Cookaholics Bulletin Board

...The Battle Between Health And Taste. From "the salt". It is mostly about aroma.

Jim,

My sweetie and I were chatting about the current gluten-hating fad this morning. The book White Bread was an eye-opener in this regard; apparently Americans have been obsessing about bread in various ways since 1880 (probably earlier than that, but that's when the book starts). The current artosophobia* is just yet another cycle, an obvious polar swing from the obsession about high-quality bread five years ago, which was a swing back from the Atkins craze five years before that.

Of course, I've also noticed that the anti-bread obsessions also seem to strike just when vegetarianism is on the rise, and the alternative to bread offered always seems to be lots of meat. I'm wondering if there's maybe a touch of American Meat & Dairy Council marketing money in this.

(*artosophobia = fear of bread. I made it up from an old Greek root for "loaf", since apparently there isn't an canonical name for the phobia. Someone with a copy of the DSM can maybe correct me.)

Great article, Jim. I've never heard of that compound in bran causing the change in flavor. Maybe this is why Pouilâne began using partially sifted bread, to remove some of the bran from the flour, for his famous "almost" WW bread? Maybe they knew about this way back, or it was just a lucky thing, with that tasting the best of a bunch of tries.

I like that term, Fuzzy! So many things have "Gluten Free" on them it is getting as bad as spray on vegetable oil saying "fat free"; not the same, but just as bad. I am waiting to see GF on some oil bottles.