If you bake bread only occasionally, you’re probably just grateful for little packets of dried yeast. This episode is not about that. There’s just not that much to say.

When it comes to Judeo-Christian religious doctrine, however, the role of yeast in human affairs bubbles away below the surface...

Flour, water, salt and yeast; the basic ingredients of a loaf of bread. What happens when you mix them up and then heat them is a complex casade of chemistry, biology and physics. Most of the more subtle changes take time and can’t really be rushed. That’s why slow bread is better than fast bread...

Small bakers couldn’t compete with the giants created by Allied Bakeries, so they turned to science. That produced the Chorleywood bread process, which gave them a quicker, cheaper loaf. Unfortunately, the giant bakeries gobbled up the new method too. More and more small bakeries went out of busin...

Stone mills served us well in the business of turning grain into flour for thousands of years, but they couldn’t keep up with either population growth or new and better wheat. The roller mill came about through a succession of small inventions and the deep pockets of a few visionary entrepreneurs....

Too funny. R. Scott Jones writes about solving his hair “issues” by getting clippers and adopting a buzz cut. I did the same, back in the day. He did have one worry: