The Staff of Life: Is Yours Filled with Preservatives?

I have an inherent drive to get to the source of things in my life. With food, that means getting as close to nature as possible. I understand that this is not a desire many people share. If that were the case, there would be a movement to fling all of the currently existing Doritos and Twinkies into space and look upon the memory of them with shame and disgust at our fallen culinary state.

I'll be honest and say I don't know that much about how bread is made. But I do know that the primary concerns for most companies producing bread are things like shelf life and packability. If they were making, I don't know, boxes, I'd be totally down with that. But they're not. They're making food. That you eat. And that goes in your body. The primary concern should not be how long it can sit at the grocery store or how easy it is to pack and ship with tons of other bread

So what did I do? I learned to make my own! Three cheers! And it's incredibly easy. It's about one level above ramen noodles, and I'm being completely serious. It takes about 10 minutes of actual working time, tastes incredible, is healthy, and impresses the crap out of the ladies (if you're a lady, I think the result is about the same on the menfolk, though I'll admit I'm not as interested in impressing them so I can't be sure). Thanks again to Mark Bittman for this one. Here's the link.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/26/dining/20110126-bittman.html?ref=theminimalist#No-Knead_Bread_(2006)