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Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life

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Category Archives: Bread

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Bread loaf 2

Cheese + Flour + Yeast + Salt + Eggs = The Ancient Mystery of Bread

March 22, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

To contemplate bread even more, please go my previous post, Panis Gravis, or, Bread, Endless Nurturer. I’ve baked bread for years and years. In fact, except for the odd hamburger bun, my family never eats “boughten bread,” as my mother-in-law called it. In a time when “carbohydrate” evokes images reminiscent of horror films, singing the merits of bread may seem like advocating for the return of feudalism. But, in spite of all the denial of bread as a food in […]

Categories: Baking, Bread, Cheese, Cooking, Eggs, Photography, Russia • Tags: Acharuli khachapuri, Baking, Bread, Celiac Disease, Demeter, Gluten intolerance, M. F. K., Persephone, Republic of Georgia

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Bread and jam 1

The Little Red Hen had a Point: The Tao of Baking Bread

November 18, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Categories: Baking, Bread, Cooking, Photography • Tags: Baking, Bread, Photography

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France HUGE baguette old picture

Telling Stories, About French Bread

August 24, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Even years later, long after someone took this photo, I can see this young boy – I’ll call him Jacques –  standing in the street, lugging his heavy basket made of tree branches, no doubt the same ones that Jacques’s father might use on the poor boy’s legs if he doesn’t sell all the bread that day. Look at his shoes, it’s hard to tell, but is one of the soles higher than the other? And his toes, poking out […]

Categories: Bread, France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Bread, Elliott Erwitt, France, French Cooking, Photography

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Sunset at Ramadan in Morocco (Used by permission of David Young.)

RAMADAN KARIM — The Fast

July 28, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

(I wrote this several years ago and include it here as a tribute to the Moroccans I knew then and to all the people who will begin fasting for Ramadan starting on Monday, August 1. Note that while Paula Wolfert’s cookbook, Couscous and Other Good from Morocco, seems to be cited everywhere, Kitty Morse — who grew up in Morocco — has also written a number of excellent books on Moroccan cuisine.) Manage with bread and butter until God sends the […]

Categories: Bread, Morocco, Recipes • Tags: Agadir, Ait Baha, Anti-Atlas, Bread, Cooking, Fasting, Food, High Atlas, Morocco, Peace Corps, Ramadan, Recipes

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Panis gravis, or Bread, Endless Nurturer

March 23, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A whole world dwells within each tiny  seed. Of porridge,  of bread, of love it whispers – in all these lies the promise of wheat. With it all comes both the caress of crumbs and the sour stink of brown bread and garlic, the pain of brokenness … and the bitter bread of exile. But yet there’s this … In the beginning, the pure green frenzy of genesis, sprouting skyward. And then, suddenly, fields swaying in the wind, like breakers […]

Categories: Bread, France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Bread, Cuisine Francaise, Fougasse, France, French Cooking, Meditations, Pain de France

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Water, the Essence of All

March 21, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Begin with a washing of hands, cleansing and purifying, before approaching the stove, as to an altar. Pouring water into a pot, do you remember the source? Rain, clouds, rivers, streams, lakes, oceans … Transformation, from elements and compounds and chaotic matter to life. Essence. Alchemy. In your hands, a cook’s hands, water shape-shifts into magical forms: liquid, gas, solid. Water … Boils, blanches, poaches, simmers, steams, freezes … Water … Becomes soup. Steam … Becomes tamales. Ice … Becomes […]

Categories: Bread, Eggs, Photography, Soup • Tags: Acquacotta, Bread, Meditations, Photography, Soup, Water

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Panis focacius, la Gibacié, and la Pompe à l’huîle, Kin Under the Crust, One of the Thirteen

December 6, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Christmas cakes were baking, the famous pompou and fougasse, as they were called, dear to the hearts of the children of old Provence. ~~ Christmas in Legend and Story A Book for Boys and Girls I’ve always loved the “Jacob’s Ladder” look of fougasse. The lacy leaf-like lattice reminds me of the connection between bread and art, with that unspoken tie to pagan sacrifice, manifested in people- and animal-shaped holiday breads and sweets. And, not surprisingly, fougasse is one of the […]

Categories: Bread, Christmas, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Olives • Tags: Bread, Christmas, Cuisine Francaise, Fougasse, France, French Cooking, La pompe à l'huîle, Pain, Treize Desserts

Fougasse mosaic

Idylls of Cuisine, #91

December 4, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Bread, Christmas, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Bread, Food Photograohy, Fougasse, France, French Cooking, Provence, Thirteen Desserts

French Bread of a Different Stripe

November 26, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Categories: Bread, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Bread, Cuisine française. Pain, France, French bread, French Cooking

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Russia Easter icon

From Mother Russia with Love: Kulich and Paskha

March 31, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Because Russian Orthodox Easter falls on the same day this year (2010) as the Western Easter, it seems appropriate to include recipes for Russia’s most well-known Easter sweets: Kulich, a tall puffy “baba” or sweet-bread cousin to Italian Panettone (maybe with phallic overtones and fertility in mind?) and Paskha, a cheesecake-like dairy-rich concoction eaten with Kulich. Imagine … In the darkness of midnight, you hurry to the church, carrying your baskets filled with Kulich, Paskha, and brightly decorated eggs, seeking […]

Categories: Bread, Easter, Russia • Tags: Easter, Festive Breads, Kulich, Paskha, Russia

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Saint Patrick

Traditional, “Authentic” St. Patrick’s Day Food

March 17, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

He’s a desperate big, little Erin go brah; He will pardon our follies and promise us joy, By the mass, by the Pope, by St. Patrick so long As I live, I will give him a beautiful song! No saint is so good, Ireland’s country adorning: Then hail to St. Patrick, today, in the morning! Oh what would St. Patrick’s Day be, without corned beef and cabbage? What indeed, without the tradition so beloved of Irish Americans? Bu there you […]

Categories: Bread, Cooking, Holidays, Ireland, Irish Cooking • Tags: Guinness, Ireland, Irish Soda Bread, St. Patrick's Day

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Photo credit: Chris Blakeley

The Black Fast, a Mortification of the Appetite

February 10, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

With Lent fast approaching (February 17, 2010), an examination of fasting and other fleshly challenges seems apropos. Religious-based fasting, in the history of English speakers anyway, belies its importance in the commonly used word for the first meal of the day: breakfast or “break fast.” After all, for much of Western European history, almost half the days of the year counted as times of fasting. Locavores and vegetarians today will find much to inspire them in the dishes created to […]

Categories: Bread, England, English Cooking, France, French Cooking, Lent, Middle Ages, Monasteries, Soup • Tags: Bread Soup, Brian M. Fagan, Cod: A Biography, Fasting, Fish on Friday, Lent, Marc Meneau, Mark Kurlansky, Roman Catholic Church

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Christmas Schenone bread and love

Pandolce: From Liguria with Love, Thanks to Laura Schenone

December 22, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Laura Schenone, author of the soulful The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken and the scholarly (and prize-winning) A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove, traveled back to Liguria for Christmas in 2007. From that trip came her perpetual Christmas gift to all of us, Pandolce. In an article in the December 2008 issue of SAVEUR Magazine, she teaches us how to make our own Pandolce in the old way, just in time for Christmas and the holiday season. Although the […]

Categories: Baking, Bread, Christmas, Cooking, Italian Cooking, Italy, Techniques • Tags: Christmas, Italian Cooking, Italy, Laura Schenone, Pan Dolce

Fruitcake cartoon

Fruitcake, Fermentation by Another Name

December 15, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

We never eat fruitcake because it has rum, And one little slice puts a man on the bum. Oh, can you imagine the pitiful plight Of a man eating fruitcake until he gets tight? A man who eats fruitcake lives a terrible life. He`s mean to his children and beats on his wife. A man who eats fruitcake dies a terrible death, With the odor of raisins and rum on his breath! “Away with Rum,” Temperance Union (Aussie Band) Christmas […]

Categories: Baking, Bread, Cakes, Christmas, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Fermentation • Tags: Breads, Cakes, Christmas, English Cooking, Fermentation, Fruitcakes

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Hunger The-Four-Horsemen-Of-The-Apocalypse

Hunger is the Best Sauce

November 11, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A hungry people listens not to reason, nor cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayers. [Lat., Nec rationem patitur, nec aequitate mitigatur nec ulla prece flectitur, populus esuriens.] De Brevitate Vitoe (XVIII), Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) Chronic hunger is something that most of us in the United States will never really know.* Yet we, like most humans, fear it. Just as people have feared it for centuries. That fear permeated ancient myths and led to such collective cultural […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, Bibliographies, Bread, Cooking, Ethiopia, Europe, Evolution, Italian Cooking, Local foods, Methods, United States • Tags: Africa, Discorso sopra la carestia e fame, Famine, Giovan Battista Segni, Hunger, United States

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Morocco bread

In Morocco, Bread is Life

July 3, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

When the only bread you eat comes pre-sliced out of a plastic bag, it’s almost impossible to understand that “staff of life” saying so commonly applied to bread. George Orwell’s story of feeding bread to a hungry Moroccan worker pointed out the near reverence for bread in much of the world. And, in Morocco, bread indeed is the “staff of life.” Moroccan bread exemplifies the reason for the saying, as I learned, writing the following in a letter to the […]

Categories: Africa, Bread, Morocco • Tags: Bread, Morocco

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George Orwell

In Morocco — George Orwell, Bread, and Stirrings of Post-Colonialism

July 2, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

George Orwell spent the winter of 1938-1939 in Morocco, for reasons of poor health. Author of stinging commentaries on colonial imperialism [Full-text: Burmese Days (1934) and “Shooting an Elephant” (1936)], as well as 1984, Animal Farm, and Down and Out in Paris and London, Orwell turned his blazing pen on French Morocco that winter. The following short passage comes from his essay, “Marrakech.” (Please remember that Orwell is writing a blistering indictment of colonialism, in spite of the way the […]

Categories: Africa, Bread, Morocco • Tags: Bread, Can the Subaltern Speak?, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, George Orwell, Marrakech, Morocco, Post-Colonialism

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Transforming Flour, Becoming Bread

June 18, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Putting bread in perspective. A photo essay accompanied by historical commentary. The baking of bread, one of much of  humankind’s most basic foods, transforms seemingly ordinary ingredients into the sublime, at times anyway (for exceptions, just think of black-burned toast or cannonball-consistency buns). Bread belongs more to the sacred than to the mundane. In the making and the analysis, we lose sight of the awe, the miracle of the raw, becoming nourishment. Yeast, bubbling with life, soon to perish in […]

Categories: Baking, Bread, Cookbooks, Recipes • Tags: Baking, Bread, Catharine Esther Beecher, Eliza Acton, Flax Seeds, Janet McKenzie Hill, John Harvey Kellogg, Recipes, Sunflowers Seeds, Whole-Grain Bread, William Henry Robertson. Cooks

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(Painting by Francisco de Zurburan)

At the Tables of the Monks: Daily Fare (Part III)

May 20, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Fermentation provided a number of foods on the tables of medieval monks. Beer, cheese, wine, sausages all result from fermentation processes. While it is true that medieval monks invented none of these foods originally — the Romans made cheese, wine, and sausages and Norsemen enjoyed beer — the monks, after the fall of Rome, guarded the production processes in monastery kitchens and vineyards and smokehouses. And in doing so they improved upon the old tastes and created entirely new foods. […]

Categories: Beans, Bread, French Cooking, Recipes • Tags: Bread, Cluny, English Monastic Life, F. A. Gasquet, Fava Beans, Francisco de Zurburán, Monasteries, Refectory

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Sugar Skulls (Used with permission.)

Día de los Muertos (Todos Santos)/ Day of the Dead Food-Laden Altars

October 31, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

(Note: The italicized portion of the following article is an excerpt from something I wrote for an encyclopedia on the history of dining and entertaining, Entertaining from Ancient Rome to the Super Bowl, Greenwood Press, 2008.) In Mexico, the Día de los Muertos (Todos Santos) (Day of the Dead/All Saints’ Day) resembles the norteamericano Halloween only superficially. Mexico is deeply, profoundly Catholic. And Mexico is also deeply, profoundly Aztec. Or at least traces of indigenous religions color the Catholic festivals […]

Categories: Bread, Halloween, Mexico, Pork, Recipes • Tags: Bibliographies, Calaveras, Cooking, Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos, Food, Halloween, Mexican Cooking, Mexico, Pork Chile Verde, Todos santos

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Bedouin Life Shaped Arab Culture (Photo credit: C. Bertelsen)

FOOD AND THE STRANGER IN THE MIDDLE EAST : A Different Look at a Misunderstood Culture

September 23, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Warriors universally used to lay down their swords or knives at the doorway of their enemy when they broke bread together. Eating together, praying together, speaking together were possible only when no one felt vulnerable. Only in that way could “the Other” become human. Like their Bedouin neighbors, and ancestors, Arabs today offer their guests – even strangers – the best they have, often denying themselves of basic comfort and food in order to please guests. By killing and roasting […]

Categories: Bread, Middle East, Recipes • Tags: Arab cooking, Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Middle East

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Food forms the very essence of life, from the fruit fly to the elephant, with humans in between. So much of what we do revolves around cooking, eating, and the finding of food. Here you'll discover stories, meditations, and photographs celebrating the places that we call home. And, of course, the food that garnishes it all.

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What’s Cookin’ Here

  • A Bare Table is Like an Artist’s Canvas
  • “Stew’s so comforting on a rainy day.” *
  • Singkong, Manioc, Mandioca, Mandió, Tapioca, Yuca: Singing the Praises of Manihot esculenta (Cassava)
  • The Promise of Apple Blossoms

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