Modernist BreadCrumbs Heritage Radio Network

Welcome to Season Two of Modernist BreadCrumbs!

It seems only natural—and appropriately poetic—to start this season talking about starters. They’re the inception of the loaf, the first step. You don’t need a starter to make bread, but the story of cultivating yeast from the environment around us—whether you call it “starter,” “culture,” “levain," or “mother"—is what we’re focusing on in this episode, from microbes to miche.

We'll hear from Executive Producer Michael Harlan Turkell about his "mother," baker Sarah Owens about her "Beast," microbial ecologists Dr. Erin McKenney and Dr. Rob Dunn of "The Sourdough Project," and, of course, the co-authors of "Modernist Bread," Nathan Myhrvold and Francsico Migoya.

Industrialization, and the semi-dwarf wheat developed during the Green Revolution, created a disconnect between farming and flour. But now, consumers are rejecting these commodities and rediscovering the foods, flavors, and farmers around us. This episode is about the growing movement to bring back heritage grains and strengthen local and regional food systems. In direct opposition of the Green Revolution, we’re going to hear from the front lines of the “Grain Revolution."

Bread has been paired with other fermentations for millennia—with beer in Russian literature, wine in religious texts, and cheese in sandwiches around the world every day. What is it about bread that makes it a natural ally to these fermented products? Well, bread itself is a fermented product. In this episode, we’ll look at co-fermentations and variations on the process of yeast eating sugar and releasing carbon dioxide.

Flatbreads and quick breads may seem like strange oven-fellows, but hear us out. In the Venn Diagram of bread baking, they both fall in the overlap of “speed” and “differently leavened.” So we're firing up the tonir, the tandoor, the griddle, the bastible, the wok, and even a rock, to travel around the world through bread.

We're hopping in our Winne-bread-go and hitting the road—to explore the state of regional breads in America! We'll travel to New Orleans for a Po'boy, New England for Anadama, and to Appalachia for Salt Rising Bread, all in search of an answer to the question, "Is there a regional bread culture in the United States?"

We're going down the rabbit hole of breads with holes! From the New York vs Montreal bagel debate—and the power of water and lye—to the twists and turns of pretzel history, focusing on the presence of negative space is a positive thing.