In the third portion of Cooked, Michael Pollan goes into great detail of the arduous process of baking bread. He spends a large portion of the time detailing the exact processes, then his adventures of investigating how a master baker produces the perfect sourdough bread. This section of the book was very similar to the first part of Cooked, fire, in which the art of barbecue was explored.
Something I really liked about this section was the discussion of the microcultures of bacteria and yeast that were required to make the bread rise. Pollan goes into great detail to contrast his procedure of letting the dough sit outside for a little while as compared to the industrial process where specific yeast are used. Pollan describes that the diversity of the microcultures is what makes home made bread so much better (in addition to the added freshness and better nutrient value). I enjoyed how he did take the time to get acquainted with the organisms growing in his bread, to the point of learning the history of the microbiology behind it and the exact biochemical processes.
Combined with the experience from Great Harvest last weekend, I definitely appreciate bread a lot more. And after eating the freshly made bread from Great Harvest, it's really hard to go back to anything bought from Ingles.
Ultimately, I really appreciate the scientific approach that both sources took to explain this seemingly simple process. Some day, I do want to try baking bread myself and see if I can get these finicky microbes to grow and produce great bread myself.
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