Freeze Bubbles in the Oven 🫧

Transforming powdered grass seed into the foundation of civilization

In April 2020 gastroegyptologist @SeamusBlackley was pontificating how incredibly lucky the human race is that real bread exists:

"A lot of engineers & scientists end up baking sourdough because I think a few things:

First of all it's really interesting technically. You know you have this kind of somewhat random biological sample and it does an amazing thing. It transforms powdered grass seed into the foundation of civilization. Okay and that's incredible. But it does it in a really kind of wistful, uncontrollable, kind of naughty way.

You know it's not predictable. You don't know what's in it. You don't know how long it's going to take. Based on the humidity in the air and the temperature and a million other things that maybe you can control and maybe you can't, the behavior of this stuff is different.

But it turns out — and I think this is really lucky for our species — it turns out that almost any screw-up or half-right way to bake natural bread like this is delicious and nourishing. So your village will survive no matter how bad you are at it.

And it might have a lot to do with human beings like me being here. Because you can grow this grass, which grows easily, okay, and you get the seeds off it and you can make this food. And the grain lasts a long time. You can store the seeds and it lasts a really long time.

And then when you need it you can kind of grind it up and make this ‘stuff’ with it that feeds everybody and people don't die. Like it turns out to have enough protein in it and enough amino acids in it. And enough micronutrients, and starches and sugars and all these things that human beings need. It just turns out to have that. It's kind of miraculous. And you know when you think about 'is there life on other planets in the universe' and all of that. How lucky do you have to be to find something like that.

It turns out that almost any screw-up or half-right way to bake natural bread like this is delicious and nourishing.

-Seamus Blackley

And it's got a host of additional benefits too. Like I have come to firmly believe that the fact that you can make beer at the same time as making bread is also hugely important in human civilization. Because all of the people who need to go do all this heavy labor to farm and to harvest and to winnow and all of that. You can tell them, 'hey, if you go do all this work so the village survives, we'll also make some beer.' And so its like the lubricant that makes all the other hard work happen.

So it's really lucky that you can collect out of the air... even if you just leave some of this grass seed around and mix it with water it's going to start bubbling up. And if you kind of freeze those bubbles by putting it in an oven or getting it hot you get this satisfying yummy stuff that stops your kids from dying.

Really super lucky."

This was @SeamusBlackley on the Ologies podcast expounding on #sourdough. You can enjoy the full thing here. Also, Seamus has countless fascinating threads on the old Twitter. From harvesting ancient Egyptian yeasts for sourdough baking, to growing and harvesting cacao and then making chocolate end to end. But a great place to start if you want to see how he looks at this whole thing with a sense of wonder and appreciation is this thread.

Enjoy this last line one more time. It is what really caught my ear and caused me to transcribe the above quote into this thread, and to take the time to get this into your email inbox:

And if you kind of freeze those bubbles by putting it in an oven or getting it hot you get this satisfying yummy stuff that stops your kids from dying.

-Seamus Blackley

And it doesn’t really matter if the Xbox logo was an intentional tip of the hat to his love of sourdough. Destiny did what was always intended.

Bubbles frozen in the oven

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Some heroes ride bikes. ψωμααααας!

Response to “What is your earliest memory of bread?”

Thanks for being with me and the bread of the Mooon on this sourdough journey. Let me know what you are baking. You can reply to this message, tweet me (@mooonbread), instagram me (@mooonbread), or just bring some bread over to my house ;)

All my love by way of bread,

-Jordan