9 ms·

My wife bakes bread almost every day and grows her own yeast. She loves it and the bread is fantastic. What is so ridiculous?

ChefboyOG 5y ago
There's nothing ridiculous about the fact that your wife enjoys baking bread. There's a lot that's ridiculous about bread being so expensive that recreating the entire supply chain in your backyard is the only economically viable option for obtaining it. The metaphor pretty clearly was not about critiquing baking as a hobby.
- gentleman11 5y ago
  It’s clearly about mocking decentralized home made solutions to problems, and of the people who opt for that approach. It’s an insult to every Amish person on earth and to home mechanics who shy away from garages. It’s also, by far, the most downvoted thing I’ve ever posted so thanks for using your other accounts to hit me for my acidic and savagely inappropriate comment
  - lotyrin 5y ago
    I'm not sure why you are projecting that, but it's not there.
  - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
    Their point was why are people being FORCED to produce a diabetes bio-hack instead of getting insulin. Neither your wife, Amish people, nor home mechanics are forced to make their own bread instead of buying it - they are all choosing to even though bread is cheap and easily available.
  - pitched 5y ago
    Growing wheat and grinding it out into flour isn’t something I’ve ever heard anyone take on as a hobby before. Having all that actually cost less (including time) than buying bread would be a huge achievement!
    - dekhn 5y ago
      I imagine the guy who built his own toaster from scratch probably also contemplating rebuilding the entire pipeline to produce the input to the toast. "Step one: acquire the ore. Step two: smelting iron ore..." http://www.thetoasterproject.org/page2.htm http://www.thetoasterproject.org/page2.htm
      - ineedasername 5y ago
        At that point we're basically talking about Factorio.
    - squeaky-clean 5y ago
      Adam Ragusea actually just did a 2 part video on growing his own bread from scratch in his backyard. Part 2 just came out a few hours ago. Spoiler :P it definitely took way more time an effort than buying flour from the store and making bread. And the final product was a pretty poor loaf of bread because he couldn't find a way to buy the same type of wheat most farms use and had to settle for "animal feed" quality seeds. Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlPm7JtaxE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlPm7JtaxE4
  - crakenzak 5y ago
    It’s clear from your responses that you seriously can’t handle logical disagreements to your point on online forums and choose to get offended instead. The replying comment is right, it’s irrational & you’re filled with hubris to think that you could replicate world wide supply chains in your back yard. In no universe does growing yeast == replicating a global supply chain.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
margalabargala 5y ago
Growing enough viable yeast to bake 10 loaves of bread is orders of magnitude simpler than growing, harvesting, threshing, and milling enough grain to bake 10 loaves of bread.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  It can as simple as doing nothing. You can start your own sourdough at home completely from scratch, and do nothing but wait for the yeast to show up.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    most times the results will be contaminated by bacteria. The knowledge of what was actually going on when you do this was only gained in the past 250 years or so (before that, yeast was known as godisgreat). In addition to doing it the way you described (put out flour and water in a bowl and wait for it to bubble and smell nice), you can also buy a $100 microscope, collect wild yeast, clean the bactiera off, and grow mass cultures. Sometimes it pays to work at the last step of the industrial, scientific and agricultural revolutions.
jcims 5y ago
It’s a little more complicated than that. Bread is ingested through a system optimized to absorb nutrients from outside the body. Insulin must make it into the bloodstream intact, typically through injection. It’s also incredibly potent, a unit of insulin dried to crystalline form weighs less than 40 micrograms, so it much be administered in a sterile carrier fluid. Lastly the penalty for overdosing is generally called insulin shock or diabetic hypoglycemia, and ‘it is rare but possible for diabetic hypoglycemia to result in brain damage or death. Indeed, an estimated 2–4% of deaths of people with type 1 diabetes mellitus have been attributed to hypoglycemia.‘ [1] That’s with pharmaceutical insulin, not DIY. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetic_hypoglycemia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetic_hypoglycemia
- AstralStorm 5y ago
  On the other hand, glucose blood levels are reasonably easily measurable and being slightly on the high side is fine, but the precision pumps (or microfluidics) to do this dosing automatically and accurately are still expensive.
ipsum2 5y ago
The parent mentioned growing their own grain, which is substantially more difficult (planting, harvesting, milling) than growing your own yeast.
- dekhn 5y ago
  Let's go back to before real agriculture. 10K years ago People harvested wild grain, processed it, managed to make yeast starter, and produce an edible bread that sustained humanity until we learned how to domesticate it and build the infrastructure to study it until we know how all this works at the molecular level. But they managed to do it without any science or technology.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    10k years ago they had actually already domesticated crops and weren't reliant (at least not in many places) on finding wild grain. Regardless, it was all still done with science: Observation followed by trial and error informed by those observations. Maybe not the scientific method formalized by Francis Bacon, but it's still there in the outlines.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - dekhn 5y ago
      OK, 12K years not ten. I wouldn't call that science- while observation and trial and error necessary, they aren't sufficient. What was done to turn teosinte into maize was more of... a large scale, long-term, unintentional engineering experiment.
      - ineedasername 5y ago
        I'm not sure you can have engineering without some at least rudimentary approximation of a scientific method. Maybe that's a nitpick though. Either way, I don't see a fundamental aspect of the scientific method missing from an observation -> trial -> results loop. I also don't see crop cultivation as unintentional, although I'm not clear what you meant by that. What wasn't intentional? Deciding to experiment with planting seeds would have been a deliberate choice. Probably based on some observation that where wild grains were gathered together and and little things fell off of them, sometimes the same type of plant would grow. Followed by the idea that putting those things in different places might produce the same effect. Etc. I don't think you get from wild gathering in a nomadic lifestyle to settled agriculture without observing, coming up with ideas about what you observed, testing those ideas, and checking the results. That is. A scientific process. Toesinte turning into maize would may have simply been a blind generations long domestication process, but not that spark of insight and experimentation that led to stationary agricultural societies.

ChefboyOG 5y ago

There's nothing ridiculous about the fact that your wife enjoys baking bread. There's a lot that's ridiculous about bread being so expensive that recreating the entire supply chain in your backyard is the only economically viable option for obtaining it. The metaphor pretty clearly was not about critiquing baking as a hobby.

gentleman11 5y ago
It’s clearly about mocking decentralized home made solutions to problems, and of the people who opt for that approach. It’s an insult to every Amish person on earth and to home mechanics who shy away from garages. It’s also, by far, the most downvoted thing I’ve ever posted so thanks for using your other accounts to hit me for my acidic and savagely inappropriate comment
- lotyrin 5y ago
  I'm not sure why you are projecting that, but it's not there.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  Their point was why are people being FORCED to produce a diabetes bio-hack instead of getting insulin. Neither your wife, Amish people, nor home mechanics are forced to make their own bread instead of buying it - they are all choosing to even though bread is cheap and easily available.
- pitched 5y ago
  Growing wheat and grinding it out into flour isn’t something I’ve ever heard anyone take on as a hobby before. Having all that actually cost less (including time) than buying bread would be a huge achievement!
  - dekhn 5y ago
    I imagine the guy who built his own toaster from scratch probably also contemplating rebuilding the entire pipeline to produce the input to the toast. "Step one: acquire the ore. Step two: smelting iron ore..." http://www.thetoasterproject.org/page2.htm http://www.thetoasterproject.org/page2.htm
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      At that point we're basically talking about Factorio.
  - squeaky-clean 5y ago
    Adam Ragusea actually just did a 2 part video on growing his own bread from scratch in his backyard. Part 2 just came out a few hours ago. Spoiler :P it definitely took way more time an effort than buying flour from the store and making bread. And the final product was a pretty poor loaf of bread because he couldn't find a way to buy the same type of wheat most farms use and had to settle for "animal feed" quality seeds. Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlPm7JtaxE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlPm7JtaxE4
- crakenzak 5y ago
  It’s clear from your responses that you seriously can’t handle logical disagreements to your point on online forums and choose to get offended instead. The replying comment is right, it’s irrational & you’re filled with hubris to think that you could replicate world wide supply chains in your back yard. In no universe does growing yeast == replicating a global supply chain.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

margalabargala 5y ago

Growing enough viable yeast to bake 10 loaves of bread is orders of magnitude simpler than growing, harvesting, threshing, and milling enough grain to bake 10 loaves of bread.

rootusrootus 5y ago
It can as simple as doing nothing. You can start your own sourdough at home completely from scratch, and do nothing but wait for the yeast to show up.
- dekhn 5y ago
  most times the results will be contaminated by bacteria. The knowledge of what was actually going on when you do this was only gained in the past 250 years or so (before that, yeast was known as godisgreat). In addition to doing it the way you described (put out flour and water in a bowl and wait for it to bubble and smell nice), you can also buy a $100 microscope, collect wild yeast, clean the bactiera off, and grow mass cultures. Sometimes it pays to work at the last step of the industrial, scientific and agricultural revolutions.

jcims 5y ago

It’s a little more complicated than that. Bread is ingested through a system optimized to absorb nutrients from outside the body. Insulin must make it into the bloodstream intact, typically through injection. It’s also incredibly potent, a unit of insulin dried to crystalline form weighs less than 40 micrograms, so it much be administered in a sterile carrier fluid. Lastly the penalty for overdosing is generally called insulin shock or diabetic hypoglycemia, and ‘it is rare but possible for diabetic hypoglycemia to result in brain damage or death. Indeed, an estimated 2–4% of deaths of people with type 1 diabetes mellitus have been attributed to hypoglycemia.‘ [1] That’s with pharmaceutical insulin, not DIY. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetic_hypoglycemia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetic_hypoglycemia

AstralStorm 5y ago
On the other hand, glucose blood levels are reasonably easily measurable and being slightly on the high side is fine, but the precision pumps (or microfluidics) to do this dosing automatically and accurately are still expensive.

ipsum2 5y ago

The parent mentioned growing their own grain, which is substantially more difficult (planting, harvesting, milling) than growing your own yeast.

dekhn 5y ago
Let's go back to before real agriculture. 10K years ago People harvested wild grain, processed it, managed to make yeast starter, and produce an edible bread that sustained humanity until we learned how to domesticate it and build the infrastructure to study it until we know how all this works at the molecular level. But they managed to do it without any science or technology.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  10k years ago they had actually already domesticated crops and weren't reliant (at least not in many places) on finding wild grain. Regardless, it was all still done with science: Observation followed by trial and error informed by those observations. Maybe not the scientific method formalized by Francis Bacon, but it's still there in the outlines.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dekhn 5y ago
    OK, 12K years not ten. I wouldn't call that science- while observation and trial and error necessary, they aren't sufficient. What was done to turn teosinte into maize was more of... a large scale, long-term, unintentional engineering experiment.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      I'm not sure you can have engineering without some at least rudimentary approximation of a scientific method. Maybe that's a nitpick though. Either way, I don't see a fundamental aspect of the scientific method missing from an observation -> trial -> results loop. I also don't see crop cultivation as unintentional, although I'm not clear what you meant by that. What wasn't intentional? Deciding to experiment with planting seeds would have been a deliberate choice. Probably based on some observation that where wild grains were gathered together and and little things fell off of them, sometimes the same type of plant would grow. Followed by the idea that putting those things in different places might produce the same effect. Etc. I don't think you get from wild gathering in a nomadic lifestyle to settled agriculture without observing, coming up with ideas about what you observed, testing those ideas, and checking the results. That is. A scientific process. Toesinte turning into maize would may have simply been a blind generations long domestication process, but not that spark of insight and experimentation that led to stationary agricultural societies.