Rice makes terrible bread. Grind me up some more of that fancy grass please.
Rice bread is fine. I haven’t had any that tries fancy grains to mimic whole wheat or anything like that, but it’s at least as good as regular white bread.
Probably better than white bread tbh. Store-bought white bread in the US has a higher glycemic index than pure fucking sugar.
Don’t eat white bread, it’s terrible for you
Got a source on that, because it sounds like “America bad” bullshit? Also, what is “store bought?”
Yeah, commercial bread is terrible. Good bread isn’t hard to bake at home though
Unfortunately rural japan hasn’t really figured out good bread yet so almost all the bread where I live is white bread. Japan is known for a lot of great food but their sandwiches are depressing.
I kinda dig Japanese sandwich culture. Japanese milk bread makes for great egg salad sandwiches. And things like steaks or fried cutlets make for delicious sandwiches, too.
They’re good sandwiches for a bit, but after awhile the lack of substance really gets to you. With the single bread type and an almost complete lack of deli meat (and good toppings like cheese and pickles being scarce) i just really miss sandwich culture
It’s all the same, Rice bread is terrible for you also.
Boiled wheat is perfectly edible, actually.
Beef barley soup is delicious
Significant point: “Edible” is subject to discussion. Not more than 100 years ago, the expected diet in large parts of Norway was boiled fish, boiled potatoes, and some form of boiled grain. For every meal. Your entire life. Vitamins? Go chew on that shrub until the scurvy goes away.
boiled fish, boiled potatoes, and some form of boiled grain
tbf that sounds amazing
Nobody stops you from trying it you can afford it, I hope you can it’s pretty sad otherwise
i eat it almost every day, that’s why i can say with confidence that it sounds amazing, because it is :P
I doubt it. In winter maybe. But given the extreme abundance of wild berries in the summer I’m pretty sure people ate a lot of them.
Source: Grandparents that grew up on a plot of land (read: hunk of rock) on the west coast and lived off sustenance farming (which includes a significant amount of fishing) as late as the 1930’s.
Sure, berries and some other foraging products was part of their diet, but not a very significant one. It was mostly whatever would grow on that plot. Mostly potatoes and onions, with some other minor stuff. While berries are abundant, picking them gives you a lot fewer calories per man-hour than fishing, so fishing takes priority.
I would’ve thought there were at least lingonberries over there? Lingon preserves have been around and ubiquitous enough since at least around the 1600s here in Sweden. In addition to that, off the top of my head there’s also blueberries, juniper, and at some point rose hips were introduced. Depending on where you are you could harvest cloudberries. In late spring/early summer you could harvest pine needles, as well as young pine cones.
In some part of China (Yunnan I think, but I could be wrong) they also harvest pine pollen, though I’ve not heard of that practise around here.
Granted, the ecology is decently different between Sweden and Norway, if they actually lived on a hunk of rock with no forest in sight I’d assume it’d be hard to get berries.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of berries around. You can pick 10 L of blueberries in not too many man-hours, the same goes for cloud berries. Lingon berries are also abundant for that matter.
As mentioned, they definitely had these things as part of their diet, but it was nowhere near being a primary calorie source. The reason for that is probably that fishing or harvesting seagull eggs was a much, much more efficient way to get the calories you need. When you’re already sustenance farming, you typically maximise efficiency when possible. My primary point was really that when maximising calorie-efficiency (which they largely did) you end up living primarily off boiled fish and boiled potatoes.
Aye, this makes sense. You can pickle fish just as easily as you can create berry preserves, and ultimately the goal is to have enough calories around to get you through winter, the more efficiently you spend your time the better I suppose.
Preserving fish is great! You can salt it, dry it, ferment it, smoke it, pickle it, soak it in lye (we have a dedicated word for that), aand that’s about it :D
I see you’ve all already had the discussion but my point wasn’t really to say that they were the main source of calories or something. But a small part of the diet can still make an important contribution to nutrition, particularly when it comes to vitamins.
You don’t need a lot of fruit to not get scurvy, though. I bet even just the boiled potatoes have enough vitamin C left to keep it away.
I believe I’ve read that potato’s were, for a significant period of time, the average Norwegians primary source of vitamin C. Not because it contains loads of vitamin C, but because people ate them by the boatload. (Don’t peel them, that gives you scurvy)
Called porridge.
I’ve got a pack of pearl barley in the cupboard right now; it’s delicious.
Same, I also regularly make meals with pearl barley, it’s absolutely great as a noodles/rice replacement or salad ingredient
You can absolutely make barley bread. It just won’t be very fluffy or rise, since there’s no gluten in it.
That … doesn’t sound like bread to me.
That’s because its 2026, and not 1326. It would have definitely qualified as bread in the middle ages, and probably way before.
American-pilled.
If you look at a lot of other breads outside of the US, particularly German breads, they tend to be a lot more crumbly.
The high gluten breads you’re used to came about from industrial bread makers wanting their bread to rise more so they could use less grain per loaf while keeping the size the same
I’m German myself. All bread I’ve ever seen in Germany is leavened.
There most certainly is gluten in barley! Breweries don’t just add gluten to beer just to be dicks to people with celiac disease.
Tbf, most grains have way more gluten in them than they used to, though wheat is by far the worst offender. This is because they’ve been bred for industrial purposes. If you have a grain with a lot of gluten it’ll rise more, so you can use less wheat (aka reduce cost) while keeping the size of the loaf the same
It being tasty or not is entirely subjective. I’m a big fan of boiled wheat. The texture is fantastic.
Is this a dish that your parents made for you when you were a child?
Nope. Think we had wheat on occasion but I don’t recall feeling strongly about it. It’s something I’ve started doing more in recent years and I was a fan from the start. You can prepare it in various ways, like cooking it in a broth makes it absorb the flavours. Or you could just boil it with salt like you’d boil pasta, in which case it’s not that different in terms of flavour.
It’s so substantial, even chewy. I love oat groats for this too.
It’s pretty simple, really. Rice doesn’t grow everywhere.
Can confirm. I’m currently at Tim Horton’s and there’s no rice growing.
Is the Tragically Hip song Wheat Kings playing though?
Rice requires hours just to filter out all the stones from it.
It’s learned over time. I expect what we learned from easier-to-process roots was applied to grains.
Sir and/or Madam,
Have you heard the good word about maize (corn)? 🌽
I live amongst yankees now. I’d even take some huitlacoche.
I’ve been wanting to try that for years
It’s an acquired taste. Definitely tastes better than it looks.
WHAT UP MOTHER SHUCKERS
Devil crop.
Yeah I think about this a lot. How tf did they figure out wheat on such a massive scale for bread?
It might be because ancient peoples weren’t stupid, but just less knowledgeable about how things work than the average, modern adult. There were likely very curious individuals who wanted to improve something they already had or try something completely different for the sake of trying. Didn’t you ever try mixing random food ingredients as a kid to see if it tastes good?
Still do.
I see you have not met the average modern adult.
Actually, you’re right, wtf was I thinking. Bread was clearly alien tech.
- Ancient people were as intelligent as we are.
- It didn’t have to start at a massive scale, it was likely a smaller start that spread and expanded.
- Finding and making food was the thing everyone spent all their time on until the agricultural revolution, even then is was still almost everyone. It wasn’t until the industrial revolution that a majority of people weren’t focused exclusively on food production.
Human being more gatherer than hunter and wheat the evolved form of an evolved form from early human domestication, helps?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einkorn
Edit: damn, the description in the article basically answers the whole topic here.
This phenomenon is even stronger with Maize. It requires heavy processing to be turned into glucose sirup or anything resembling edible food. By default, the grains are extremely durable and very difficult to digest.
But this is essentially what protects it from insects and fungus. Because the grains are so hard to digest by default, they can only be eaten by humans who have the tools to heavily process them before eating; for everyone else it’s essentially uninteresting as a food source and that prevents mold and insects.
Corn (Maize) is a selected grass. (Teosinte) Wheat is also a grass (Emmer) which hasn’t been nearly as modified.
The american indigenous people cultivated and developed corn over 10,000 some years. An ear of corn can be boiled and eaten. Wheat? Not so much.
You can absolutely boil wheat, so I am not sure I follow…
What type of corn are you referring to? I’m not familiar with the history of corn, but what you’re saying doesn’t match my experiences with any variety
Dent corn is used as livestock feed, and is generally considered the less edible version. Sweet corn can be eaten by humans raw. Basically every variety I’ve ever seen can be eaten if boiled long enough
Yeah, the effect is stronger for dent corn.
Dent corn can last upwards of 20 years when stored correctly.
I’m not sure what that number is for other cereals but i guess it’s less long.
Sweet corn is a mutation that was only really cultivated in the late 1700s. Before that dent and flint corn were the norm. These corns require nixtamalization to soft the corn and then need boiling, grinding, and cooking to make something like tortillas.
Sweet corn is also harder to store if harvested at a flavorful stage. Up until canning became widespread, there was no easy way to store corn without drying it out.
Have you not heard of corn on the cob? Just pull off the husk, boil, and eat.
I can’t tell if this is in jest or ignorance.
Sweet corn is a recent invention.
And great, you’ve got the months of July and August covered. How are you going to survive fall, winter, and spring? Corn doesn’t become a staple crop until it can be stored year round, maybe between years to alleviate famine.
My point being that corn only needs to be boiled to be easy to eat. Going around like it’s completely inedible is ridiculous.
And your second “point” is a complete red herring. It applies to almost any crop outside of its harvest season. Those vegetables you’re buying at the grocery store? They’re not being stored year round. They’re grown in Mexico and South America before being imported. That’s how you’re able to get tomatoes in March.
My point being that corn only needs to be boiled to be easy to eat.
Sweet corn harvested at the milky stage, sure. But wait until the kernels are reddish brown and they won’t be great. And that’s a variety that was developed like 1500 years after the Romans were wiping their asses with sponges, so not relevant to the conversation about ancient prehistoric people developing a staple crop.
Go boil a jar of popcorn and see how practical it would be to try to eat flint corn with just some boiling.
Plus nixtamalization improves the nutrition of cornmeal so that it can meet more of human nutritional needs.
And your second “point” is a complete red herring. It applies to almost any crop outside of its harvest season.
It doesn’t apply to staple crops. Wheat, rice, millet, sorghum, buckwheat, beans, and potatoes can be stored long term, so entire civilizations came up around them millennia ago. Sweet corn harvested at an edible stage can’t be, at least not without refrigeration or canning technology.
All this is to say yeah, the civilizations built around maize as a staple crop had to figure out nixtamalization.
who’s
whose
I often wondered this about potatoes. Wild potatoes are extremely poisonous, so who went, the last time we ate one of those we all got sick and a few people died.
Let’s cultivate them. I’m sure in just a few thousand years we can turn it into something useful. Of course until then it’s kind of just wasted effort but our children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children will thank us.
Peru, that’s who. I’m pretty sure that’s where all edible potatoes come from.
Boiling them in a clay pot, one of the only materials available to them, renders them edible and famously almost nutritionally complete. They are incredibly easy to grow and grow almost anywhere. They were immediately available. “What happens if we boil it” is the basis for quite a lot of staple foods and would have been a human go-to.
Eating one probably felt so damn good when people had a non-existent understanding of nutrition.
Eating potatoes still feels great
My thoughts but with chicken “ah yes these poisonous birds that make you shit yourself to death, i shall bring them home”
Wait till you learn why chicken was domesticated and spread around the world. Believe it or not, but it’s not for food.
Chicken isn’t poisonous if you cook it directly after slaughtering, though, the raw meat just doesn’t keep well. Humans figured out fire a long time ago.
Only if you cook them all the way through, i imagine the first couple of guys that tried to eat it died
It’s really not that hard to cook it all the way through, I’d assume they did that anyway with any meat. It’s not smart to eat meat “rare” when you don’t have fridges and the animals might have any number of bacterial or viral diseases. On top of that, wild birds can also carry salmonella, I’d assume humans figured out how to eat wild birds long before they encountered chicken.
Ooohh so the knowledge of what to do was just imparted by divine right? No experimentation? The first guy did it right and everyone after them did too?
People still get salmonella from improperly handling chicken to this day, the chickens bodily fluid also carry the disease and handwashing was not a thing for a very long time.
In California, native Americans made acorn porridge. They collected the acorns, shelled and roasted them, ground it into a flour, then leached it because it’s full of bitter tannins, and then they can cook the leached acorn meal into a porridge. It is crazy and multiple steps to get there. Mind blowing stuff.
When you are hungry and have had to resort to a less desirable food source, the time for research and development becomes available.
Yeah you start by trying to eat the stuff that seems like it could be food because you need food, then once you get it edible (using the basic techniques), then you can focus on trying to make it palatable.
Preparing a meal is a super involved process, but getting the acorns should be extremely easy compared to farming grain.
Wheat is a more modern staple than you might imagine. Millet was more widespread than rice or wheat for much of Eurasia.
Fake: OP wipes their ass
Gay: Eating any harvested grain.
There was a theory that wheat contains a chemical that makes people more docile and accepting of hierarchy, and that a wheat-based diet allowed for large-scale hierarchical societies with taxation, conscription, inequality and division of labour to exist
That’s not on Google, where’s the link?
That chemical is a calorie.
A calorie is a unit of heat energy, not a chemical.
One guy can grow and harvest a wheat field large enough to feed his family, but rice requires a lot of community organization to grow.
Also, a very different climate and soil.
Also, a swamp.
There’s an interesting hypothesis called the Rice Hypothesis that theorizes that the different styles of farming rice vs wheat shaped our societies in ways that are still prevalent today. Farming rice led to strong collectivism in society, while farming wheat led to strong individualism in society. Perhaps this is what has led to our differences in ideologies and governing systems.
All grass based crops encouraged group cooperation. Plants like potatoes remain safe in the ground until you need them. But all cereal crops require harvesting at a specific time. You can’t just harvest enough wheat as you need it. This means you inevitably have to have a stockpile of grain to get through the year. And a stockpile of already harvested and prepared grain makes you an instant target for raids by opposing groups.
Cereal crops of all forms necessitate cooperation.
I mean, everything in life requires cooperation, but that’s not the point. Rice took twice as many labor hours as wheat and required more irrigation. According to Shenshi Nongshu, “if one is short of labor, it is best to grow wheat”. Also studies have shown that in China people in historically rice farming areas behave more collectively than those in wheat regions. Not all grasses behave the same way and need the same things, especially with how much we’ve bred them to our needs.
Fascinating theory. I’ll have to go down that rabbit hole tomorrow.
I also like the one where western people are good at stuff like telescopes and magnifying lenses because they drink wine, which is a pretty color, where as the Chinese drank clear alcohol so they didn’t get as good with glasswork
Oh interesting, I haven’t heard of that. I’ll have too look into it, thanks!
Also in regards to lenses and pretty things, because pottery and paper were already so massive industries in China, they didn’t see use for glass as much as Europe which needed it for windows and whatnot.
So then Europe had the advantage in glassworking and thus got some scientific instruments (such as beakers and lenses) first.
How much of that was of because wine, I couldn’t say. But I would like to mention that a gene for naturally being (much more) intolerant to alcohol is more common in Asia than in Europe. But how long it’s been more common is a question I couldn’t answer, as it might be more of a consequence than a cause, with how fast evolution works. (ie Europe has had strong liquor for centuries and you can see from places which only recently got liquor how much more prevalent alcoholism is — it gets filtered out pretty fast as if you’re dependant on alcohol and sauced all the time you prolly might not procreate, unless you’re not that intolerant to it and manage to function.)
