Iron fortified bread!

Sara Lee bread recall.

And does anybody else find it a little hard to conceive just how this machine could “break down” at what one assumes is the very beginning of the process (sifting the flour that goes into everything made there)? And yet the line just keeps on running to produce thousands of loaves of product?

I admit I have never worked on a production line of any sort but do watch that “How It’s Made” show quite a lot. The factories they depict always seem to have “stop” buttons scattered along the line, along with sensors at various points which will halt operations automatically if a problem is detected.

(These are not infalliable. They did a show once on a plant that produces lutefisk fer chrissakes and nobody did anything to stop that atrocity from taking place. Can’t find it on their episode list but I know i saw it. Oddly enough their very first episode involved making…bread, and somehow that’s the one I’ve never seen. Otherwise I would probably understand this Sara Lee difficulty.)

Of course the show, and most of the places depicted, is from Canada so maybe that explains the difference….

Lutefisk From Scratch
Cappelens Kokebok, Ed.: Aase Stromstad, Oslo 1968

Feeds: 10 people, 1/2 Kg per person
Time needed: about 2 weeks

Ingredients:
1 kg dried fish (makes about 5 kg lutefisk)
100 g caustic soda
30 liters of water

Saw the fish in suitably sized pieces or leave it whole. Put in water. Leave in water in a cool place for 5-6 days if cut in pieces, 8 days if the fish is whole. Change the water every day.

For the luting use a plastic or stainless steel or enamelled tub (the enamel must be unchipped). Wooden vessels, china or stoneware may also be used.

Place the fish in the tub with the skin side up. Dissolve caustic soda in the water, pour over the fish until covered complete by lut water. Leave the fish in a cold place for 3-4 days.

When the fish is completely luted, it will be well swollen and you should be able to put a finger through it. Rinse the fish and leave in cold water 4-6 days. Change water every day.

If the fish stays in water for too long after the luting, it may be soft and difficult to boil. Test boil a piece, if you are uncertain.

Do not make lutefisk in the warm season.

——————

Ahem. That last injunction, about not making lutefisk in the warm season, is one to take to heart.

Personal serving suggestion: Best when accompanied by lots and lots of aquavit. Det er godt a leve!

Old News …

“The incredible adulteration of bread, especially in London, was first revealed by the House of Commons Committee “on the adulteration of articles of food” (1855-56) …

III.X.36

At all events the committee had directed the attention of the public to its “daily bread,” and therefore to the baking trade. At the same time in public meetings and in petitions to Parliament rose the cry of the London journeymen bakers against their over-work, &c. The cry was so urgent that Mr. H. S. Tremenheere, also a member of the Commission of 1863 several times mentioned, was appointed Royal Commissioner of Inquiry. His report,*45 together with the evidence given, roused not the heart of the public but its stomach. Englishmen, always well up in the Bible, knew well enough that man, unless by elective grace a capitalist, or landlord, or sinecurist, is commanded to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow, but they did not know that he had to eat daily in his bread a certain quantity of human perspiration mixed with the discharge of abcesses, cobwebs, dead black-beetles, and putrid German yeast, without counting alum, sand, and other agreeable mineral ingredients. Without any regard to his holiness, Freetrade, the free baking-trade was therefore placed under the supervision of the State inspectors (Close of the Parliamentary session of 1863), and by the same Act of Parliament, work from 9 in the evening to 5 in the morning was forbidden for journeymen bakers under 18. The last clause speaks volumes as to the over-work in this old-fashioned, homely line of business… .”

Marx, Capital, 1867

BushCo, where the 1800s remain the ideal.