The Bread on Earth site is baking slowly and steadily from the inside out, evolving daily in its intentions and form. In the meantime, I’m here with some thoughts! offerings! and requests! 

Starting with the obvious, to soften you up...

OFFERINGS

• Making bread balloons. Sent my way by Nadine Muhtadi. 

• A take on the bread riots in Tunisia by Marwan M. Kraidy, from his book The Naked Blogger of Cairo. This chapter looks at the indelible ties between bread and political and cultural identity, sovereignty, and basic human rights. It ends with the description of Captain Khobz (Captain Bread), a modern day superhero who fights for fundamental necessities. The last line reads, "If bread making is one of the most fundamental ways to turn nature into culture, bread activism is a way of turning culture into politics." Sent in by Alice Wilson.

• Baking bread in space, for both nutrition and comfort (listen on mute if you want to be able to appreciate it). Contributed by Miranda Chan. 

• A (zoomable and savable) passage from a tiny, elusive book, eponymously titled Bread. By Scott Cutler Shershow.

•  An impossibly good scene from the 1985 film Tampopo, about the tenderness of eating ramen, pilfered from friend  Abeera's website. 

• A treatise on the deified avocado toast and its unlikely ties to NAFTA, from The New Yorker this week.  

• While still physically and otherwise digesting a recent trip to India split between Ladakh and Rajasthan, here are a few scans of recipes printed and gifted to me from the house book of secrets at the Samode Hotel in Jaipur, by the bespectacled head chef Rajeev Sharma. 

• Excerpts provided by a friend (thanks Zachary) from the chapter “Sex and Bread” in the book Etymologicon, graphically organized below for your brief viewing pleasure:  

REQUESTS

• The Bread on Earth website will host a constant stream of kitchen noise (indeed!) that you can listen to at any and all times, should you want to fill the void. I'm asking for your contributions to create this lo-fi symphony of a universal kitchen space. Whenever you think of it- while boiling water, frying eggs or samosas, slurping soup, searing meats, listening to the crust sing on a newly baked loaf, or just standing there amidst the sterile hum of your open refrigerator, press record on a phone or any other device with such hight tech capabilities and send me the clips you produce. The quality matters not. You will hear them all woven together in some kind of inedible audio fabric in the coming months. Thank you!

• I'm still accepting (always and forever) contributions to the Bread Web, a growing map of regional bread types that connects each to its relatives worldwide. Find the submission form here.

• I am also looking for writing contributions (of satirical, journalistic, and/or narrative nature) for the editorial portion of Bread on Earth. This community is about using bread to turn heads towards the cultural truths that come out of one very basic part of our human diet. What can we learn from a study of parantha in Kerala, aside from how to get those layers so flaky? I'm seeking stories of human interest that avoid preciousness or exaltation of, simply, a baked item. Keeping these central tenets of the project in mind: we are an open and democratic forum avoiding kitsch, tweeness, elitism, and capitalistic pursuits, please get in touch! 
• Not a writer? I applaud your choices, but I’d still love to read your stories. With other writers and editors on board to help, Bread on Earth wants to incubate more astute journalism in the food world. We can shape your pieces with you in pursuit of a growing league of food writers and storytellers, and develop a coterie of so-called bread correspondents while we're at it. 

Thank you for sticking with me so far….

THOUGHTS

• I'll be acting as handy accessory to chef and artist Amanny Ahmad for two of her four dinners at Dimes Deli in New York's Chinatown, featuring a menu of Palestinian American food. On Wednesday, July 19th, I’ll be making sourdough flatbreads from locally grown and milled flour, modeled after Palestinian khoubez, to accompany the meal. On August 3rd I’ll be making some strange savory dark cocoa and yogurt pitas. If you are local and keen, find tickets to all the dinners here. A portion of the proceeds will go to the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library (!). If within your means and commute, please join us. 
   
• I’ll be attending the Kneading Conference in Skowhegan Maine at the end of this month, with a lot of other breadheads. I’ll be taking a portable brick oven building workshop, after which I'd like to build outdoor ovens with and for friends (new and old) all over, wherever my feet can carry me. Will any of you nerds be attending?

• Grain Resources: I’ve had plenty of requests for guidance on using whole and ancient grains in your bread baking. Here is one of my favorite guides to pass around, provided by the Regional Grains Project of GrowNYC , a pioneer in the East Coast heritage grain movement and an invaluable resource for New Yorkers (I buy most of my flour from them at the Union Square Greenmarket on Wednesdays and Saturdays). Another online grain guide, this one repping the West Coast, is over here and provided by the California Grain Campaign. Have a looksee. 

• And one step further in an ongoing pursuit to be as un-Trumpian as possible: a lovely little feature in the NYT last week! Media likes bread again, maybe?