Let's get one thing out of the way at the outset. I have no idea who is responsible for "history is written by the X," where X is any one of a number of synonyms for victors. The internet will give you lots of options: Napoleon, Walter Benjamin, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Pliny the Elder. I'm going to go with Walter Benjamin, because it suits my purposes.

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One of the trickier aspects of home fermentation is the need to keep things anaerobic. The bacteria that do the work are perfectly happy without oxygen. Most spoiler moulds and bacteria need a bit of oxygen. So the usual advice is to ensure that all the stuff you're pickling is submerged beneath the liquid in which it is being pickled. Easy enough in a nice, straight-sided pickling crock, where a plate with a weight on top does the job smoothly. Posh crocks may have a fitted lid or even an air-lock. But they're expensive and second-hand ones are hard to find.

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There are quite a few podcasts that I keep an eye on but do not actually subscribe to. One of those is Econtalk, and recently I spotted a couple of things there that looked interesting enough to mark for listening. Rachel Laudan talked to Russ Roberts about the ideas in her book Cuisine and Empire, and as she's an old cyber-friend and previous guest on my own podcast, I was keen to hear what she had to say.

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It is with profound regret that we report the final sad demise of Artisan, a noun recently pressed into service well beyond its capabilities. As a young person, Artisan was to be seen practising its trade, making a variety of products in limited quantities, often using methods learned from its forbears Craftsperson and Handworker. More recently, alas, Artisan succumbed to blandishments of the men in shiny suits and lent its imprimatur to several tawdry enterprises as far flung as mousepads and kitchen mixers.

Artisan, absorbed in hookers and blow, was at no time aware of how its hard-won reputation as a mark of singular quality had been undermined by its unthinking endorsement of these activities. Even at the end, it was to be heard defending the right of all products everywhere to consider themselves handmade, no matter how unlikely that was. Individuality, Artisan was heard to mutter in its cups, was no great shakes anyway.

The end, when it came, came with a whimper: the simple phrase "artisan baked bread" attached to a sandwich package that very obviously contained nothing of the sort.

Artisan is survived -- barely -- by heirloom, homemade and authentic.

There is, apparently, a huge difference between pizza made in New York and pizza made elsewhere. So I learned on a podcast I listen ed to this morning, and I confess, I've heard the same said of New York bagels. The folk belief is that it must be something in the water. The podcast went on to explain in loving detail how someone conducted a trial of different waters, decanting store-bought waters into plain bottles, numbering the bottles and having his wife switch the numbers. Oooh, double-blind. Science! Then schlepping the whole lot off to a great pizza restaurant to conduct the tasting. And you know what:

As far as pizza goes, use whatever water you want. ... Clearly, the small differences that arise naturally in the course of making a good pizza by hand far outweigh the minor differences that water could make.

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