Later in the summer I'll be offering some bread-making courses, and as part of that I've been excavating part of my personal baking history. Today, that was the story of how I came by one of my sourdough starters, the 100-year old Tuscan pasta madre. I snapped this portrait this morning.

A...

Until recently, the Mangalitza, or Mangalitsa, or Mangalica pig was the stuff of stories for me. This woolly pig, first selected in Hungary, has been raved about as a very tasty pig indeed, a breed whose salvation lay in being eaten more widely. On a couple of trips to Hungary I did keep half an eye open for it, but at least on my sketchy investigations it appeared to be without honour in its own country.

Alex Blumberg interviewed Pierre Sutton and his daughter Keisha on a recent episode of his series Without Fail. Sutton's giant achievement was to create black-owned "race" music radio stations, and listening to the episode triggered a memory from long, long ago.

I haven't seen that video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing her ass off, and nor will I, but kudos to Wired for using it as a peg on which to hang a good story about copyright, mash-ups, fair use and the like.

I cannot remember when I started following Bonnie Ohara's Instagram feed or what originally led me there, but I was thrilled for her when she announced that she had been asked to write a book. I was even more thrilled a little while ago to discover that the book -- Bread Baking for Beginners: The Essential Guide to Baking Kneaded Breads, No-Knead Breads, and Enriched Breads -- had become a runaway success.