Chorleywood: Ultra-fast bread!

 

Image via VickiW

Strange how memories from early life return as you age. Short-term ones would be nice, and are actually more important, day to day, but those long-term ones from so long ago keep on thrusting themselves forward.

These days after the advent of computers, iPads, smartphones, internet, and the World Wide Web, things have changed so radically in present lives that you almost long for a break from it all.

It isn’t just those tech things that have altered life, so that it’s almost unrecognizable. It’s what has followed. 

Take bread for instance. See this loaf bought from the local supermarket 10 weeks ago? Yes, it’s stood on my counter, wrapped in its plastic bag, long enough to create blue mold on any other foodstuff you can think of.

Perfect, uniform, commercial bread slices

Image sofi5t of Pixabay

The thing is, it still looks as fresh as the day it was bought. Not only that, it feels just as fresh. I don’t plan to make a sandwich from it. But I’m completely overawed when I realize that technically, I could. When I make bread, as often as I can, I’m joining the ranks of so many others these days. These are the folks who just know from a health point of view that homemade is very much better for you. They are people who find the time in their 24 hours to make a batch of bread. It’s not that easy these days. People are struggling to afford feeding their families, or even themselves in many instances. Greedy landlords, voracious CEOs of major companies, all do their level best to ensure corporate profits remain astoundingly high, while they are also seemingly unable to think about the pain of so many folks these days. This is not the first time people have suffered from a shortage of, or inferior quality in their bread. Bakers used to grind their own flour, and they were heavy loaves, but nothing had been taken out or added in. Bread was indeed “the staff of life” and kept people healthy, with the addition of simple unprocessed foods.

Home-baked Image via VickiW

Faster isn't always an improvement...

Until the late 19th century milling flour was a slow process. But when a new commercial method was introduced in Chorleywood, England, all this changed. Suddenly mills could produce 20 tonnes of flour in an hour. This process also separated the different parts of the wheat grain, giving a lighter flour but without the health-giving bran and germ. The main part of the grain is about 90% endosperm, the starchy part.

Have you ever wondered why, if you read the list of ingredients on flour, vitamins are added? The answer is that the new and improved method of making bread in gigantic factories and supermarkets actually removes the nutrients that we expect to find in our bread. 

This coincides with the global health problems that societies face today. In an effort to replace the missing nutrients extracted with the modern bread-making methods they, plus dozens of other “improvers” and additives must be carefully weighed out and added back to the “no fermenting” time of the dough. This is by order of governments who realized health problems were escalating quickly.  

The baking that follows is quick. No messing around.

It’s very complicated, this Chorleywood high-tech machine process. Actually, more time is spent with cooling and packaging the bread than baking it. Forget about the hours of allowing yeast to slowly work its magic. That time is cut to ribbons.

After the 10 weeks that my little “whole-wheat” loaf has sat on my kitchen counter I looked at it again today. No change. Still soft, nice texture. Still brown, perfectly baked. Still smells okay. No mould to be seen. I’m wondering how long the supermarket bread is classified as being “fresh” after baking? Lots of folks buy it.

Should I do the taste test? I’m tempted, purely from a research point of view.

All good!

I did it! ¼ slice, with butter and my neighbour Jim’s strawberry jam made in October.  The bread tasted fine! It gives a whole new meaning to fresh. How would I ever know what that means now, with supermarket bread?

I didn’t get sick. I felt fine. But I have to wonder if I’d feel the same on a steady daily diet of it?

10-week-old “fresh whole-wheat” Chorleywood bread Image via VickiW

It’s not that difficult to see the possibility that profit might be the underlying cause of much illness in populations. The Chorleywood rapid bread-making process has spread throughout the world. The nutrients that once were in the grains are removed, then carefully replaced after treatment, together with dozens of additives. Swift baking follows. 

It’s always worthwhile to look at the labeling of food these days. But know that in modern, speedy baking, many of the ingredients simply don’t have to end up on those labels. 

It all started with Chorleywood…

Image via Google Maps

New Year With a Daddy Long Legs

A New Year's Day

Wow, Christmas seemed to disappear very quickly! I look around me today, on the first one of 2024, and now no vestiges of that day remain.

The decorations are neatly packed into two vintage tubs that came with us on the long trek from Sechelt to Chilliwack. 

There is a sigh of realizing the joy of being close to family at this point. I still miss the wonderful friends in Sechelt, but I know they are still there. It just remains at their point to devote energy to getting settled here.

Christmas, wherever

We used to travel every Christmas, used to find joy in seeking out remote islands, and living there for a while. That was good, especially as we now have those wonderful memories.

But now we’re entering a different time of life, with different health issues, and different age. Probably many others will be doing the same today. 

After all, this is the time for New Year's resolutions. Usually, the aims are pretty high, and this can be a trap in itself. I believe in allowing yourself a lot of leeway in these goals. That way you can at least succeed, in part! That helps to reinforce belief in your own abilities. 

So instead of confining yourself to success of an ultimate self-improvement goal by a definite date, how about starting on it, and assessing your results through the year? After all, starting is good, much better than doing nothing towards whatever it is, right? Life is unexpected.

The guest

This morning I approached my easy-to-clean, immaculate white shower. But wait, something sullied that sheer white perfection. Was it dust? 

On closer inspection “it” turned out to be a very spindly-looking Daddy long legs. I marvelled briefly at the fragile-looking, long legs and minuscule body before turning on the water. The long legs was going to be just fine, as it was at the non-pressurized part of the shower. 

Image via BlueSeaShell of Pixabay

Beyond myself

I used shampoo and body wash soap. The water was comfortingly warm. Then the thoughts started crowding in. 

I was thinking about the masses of humanity that are displaced because of war. How do they manage? No soap, no washing facilities. No food, no beds. Nothing that could  give them the comfort of having any type of home. 

I cannot even imagine their grief, despair and sadness. The women especially. They always seem to come off worst in these situations. Would the world actually be better off with women in charge? They have a thing about their menfolks getting injured or killed. 

Other thoughts intruded. I wondered whether the daddy long legs was actually a daddy, or a mommy? Hard to tell. 

I do know though that daddy long legs, although related to spiders, are actually related but not actual spiders.  Also that the dads actually completely care for their infants. The moms skedaddle after the babes arrive. 

So there goes my theory about women in charge.

After my shower I toweled dry. I had resolved not to get side-tracked from the daddy long legs in its precarious position on the slippery wall. But to my disappointment, he/she had gone! Just like that. But wait, no, there was indeed a lonely trace of the creature.

Daddy long legs have a way of voluntarily discarding a leg to marauding attackers. 

Apologies for the lighting

Image via VickiW.

They have eight, and can’t regrow them, so this is a sacrifice indeed. If I see this particular one again, I’ll be counting the legs. Speaking of which, those legs look incredibly fragile, and definitely much longer than a normal spider has.

Their tiny pill-like bodies have those outrageously long legs all attached in one place to them, and they only have two eyes. So they’re not particularly well designed as far as self defence goes. Their long legs make a convenient hold for birds, if they happen to venture outside.

I'd happily keep lots of them in the house, as they eat all kinds of decomposed matter that they probably can see more than me. ( I’m legendary for not being the best house cleaner, and we do have quite a bit of carpeting.)

So it was a sad thing that this particular daddy considered me a predator. 

A blend

New Years are times of sad and glad, all mixed up. We went out for dinner last night with our neighbours. Just before it was delivered to our table an ambulance arrived, right on the opposite side of the road. 

There we were, eating delicious food. For the next hour or so, obviously the paramedics were busy working frantically to resuscitate two folks lying on the ground who’d overdosed on drugs. Sometimes it’s hard to reconcile these things.

I want to thank all my readers, all over the world for reading here. I’m hoping you’ll all have the absolute best year in 2024.