheat. However, we also use all purpose, for one type of bread, pizza crusts, pasta, pie and galette crusts,, the rare batch of spaetzle, cookies, caked, brownies, cinnamonn rolls, and whatever else that isn't bread. We use enough that we just get 25# bags of whatever it is that Costco sells in 25# bags. Which reminds me that I need to refresh my starter and that there is an experimental baked product I wish to make next week, so thanks.
"Gouging" does not exist. It is a made up term and concept, possibly imported to the US from some civilized country somewhere but contradicting our fundamental cultural and legal structure. As Nancy P so famously reminded us all, this is a Capitalist country. The rule of capitalism is that the invisible hand of the market shall determine prices, which shall be whatever the market will bear. This is the definition of a fair price (and an arm's length price) and hence preempts the entire concept of gouging. "Gouging" is fundamentally charging an excessive price during times of abnormal shortage. But, if one can charge a given price and still make the sale, then it is by definition, not excessive since the market will bear it and that means that it is a fair price. In effect, gouging is capitalist, and capitalism is gouging.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Forgot the invisible hand of the market
is always correct. Thanks for clarifying. Price gouging does not happen in America. Temporary market opportunities or patents related price controls are normalized in the American economic model.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
The invisible hand
is always groping in our shorts.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Clicked on the link to read history
Fascinating! Thank you.
One of the things I think is interesting about historical bread baking is that bread was either purchased from bakers or in some places, there was a community oven for bread baking. To the best of my knowledge, it is only fairly recently that it became common to bake bread at home for an individual household. And I think most bread is still purchased from commercial bakeries. In rural places, it used to be delivered.
I used to bake my own whole wheat bread. At one time, I had a recipe that made 7 loaves in a batch. I didn't have that many loaf pans, but the large size juice cans (ex: tomato juice) worked well making some loaves cylindrical. I have lost that recipe now, but can use food processor to make 2 loaves at a time, which is plenty for my needs now.
Modern ovens simplified baking bread loaves and rolls
in individual homes. Otherwise if one had to buy fuel it seems much easier to buy from a baker. Baker's ovens did double duty in some communities and also used to cook casseroles and the famous Boston Baked Beans. The wide variety of flat griddle breads were easier to make at home on a daily basis. Chemical leveling significantly changed the total amount of time necessary to make a bread dish.
When raising a family those 7 loaves probably disappeared fairly fast.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
That's an interesting idea/hypothesis, but
I think that it was intermittent, regional, sporadac and local. Depends, of course, on the definition of bread. In the Indus valley in 3200 BCE every house had an oven. Breadmaking is older than that, so possibly all of those folks made their own. The Ottoman and Seljuk Turks had lots of special ovens for making a type of flatbread, not one per house, but enough so that there were no doubt many home bakers. Things like Naan and Chapatis, where they were a staple were probably mostly made at home, especially chapatis, which are more of a pan bread.
There had to be a ton of places for long periods where most baking was central, like medieval Europe, at lest in the towns due to lack of both ovens and "flour". No evidence of home ground flour in urban Europe and no histories, oral or otherwise, of lots of everyday folk running down to score a little flour from the miller's private stash. Home ground flour, of various grains was more likely, and in certain places and eras, more well documented. (if you include maize and consider tortillas as flatbread, or acorn and/or mesquite flour and indian flatbreads, home baking was common in the americas for ages). Flour, for Euro Urbans, was certain a major limiting factor.
Commercial yeast production didn't start until the 1800s, so, outside of those willing to deal with sourdough, that is one key date for Europeans and "Americans" of European descent. Before that, some used brewery foam for leavening, but how common could that have been, especially in urban settings.
The Dutch Oven seems to date to the 1700s. A lot of folk, given that they had the flour, could've baked in them over the hearth, or in the fireplace. Basque sheepherders bread, and other variants may date to this era, but they again were definitely not urban. Clay pot cookery goes back way further but I dunno about clay pot baking until somewhat recent times with the use of a cloche.
So, it looks like here and there, as far back as 3200 BCE, some civilizations and cultures possibly and even in some cases very likely had plenty of home baking, especially flatbreads, but only on a very sporadic basis with huge intervals when it was scarce.
Of course, this is also just a hypothesis.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
I never got the hang of baking bread.
I cheat, use a bread machine.
At least I eat very little bread, so I do not miss having the lack of that skill.
I recall a trip to Georgia and Armenia where bread, and their bread baking traditions, were a huge deal. Throughout the long and elaborate meals, more bread was constantly being served.
The tour guides took us to bakeries so we could get it strait from the ovens.
My local grocery store, even when shelves were half empty last year, kept their prices down. No opportunistic pricing at all. The managers were openly griping about the price of meat getting so out of control.
In fact, on those basic foods so often eaten by people on food stamps, such as Ramen noodles, Mac n' Cheese, baloney, soup, etc...were the items they put on sale.
Last year was a tough one, and I am glad it is in my rear view mirror.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Enjoy different loaf shapes and crust textures
the bread machine is often at the dough setting, pull and shape for last rising and baking. Not cheating - time efficient.
When traveling try and eat at least one dish daily I have never experienced. Local baking traditions are a fun exploration.
One of the regular grocery stores I shopped raised there prices on nearly everything, plus produce quality decreased. Shifted markets for a while to one using a different wholesaler and their prices had actually decreased. Switched again last month. Fortunate have a vehicle and not limited in buying opportunities.
I am hoping this year goes better for you.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
Now, what would be on my mind now ? German "Brötchen."
Brötchen = petit pain (french) = buns (am. english? not sweet ones though)
heh, I know a lot of people who like German pastries. And a former German video editor at our studio in DC complained really hard about the US. 'Man' she said 'You can't even find a decent 'Brötchen' in DC.
No way I would bake my own bread. Bakers here are pretty good.
I would say you could find at least 20 different "Brötchen" in any food store.
Look at them ...
Brötchen Palooza
Now, where is my coffee?
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The Brotchen look like bun sized
French bread loaves.
Some of them are, but some have their own distinct
seasoning. Some of them are made with milk. Some with a little quantity of lard. heck, if you are hungry you eat everything ...
My mom gave it to our dogs to eat, they were still green with all the leftover of grass in the cows stomach. Later I saw them all bleached out white and I learned that some humans eat that. The Northern Germans eat weirdo stuff. Brains and lungs and hearts all chopped in little pieces. Lungenhaschee. I mean who would eat that?
What would you prefer, eating a heart or eating a brain?
I could see me eating up Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle's brain.
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People who were very hungry
for protein, then turns into a nostalgic family or cultural identity. Every few years crave a grilled cheese with Wonder Bread and Velveeta because it was an occasional treat as a child. Fix one then okay for another few years.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
If I lived in Germany probably would
buy from a bakery. The women in my family with German heritage were serious about the quality of baked goods.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uZidkvdmNk]
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
I am always amazed and grateful how awesome
skills you have to find a real good video to explain the subject that we touch in our conversations. Thanks, friend of bread makers.
Now do you know that we need to have a 'Lütt and Lütt" (a ice-cooled little "Dornkaat' with a small ice-cooled little beer) together, in a cool Reeperbahn spot? Or may be "Eisgekühlter Bommerlunder"? (My father, even my mother used to drink a 'Bommerlunder')
[video:https://youtu.be/t03Nh0hyBY4]
Prost!
(PS: Well I never told someone that I was a Northener. Too ashamed of the folks up there, who are the most idiotic slapstickers. I used to say I am Swedish to hide my origins in Hamburg, today I wouldn't do that anymore. Forget about the Swedes, they are as idiotic as the "Ostfriesen". And anyhow I am from Berlin. Jeez, and them Berliners came from Poland. So anything wrong with that?)
Gosh it's amazing how C99p chats lead me to the most bizarre biased prejudices. I blame everything on C99p to be a true dick. Yes JtC, I drank some Bommerlunder, that's why.
Cheers. (Ok I have to go to church and ask the up on high to forgive me that I drank too much Bommerlunder. Have mercy. )
Have all a wonderful Bommerlunder-free Sunday !
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That was a funny clip!
The up on high guy is infallible, gave we, the people, the where with all to make booze, so it must be ok.
I loved my trip to Hamburg, hope to see Berlin one day.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
I lived in Berlin from 1968 to 1979, ie when ...
... Berlin was still "occupied" by the Allied Forces. So, I was a so-called "West-Berliner" student, and we lived on the 'free side' (JfK was our hero) and East Berlin was occupied by the Russians and locked behind the Berlin Wall. To me West-Berlin felt kinda cozy back then. I knew the area and it felt like home. Then I followed the father of my son and left to Italy with him and then came to the US in 1982, one and a half years later. I returned to Germany from the US some 36 years later, more or less because I had no place anymore in DC to live and miscalculated what it would cost to live in Hawaii to where my son has fled after his experiences in the military and the Iraq war and being stationed in Korea. A bit of a shock, to say the least, to have to leave the US for all the wrong reasons.
Being back now in Germany, I made one trip to Berlin so far and I felt completely lost. I could not find anything anymore. I went to my student apartment building, where I raised my son in a tiniest apartment ever. But back then it felt like heaven.
The admin lady of that student apartment building helped me to get 'a home' there, because other student apartment buildings didn't allow two persons to live in a student apartment. My unborn child during my pregnancy was 'the second person', so I was forced out.
The admin of the other apartment building was a good 'ol' real Social Democrat. and so she helped me to get in there in her building. The father of my baby lived in the same building and had his own little apartment there as well. (I think she had thrown an eye on him and even convinced my African student father to become a German Social Democrat with a "Parteibuch" (ahem, what a joke, that makes me still laugh out). I was really lucky and never forgot that woman for what she did to help me out. Btw, back then the rent for those student apartments was 70 Deutsche Mark, that would be around 40 to 50 dollars today.
So, I went back to that building after all these years in 2018. The building is now an international guesthouse-hotel thingy. When I started a chat with the concierge about me having lived here, he told me that the admin 'ol Lady' is still alive and still lived up there in the 10th floor, now being well over ninety years old. If I wanted to see her, he asked. Na, I don't remember ever having talked to her face to face, so I declined. But she did the right thing for the right reasons. So, I am grateful to her despite not having known her personally.
It was a strange 'return' to Berlin for me in 2018. It was a city I did not recognize anymore. Since reunification so much had changed to Berlin, I could not really see myself living there today.
When I lived there in the seventies, the French Allied Forces had still their military compounds including their schools up in the northern parts of Berlin. And as I thought back then I would follow the father of my child to his french speaking home country in Africa, I put my toddler in the french ecole maternelle (kindergarden) and my son learned to speak french at age 3. Of course life - as it always does - never does what one expects, and we never ended up anywhere in french speaking Africa.
Instead we lived for a short time in Italy before we came to the US. And I remember that I was scared to come to the US, my elementary school kid son, though, thought it was very exiting. He wanted to become a Washingtonian. He never understood why I feared to live in the US. Well, that was too hard to explain a nine year old.
I have still to explain it to him some 40 years later. I foresaw me to have to raise him on my own in the US, thinking about tuition in the US vs free university education in Germany and having no health insurance on my own and having no residency status and work permission in the US back then. So, a bit scary for me.. (the issues back then were the same as they are today) Wish me luck. One day he will understand. I am working on it.
Well I made it somehow on my own. But withoug a support of a partner I could not nave managed it outside of DC. Only in DC I could find employers to earn an income on my own. My fancy diploma from Technical University of Berlin in Germany was nothing more worth than the paper it was printed on. So what, that's life, long and sometimes a bit confusing and sometimes too long to not want to go on to new beginnings.
Well you made me talk too much.
Have a nice trip to Berlin. I hope them Berliners 'behave'.
They are proud of presenting themselves as being a 'little fresh", but having the heart on the right spot. At least back then they did.
Good Luck !
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I love the Frankfurt Airport, tend to use it as the hub, have
my layovers there. I did a private guided tour of Hamburg and Bamburg. Two other tours got me around from Frankfurt down a river to Vienna, and to Amsterdam.
I have visited Germany only twice, it deserves another visit.
Germany has a modern shitty historical event.
The US was, from inception, and continuing today, a continuous shitty event for virtually the whole time of being the US.
I love German food and beer. And love the music, from yodelers to Wagner.
Prost!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Uh, oh, you love Wagner and Jodeling ???
that is way too 'German' for me. Can't stand both.
Lol, the best thing of this blog is how funnily we all misunderstand each other for what each of us likes and for their personal tastes...
Don't tell me you love 'Schuhplattler' dance as well?
[video:https://youtu.be/tm4wwbjyfmE]
I am seriously considering to ignore you ... and console myself with those two ...
[video:https://youtu.be/-EclhUMMobg]
Wagner? Are you serious? You understand I am from the North, not from the Bavaria loving Germany's South, favorites of the USians... ahem
... a bit heavy, no?
[video:https://youtu.be/1PBhlPeTJ_g]
Ach, geh ... music is always pretty good for making us happy.
From Germany with love ...
Cheers.
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When in Germany, I was surrounded at a bar by
a group of Jodelers, and they sent me beer, sang for me. My travel mate thought that was ...strange.
Then, my travel pal and I went to China, and while on a boat, cruising the Yangtze, who should be sitting next to me, drinking beer? A gentleman from Germany who was in a group that performed annually at the Polo Club in Houston. He did a routine for me!
My travel pal said, "What's up with you and jodelers?"
I like Beethoven,too,just sayin'...
Wagner was a royal ass, but his music is enthralling.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
What was on my mind while reading SoE's piece was German bier..
I seem to recall that it is highly regulated as to ingredients and quality of such that can be used to make bier. In the US these days, there is a lot of experimentation of late, (it seems to me), to the extent that I've wondered whether some of our adulterations would still be considered beer there.
The grocery store
in my neighborhood generally has a pretty good stock of Bob Red Mill's offerings. We don't usually use much flour but occasionally I will get the garbanzo bean flour to make an Italian flatbread called socca. When you posted their web site I took a look and they have amaranth; which is something I have been wanting to try for a while. It's not inexpensive ( a 24 oz bag $10) but it is a high quality nutritious food, I think I read it is a complete protein. I'd like to try and plant it as well, it's an interesting plant with an interesting history.
Thanks for the bit on bread, I love good bread but don't eat too much of it anymore. The crew in my household wants to try their hand at sourdough, so we will be doing that soon. I wonder how much of it I don't eat.
Hola Rand. Amaranth and quinoa are both a complete protein,
and both have a mesoamerican background, one was Aztec and one was Inca.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Hi back at you
. I thought of you when we decided to embark on our sourdough enterprise. I'll let you know how it goes. I am sort of being hounded by the bread-eating members of the family into trying it, so here I go.
I do like quinoa very much and have a quinoa salad with a citrusy dressing recipe that is very good. The amaranth foray is new for me though. Since it is a weedy sort of a plant I may just have a chance at growing it.
I've been tempted to try amaranth, in part because
weed, but it likes full sun and we have minimal plantable full sun area.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --