Documentaries: Cooked (Air)

Cooked: Air (history section) Netflix

• 'We make bread every morning. Homemade bread is the best. It's much better than any bread from the store' - woman in Marrakesch, Morocco (link well to Arab Springs)
• 'It is impossible to live without bread. Water and bread is the same, you can't live without either' - it's part of people's culture and livelihoods
• 'One of the ways we transform food is by getting air into it - bread is elevated because they now contain air'
• 'Bread is such a simple food; 3 ingredients'
• The air pockets in the bread hold gas in them
• If you had a bowl of flour and water you could live for a little while, whereas if you put them both together to make bread you could live indefinitely. 
• The technology of bread represented a revolutionary advance 
• Bread requires a civilisation; you need people to grow the grain, you need people to harvest the grain, mill the grain and shape the dough - it's a co-operative venture
• In Morocco they start planting the grain in October, it is a process that requires a lot of time as they will source out the best people for each process
• Grain is used as a currency
• Its part of their heritage and culture
• 'Every meal, we eat bread'
• In Morocco its forbidden to take a knife to bread, its considered 'too violent an act'
• The word bread is also the word for life - good opener and below
• As far as historians can tell bread started in Ancient Egypt 6,000 years ago - it started as porridge and from being neglected for several days yeast from the air got into it and decided to cook it where the yeast expanded 
• The discovery of bread marked a huge advance from porridge - it was tastier and more nutritious
• This knowledge spread quickly over many countries such as modern day Morocco 
• Bread is the product and enabler of civilisation - leading humans from hunter gatherers to settlers
• Long ago, it was seen as prestigious being a baker with often families marrying their daughters off to bakers as they know she would have enough bread
• The bakery trade is dying as more people are wanting to buy from stores
• Wheat becomes the most important grass - it is planted more widely than any other crop - 550 million acres worldwide - all started in the Fertile Crescent link to Homo Sapiens
• But this fertile crescent can no longer produce enough bread to feed their populations so they have to import (makes it more expensive) from places such as Russia, Europe and Australia. This causes a complex wheat economy, Morocco must rely on wheat produced thousands of miles away
• 'The flour is very important in the stability of society'
• Their imports of wheat depend on the social stability of each country, which is why bread has so many important social and economic ties.
• 'We're all connected by the price of bread'
• The governments work hard to keep the prices of bread down - link to corn laws
• 'You can lose your head if the price of bread goes up too fast as a politican'
• Food riots in Tunisia - wheat shortance - look more into 
• French Revolution was tied to bread - rise in the price of bread - look more into
• Whenever the price of bread strikes there will be political unrest because that is the bed rock food
• Bread was one of the first grass processing technologies
• Air is mostly what you eat when you eat bread
• Gluten is the bubble in which the microorganisms release their carbon dioxide into - it is basically 2 proteins when you moisten flour the mesh together and when they do they form a substance 
• A variety of things have caused interest in gluten; a lot of people have written books demonising gluten 'its responsible for almost every bad thing you can imagine' 
• The founder of the Modernist Kitchen discusses how it has expanded so much that people are now advertising things as being gluten-free which are naturally gluten-free in the first place.
• 30% of Americans today make an effort to avoid gluten
• 'The trend is undeniable'
• It's hard to make gluten free bread behave the same as normal bread
• 'Not been enough research to prove gluten is bad'
• 1/2% of the population is coeliac, much larger group reports gluten intolerance 
• 'This is a mystery as it has been the staple food for our species for years - what happened?'
• Fat was demonised in the 60/70s and the same is happening to gluten now - is it a sign of something else?
• It may be the changes in the way we make bread - the bread that is in supermarkets now is very different to that that fed the people of history
• The industry petitioned to have more 'slack' to the FDA in order to mass produce bread - normal bread is 3 ingredients whereas commercial bread is 30+ - 10x the amount.
• We industrialised bread to make it cheaper - the change from wholegrain on a mill to white flour of a roller signalised this change - perceived to be a big boom in technology and to economics
• TALK ABOUT WONDERBREAD
• People started getting sick because they removed the most important part of the flour - the government intervened to put vitamins back into bread
• Sourdough is the traditional style of making bread until only about 100 years ago

The mass production of bread has taken away what was once so important, baking bread as a family and carefully sourcing ingredients spending time on it and feeling proud of creating it. This quick culture has led to a dissociation between bread and us.

Arab Spring 

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/jul/17/bread-food-arab-spring

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/feed_the_world/2014/04/food_riots_and_revolution_grain_prices_predict_political_instability.html

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/world-july-dec11-food_09-07

The French Revolution

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-food-changed-history-the-french-revolution-93598442/

+ Cuisine and Culture: A History of Food & People – Linda Civitello + 
http://ultimatehistoryproject.com/bread.html