Dinner of the Day.

WashYourHands

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Could see how attacks on cupcake shops might’ve become a thing in your neck of the woods. Certain pathologies, militant anti-carb meat eaters. Guns. Inhale breath prices. Flavours like blackberry and fennel (phone riff), not state fair style deep fried carbs even, which rock. Cardamom and rose blossom/blood orange. You’re working off visa and a lightning bolt moment hits reading outdoor ads adjacent to shops walking to the next day filled with lifting and driving

Caught the initial first wave before Georgetown whatsitcalled did a show etc. All the operators were cunts. Was seeing a lass whose social crew would regularly go on the lash down the east coast but they’d eat out a lot too, then cupcakes hit. It was really fuckin weird. I get what you mean about bakeries @Leo but this is where the French excel and maybe even @woops could agree there?
 
yyaldrin

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
i have noticed lately that bread is one of the latest products being gentrified. i keep seeing more and more of these specialized bakeries that look like art exhibitions and that sell extremely priced breads. people are even queuing up for them. this is one i saw recently:

Aera_AAS_%C2%A9ThomasMeyer_02.jpg


Aera_AAS_%25C2%25A9ThomasMeyer_01.jpg
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
IdleRich said:
I love crumpets. They have to be toasted and then you put loads of butter so it's sort of dripping butter and then jam on that.


That might be true. I certainly love bread - and I do like pretty much all things that are like bread such as, I dunno, potato cakes.

But is it just the English? I'm actually wondering now about when you go to an Indian restaurant and they have naan and roti and paratha and arguably poppadums are a type of bread too - don't tell met that's just cos they are pandering to English taste? I don't care if they are naan are just fucking lush. And is it paratha that is just dripping with grease? Those are well good too.

But bread is great, what kind of monster would argue with that? There used to be a place on Ridley Road which sometimes I'd be walking through at, I dunno, six a.m or something and they would be just finishing batches of this bread that they made and I think that they sold it to local restaurants and supermarkets and stuff. It wasn't anything fancy but - although it was kinda wholesale I think - they would let you buy some as it came out of the ovens and it was so fresh and warm, soft and tasty - beautiful.

And also I remember going to Marrakesh and thee was a bakery near where we were staying, I think maybe the guy we were staying with pointed out to us as a landmark to remember and give us a fighting chance of making our way safely through that labyrinthine warren of the medina. It was a magical place with huge stone ovens dusted white with flour and lit by the glowing coals, flour glittering in the air and those great shovels filled with delicious hot fresh bread...

I also like the way bread can be so varied, I really like that Ethiopian one that is kinda like a sour sponge but great, And French bread is pretty good isn't it? They certainly think so.

I'm getting really hungry now... fuck it I guess English people do like bread.
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the love of bread is something that varies from place to place, i can't provide an exhaustive list but I have some general contours of it in my head (the other thing like this is gardens, where the basic concept is very present in some places and totally absent in other places).

western europe including the UK is obviously a bread mecca. everyone loves it and eats it all the time. as with everything in europe it varies a lot over quite a small geographic area. france has its own government-supported thing going on and the continued existence of small bakeries everywhere (because essentially everyone in france decided that culture had peaked in 1960 and didn't want anything to change) makes it probably the winner in global bread terms. the basic formula is great and it hasn't been much diluted by factory production. honourable mention goes to germany with its love of stodgy thick bread. spain is surprisingly mediocre in my experience, i have no idea why, there's a lot of bakeries about but it always tastes a bit hard to me. i guess they like it like that. the UK is pretty good i think, it's been tesco-ised but the stuff you get in supermarkets isn't bad, and you can get baguettes and things from the co-op that i think are great. like everything related to food in the UK the unusual and culturally specific transformation of food selling to being concentrated in supermarkets and the associated tendency towards factory production hasn't been kind to the quality of bread you get, that transition has been comprehensive, and widespread bakeries are essentially a thing of the past (or at least we are in a temporary phase where that model is dormant).

north america has imported the bread tradition from its european roots but unfortunately has taken it in a very different direction, and in the US at least (no idea about canada), factory production is totally dominant, and for whatever reason the quality is nowhere near as good as UK supermarkets. your standard loaf from a shop often feels as though its been on the shelf for weeks. i have no idea why it's made to be so tough as well, you really have to rip it apart with your teeth. there are bakeries around but, to take new york as an example, good bread costs literally $10 and you're only really going to find it in a sexy neighborhood where there's enough people with money to buy such things. it is a shame. however, linked to that, people aren't nearly as obsessed with bread as they are in england, so you get your stodge from other things. the absence of the Supermarket Sandwich Hegemony that you get in the UK means that your lunch options are far more varied. continuing south, once you get to mexico you're in tortilla land, which I'm not sure counts as bread, particularly as they're made from corn. maybe there's some bread action in the southern part of south america, but again in the northern part of south america (peru, colombia etc) although there is bread about i have the impression that it's not a very wheaty place. for about a month i ate only from one bakery in ecuador near my house while writing, it's the skinniest i've ever been, it was great, and a lot of that was more baked goods using bread than bread itself from what i can remember. the carribean is not a wheaty place, i don't think there's any bread there at all.

africa likewise, i mean obviously its massive, but i can't recall much bread action. again i think the emphasis is on other things. ethiopia is the exception to that, as it seems to be for so many things, but that place seems to have so much more in common with the middle east than africa anyway. the arab world, if you'll accept that geographical definition, has some serious bread action. the levant in particular is great for flatbreads and the availability of for example manoush all over the place in beirut, where they have the oven there are you watch them chucking the dough in, means that there's quality bread easily available. the symbiotic evolution of hummus is a further advantage in this reason. there is no bread culture as you can imagine in the gulf, i don't think nomadic bedouins in the desert were that well set up to grow wheat or develop a system of bakeries. i have no idea what goes on in iraq and iran, but by the time you get to afghanistan you are in bread heaven. afghanistan is surprisingly a bread-based country. everyone eats it all the time every day. in the rural areas everyone has a tandoor in their house to make bread. in the rural areas its apparently considered a bit shameful to get your bread from a bakery because you should be making it at home. in the cities there are bakeries on every corner with these lads constantly making bread. it's educational - the bread genuinely starts to taste pretty bad if its more than an hour old. but that's not a problem, because you can get fresh bread all the time, except, as i've discovered by driving round kabul looking for it, at 4am there is no way to get bread at all because everywhere is shut. there's also a lot of variety of types of bread and shapes of bread and style of making bread. i think it comes second to france to be fair, but second is still pretty good.

getting into south asia, bread is not exactly king, due to the competition from rice, but there is still a strong bread culture, with the various forms of bread that you're all familiar with (naan, roti, paratha and their subgenres) being available to different extents in different geographies and, to be honest, micro-geographies. pakistan tends to lean towards nice oily paratha, whereas in bangladesh you can only find naan after 4pm, and no fucker will make you naan before that time, i don't know why. but there is roti everywhere so it's OK. this bread doesn't seem to come from bakeries so far as I can tell, it just seems to appear on my plate at restaurants, and in retrospect this does seem strange. probably there are bakeries everywhere but i can't remember ever going to one which is odd because, i don't know if its obvious, i like bread quite a lot. there is then a disjuncture, as with everything, once you cross the hills that separate bangladesh from myanmar. because in south-east asia there's very little bread action. the culture just seems to stop. there is french-style bread and laughing cow cheese in vietnam and laos, but you can trace the roots of this easily, and while it does seem to have caught on a bit in the cities, these places don't exactly have a rich bread culture. i'm not sure about china but in general again i don't think bread is much of a thing up there.

australia i vaguely remember having pretty good bread. i have no idea what goes on bread-wise in the northern bit of central asia or in russia or like mongolia. i'm not sure where the northern border of the bread lands lies. but essentially so far as bread goes, there is a stretch from ireland to bangladesh where bread is a strong and ancient tradition, and outside of that belt, places vary bread-wise between non-existent and mediocre.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
shakahislop said:
the love of bread is something that varies from place to place, i can't provide an exhaustive list but I have some general contours of it in my head (the other thing like this is gardens, where the basic concept is very present in some places and totally absent in other places).

western europe including the UK is obviously a bread mecca. everyone loves it and eats it all the time. as with everything in europe it varies a lot over quite a small geographic area. france has its own government-supported thing going on and the continued existence of small bakeries everywhere (because essentially everyone in france decided that culture had peaked in 1960 and didn't want anything to change) makes it probably the winner in global bread terms. the basic formula is great and it hasn't been much diluted by factory production. honourable mention goes to germany with its love of stodgy thick bread. spain is surprisingly mediocre in my experience, i have no idea why, there's a lot of bakeries about but it always tastes a bit hard to me. i guess they like it like that. the UK is pretty good i think, it's been tesco-ised but the stuff you get in supermarkets isn't bad, and you can get baguettes and things from the co-op that i think are great. like everything related to food in the UK the unusual and culturally specific transformation of food selling to being concentrated in supermarkets and the associated tendency towards factory production hasn't been kind to the quality of bread you get, that transition has been comprehensive, and widespread bakeries are essentially a thing of the past (or at least we are in a temporary phase where that model is dormant).

north america has imported the bread tradition from its european roots but unfortunately has taken it in a very different direction, and in the US at least (no idea about canada), factory production is totally dominant, and for whatever reason the quality is nowhere near as good as UK supermarkets. your standard loaf from a shop often feels as though its been on the shelf for weeks. i have no idea why it's made to be so tough as well, you really have to rip it apart with your teeth. there are bakeries around but, to take new york as an example, good bread costs literally $10 and you're only really going to find it in a sexy neighborhood where there's enough people with money to buy such things. it is a shame. however, linked to that, people aren't nearly as obsessed with bread as they are in england, so you get your stodge from other things. the absence of the Supermarket Sandwich Hegemony that you get in the UK means that your lunch options are far more varied. continuing south, once you get to mexico you're in tortilla land, which I'm not sure counts as bread, particularly as they're made from corn. maybe there's some bread action in the southern part of south america, but again in the northern part of south america (peru, colombia etc) although there is bread about i have the impression that it's not a very wheaty place. for about a month i ate only from one bakery in ecuador near my house while writing, it's the skinniest i've ever been, it was great, and a lot of that was more baked goods using bread than bread itself from what i can remember. the carribean is not a wheaty place, i don't think there's any bread there at all.

africa likewise, i mean obviously its massive, but i can't recall much bread action. again i think the emphasis is on other things. ethiopia is the exception to that, as it seems to be for so many things, but that place seems to have so much more in common with the middle east than africa anyway. the arab world, if you'll accept that geographical definition, has some serious bread action. the levant in particular is great for flatbreads and the availability of for example manoush all over the place in beirut, where they have the oven there are you watch them chucking the dough in, means that there's quality bread easily available. the symbiotic evolution of hummus is a further advantage in this reason. there is no bread culture as you can imagine in the gulf, i don't think nomadic bedouins in the desert were that well set up to grow wheat or develop a system of bakeries. i have no idea what goes on in iraq and iran, but by the time you get to afghanistan you are in bread heaven. afghanistan is surprisingly a bread-based country. everyone eats it all the time every day. in the rural areas everyone has a tandoor in their house to make bread. in the rural areas its apparently considered a bit shameful to get your bread from a bakery because you should be making it at home. in the cities there are bakeries on every corner with these lads constantly making bread. it's educational - the bread genuinely starts to taste pretty bad if its more than an hour old. but that's not a problem, because you can get fresh bread all the time, except, as i've discovered by driving round kabul looking for it, at 4am there is no way to get bread at all because everywhere is shut. there's also a lot of variety of types of bread and shapes of bread and style of making bread. i think it comes second to france to be fair, but second is still pretty good.

getting into south asia, bread is not exactly king, due to the competition from rice, but there is still a strong bread culture, with the various forms of bread that you're all familiar with (naan, roti, paratha and their subgenres) being available to different extents in different geographies and, to be honest, micro-geographies. pakistan tends to lean towards nice oily paratha, whereas in bangladesh you can only find naan after 4pm, and no fucker will make you naan before that time, i don't know why. but there is roti everywhere so it's OK. this bread doesn't seem to come from bakeries so far as I can tell, it just seems to appear on my plate at restaurants, and in retrospect this does seem strange. probably there are bakeries everywhere but i can't remember ever going to one which is odd because, i don't know if its obvious, i like bread quite a lot. there is then a disjuncture, as with everything, once you cross the hills that separate bangladesh from myanmar. because in south-east asia there's very little bread action. the culture just seems to stop. there is french-style bread and laughing cow cheese in vietnam and laos, but you can trace the roots of this easily, and while it does seem to have caught on a bit in the cities, these places don't exactly have a rich bread culture. i'm not sure about china but in general again i don't think bread is much of a thing up there.

australia i vaguely remember having pretty good bread. i have no idea what goes on bread-wise in the northern bit of central asia or in russia or like mongolia. i'm not sure where the northern border of the bread lands lies. but essentially so far as bread goes, there is a stretch from ireland to bangladesh where bread is a strong and ancient tradition, and outside of that belt, places vary bread-wise between non-existent and mediocre.
Click to expand...
Can you just expand upon this a bit?
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
No mention of what I think is another Asian bread - and a delicious one at that - I'm talking bao here.

There is a restaurant in Lisbon called Boa Bao which is one of those things that if it didn't exist someone would have to invent.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
IdleRich said:
No mention of what I think is another Asian bread - and a delicious one at that - I'm talking bao here.

There is a restaurant in Lisbon called Boa Bao which is one of those things that if it didn't exist someone would have to invent.
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i personally would have put this foodstuff in the dumpling continuum rather than thinking of it as a form of bread
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
shakahislop said:
the boundary of dumpling and bread is a social construct. its for every generation of thinkers, men of letters etc to redefine.
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The Bao that can be named is not the eternal bao.
Naming is the mother of ten thousand things.

-- Bao Te Ching
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
That is the default position of course - however some radicals have lately argued with passion and also with conviction that this division is in fact one of the few - possibly even the only - universal truths, an eternal and unchanging barrier, but yes, still something that every man must seek out and discover for himself if he wishes to find a point to which to anchor himself and avoid being washed away and drowned in the bottomless sea of ever-changing subjectivity.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
IdleRich said:
That is the default position of course - however some radicals have lately argued with passion and also with conviction that this division is in fact one of the few - possibly even the only - universal truths, an eternal and unchanging barrier, but yes, still something that every man must seek out and discover for himself if he wishes to find a point to which to anchor himself and avoid being washed away and drowned in the bottomless sea of ever-changing subjectivity.
Click to expand...
i can see we're not going to be able to resolve this
 
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