Joy over the Inundation They tremble, that behold the Nile in full flood. The fields laugh and the river-banks are overflowed. The god’s offerings descend, the visage of men is bright, and the heart of the gods rejoiceth. Pyramid Tex circa 2500 BCE. The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians, Adolf Erman, Ed. Aylward M. Blackman,…
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A Working Recipe for Ancient Egyptian Bread
Pharaonic bakers made bread with emmer flour and/or barley. Only. This was true until at least roughly 350BCE. Most breads were made with emmer, which is a species of wheat. It is makes a flour that has different properties from that for common bread wheat. Egyptians were aware of common bread wheat as that is…
Egyptian Tomb Bread : An example of variety in shape and surface decoration.
This magnificent row of breads is a detail of a painting of offerings in the Theban Necropolis Tomb TT3. This painting is strikingly beautiful. Imagine walking into a bakery seeing a display of breads that looks like this. For me, at least, a dream. Bakeries in Paris tend to display breads with the top crust…
Egyptian Bread from Temple of Edfu
Edfu is a Ptolemaic Temple located in Edfu, Egypt. Edfu lies between Luxor and Aswan. It is most commonly visited by tourists arriving by boat on the Nile. For the bread obsessed, this temple is important for the variety of bread forms depicted in bas relief that are often very different from the styles found…
The “Shape of a Stories” a talk brillant talk by author Kurt Vonnegut
What makes for an interesting story? A first answer is, something “interesting” happens. Something good happens to a character. Something bad happens to a character. Something has to happen for a story to be engaging. That is the bare minimum. Vonnogut helps us see that when a story opens the main character can be thought…
Sense of Place : Using your powers of observation.
This is an excerise in creating a setting in which your story will take place. Good luck! You may post what you make in the comments to share with others. Further research. Sense of place explained in the Wikipedia. This is a complex entry. More approriate for advanced students and teachers.
2 Subway. A New York Day, 1992.
Earlier, in the afternoon, another thin man, this one white, much older, wrinkled, missing front teeth, asked for money on the lower level of a subway station. He was unkept. He looked at me. And he said something. But I. I shook my head and he moved on, waddling, his legs far apart with crotch…
The Sweater
This story is based on an encounter with an elderly woman in Prague a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union. An inflation had destroyed the savings of retirees. This woman is selling her possessions to survive. Sweater Prague, 1993 At the top of a wide stairway bringing subway passengers to a huge…
Starch Gelatinization and Starch Conversion to Sugar in Bread Dough
For much of the 19th century, American breads, were often made with cornmeal and If you can get a bread dough into the gelatinizing temperature range appropriate a given bread grain — in the 19th century American context, rye, and corn — gelatinizes multiple changes will take place altering the taste and texture of the…
Scalding Cornmeal: an American Baking Technique well into the 19th Century. Well worth reviving.
It was standard practice to scald cornmeal as the first step in American bread recipes that used cornmeal throughout most of the 19th century. Based on the extensive number of 19th century references to this method I think it is reasonable to impute the system back to the early use of cornmeal in the 17th…
William Rubel 