Fermentation: Bread, Beer, and Culture

Matt Price

Bread

  • very ancient and widespread food source
  • today, mostly made with wheat, but that was not always true
  • made from a mash of water and ground grians
  • if left alone for several hours, this mash will "rise"

Biology of Bread

  • Grain consists of a hard shell (bran) surrounding starchy middle layer (endosperm) and an embryo (germ)
  • fibrous structure of bread, and light, airy texture, made possible by fermentation
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Figure 3: (Miller)

Bread in the West

  • "ubiquitous" food source
  • bread was certainly eaten in large quantities in Mesopotamia
  • in American English, "bread" was often been a synonym for "money"
  • in medieval Europe, "daily bread" was a household responsibility
    • There was another job in the household…

The Origins of Beer

  • from fruit?
  • accidental discovery
  • also fermentation (usually of "malted"=sprouted grains)
  • some of the bacterial culture provided by brewer!

(Cf: Hornsey, 2003)

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Social Functions of Alcohol

  • make field labour possible?
  • create social situations?
  • religious functions?

There is also a sense in which drinks perform the other task of ritual. They make an intelligible, bearable world which is much more how an ideal world should be than the painful chaos threatening all the time. (Douglas, 2013)

Beer from hand-brew to industry

  • beer has been with us a very long time
  • in a glass of beer, you can see all of human history!
  • the beer we drink is "both the same and different"
  • this whati t means to "think like a historian"!
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H3111_Industries_-_Beer_-_Turnkey_-_Industrial.jpg

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Glossary

ubiquitous
extremely common, almost universal
fermentation
biological transformation of foodstuff by microrganisms
gender division of labour
system in which men and women are assigned different kinds of tasks, regardless of their desires or talents
(no term)
::

Sources

Douglas, M. (2013). Constructive Drinking. Routledge.
Hornsey, I. S. (2003). A History of Beer and Brewing. http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/ebook/978-0-85404-630-0
Miller, J. What every new baker should know about the yeast all around us. In The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/what-every-new-baker-should-know-about-the-yeast-all-around-us-137687
The Biology of Sourdough. In Discover Magazine. https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-biology-of-sourdough
What is a Whole Grain? | The Whole Grains Council. https://wholegrainscouncil.org/what-whole-grain