Category: Pastry

Let’s Talk Flour

What is an extraction rate? And how does that impact the “whiteness” of a flour? That’s what reader Leslie is curious about today. Leslie, it’s a good question. Indeed I’ve received quite a few technical questions about flour since Friday’s post on white bread. My thinking is that I’ll answer that questions but also put together a few posts on flour and make a “flour primer” out of them for the ingredients section, since I don’t really have one of those yet. So then…let’s go!

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Pokey Was Smokin’

Pokey LaFarge was in town on Saturday night, one of the acts I mentioned in a recent post on acoustic music. The rhythms these bad boys (and girl) laid down were hot, hot, HOT. See them if you can! Readers in Europe and the British Isles: Pokey is headed your way. Check here for tour dates.

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In Praise of White Bread

Joe, I don’t like white bread. Yes you do. If you like bread, you like white bread. You might not like it when it’s pre-sliced and sold in plastic bags at the supermarket, but you like it in other shapes and circumstances, I’ll bet you money. If you like baguettes, focaccia, pita bread, fougasse, bagels, brioche, flour tortillas, naan, bialys, pretzels, pizza, pancakes, matzoh, ciabatta, sourdough bread, English muffins, olive bread, chapati, challah, lavash, breadsticks or dinners rolls, you like white bread. In fact if you prefer wheat or rye I’d still argue that you like white bread, because if that loaf is at all light and fluffy, it’s probably made with a least 50% white flour.

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Slice of History

Making one’s own sandwich bread really puts a person in touch with early 20th century living. What I mean by that is that one must cut one’s own bread, an act that we Americans haven’t had to perform since 1930. That was the year that Wonder Bread debuted sliced bread on a national scale. White bread officially became a “convenience food” and established itself as a staple of the American diet.

Which is not to say that Americans didn’t eat bread before the automatic bread slicer was invented, they just ate less of it, partly because they had to go to the trouble of slicing it by hand. Who knew that slicing was such an ordeal? Actually I know who: Otto Rohwedder. He was the inventor who understood that by eliminating the step of hand slicing he could bring bread — and commercial baking in general — to an entirely new level.

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A Brief History of the Sandwich

There’s a long list of things that you can do with pain de mie. It’s your basic fluffy white bread, good for toast, turkey stuffing and bread pudding. But me, I can’t look at an oblong square white loaf without thinking sandwiches, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

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Porter Love

Reader Lee points out that Nat Love, a.k.a. “Deadwood Dick”, legendary black cowboy and one of the Wild West’s true characters, was also a Pullman porter. Very true, Lee! Thanks!

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George Pullman’s Social Revolution

George Pullman would have been one of the most consequential entrepreneurs in American history on the merits of his rail car empire and (failed) worker’s utopia alone. Add in the social revolution he put in motion and it’s a wonder Pullman is such a little known figure today. For indeed Pullman is one of the key figures in the history of American civil rights, directly responsible for the creation of the black middle class.

Er, how did that work, exactly, Joe? Well I’ll tell you. Having read the below posts on the rise of the Pullman sleeper car, you already know that Pullman’s company took off in earnest in 1867. That coincided neatly with the end of the Civil War and the freeing of Southern slaves, a large, and largely unemployed, pool of labor. Pullman recognized that freed slaves would make excellent stewards on his luxury train cars. Many were

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