Ancient human tech

I didn’t blog at all yesterday because I was busy doing three things; watching Altered Carbon (season 2), baking bread, and having an actual existential crisis over COVID-19.

If you haven’t seen Altered Carbon (Netflix, unpaid ad), I recommend it – especially now that all we have is time by ourselves, with our internets, and our loved ones.

The main literary device which Altered Carbon is structured on is that humans found an ancient alien tech which allowed them to download their consciousness onto a device called the “stack”. This device can then be transferred to a new body when the old one dies, or whenever they want to (can afford to, really) change bodies or be “resleeved.” This results in a sort of immortality – though the longer they live, the more time they get to spend with their regrets.

The series covers topics of wealth inequality, technology and society, unrestrained human growth, greed, and even touches on the topic of gender fluidity. If a person can choose their own body, which would they choose? Or would they even choose non-binary?

There is a lot more to the stories than that but that’s an introduction. The point I am getting at is that the “stack” which holds each person’s consciousness is made from what turns out to be “ancient alien” tech.

Ok, so this is a strange transition but I also baked bread yesterday. They may seem disconnected but baking bread is ancient human tech.

One of our distant ancestors is a species of human-like creatures called Paranthropus Boisei. PB (as we will call it) evolved massive molars and huge chewing muscles so that it could live by simply grinding up whatever seeds, nuts, and other things that it could put in its mouth. Walking along in the plains of Africa, PB might just take a handful of grass seeds and chew them for sustenance. This is a crude method for extracting calories, though not entirely ineffective, but requires genetic specialization.

Humans came later but the trick that we learned is that if you take those same seeds and use tools to crush them, or grind them, and added water, and allowed the resulting paste to ferment, and then baked it, you would transform something very difficult to digest into something which both extracts maximum calories and provides rapid intake.

This technology sparked a rapid growth in human mental capacity – more calories means that you have extra fuel for bigger brains. And over generations, as we developed the technologies and processes which would later turn grains into flour and then into bread our brains grew bigger and smarter. Processes were refined, yeast was harvested, fermentation was experimented with, bread was baked on rocks, then in giant communal ovens, and humans rapidly evolved. We didn’t need to evolve specialist teeth because we evolved specialist brains.

Bread is our ancient human tech and I think about that every time I knead a loaf of bread. The very act of kneading bread is adding energy to the flour, transforming the proteins (gluten) into something more digestible than even raw flour, which is itself a highly processed food.

I also think about how easy it is to capture yeast from the air around us. Take a cup of flour and filtered water, leave it out in the woods for a day, bring it back and then force the cultures to grow rapidly by dumping half of the medium out (the flour/water mixture) and feeding it new medium. Do this every day for a week. You will have wild yeast starter.

Our ancestors almost certainly did something similar to this. They probably just fermented grains and water in pots and learned that if they left those out for a day or two they tasted WAY better. Over time they could have easily just left some of the previous ferment behind, filled the pot again, and if you do that over time you built up a huge supply of what we now call “sourdough mother.”

On Twitter I posted a very simple bread recipe and a series of videos to show people the techniques you need to make bread. I don’t pretend to be an expert baker or that I’m some great educator of the masses. My point is rather to show people how accessible these technologies are. Almost anyone can make bread! And it doesn’t have to be perfect the first time.

If we are all truly going to be stuck at home for 8 weeks or whatever, now might be a good time to learn how to make bread. After all, it doesn’t take a ton of active time but it does take time. And I have a feeling that we are going to have rolling quarantines for the next 18 months or so until we can get most folks vaccinated.

Basic white bread

• 2 cups of all purpose flour
• 1 cup of body temp water
• 1 TSP of salt (more if you want)
• 1 TSP of yeast

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix until there are no chunks of raw flour left. Leave this to sit on your counter for 20 minutes to hydrate the flour.

Grab another cup of flour, sprinkle some on top of your starter, and dump that out onto the counter. Now start kneading. DO NOT JUST DUMP THE WHOLE CUP IN THERE! Start slowly. Add more flour gradually. You will need to scrape some dough off your counter and your hands, get used to it! Adding flour is only necessary if the dough is ridiculously sticky. The real trick is that the more you knead the dough, the less sticky it will get. I use less flour because I like my bread to be more open (big holes in the crumb) but more flour is easier to work with. You could also use a stand mixer, I do for extremely wet doughs.

Once your dough passes the windowpane test, oil a bowl and put the dough in there to rise. This is your primary ferment. Leave it on the counter for an hour or more, but if you want, you could even put this in the fridge overnight! If you ferment overnight, it will taste better.

After the dough double in size, dump it out onto the counter again and flatten into a square (ish) shape. Now, if you want to add things to the dough – like seeds, nuts, garlic, olives, herbs, or cinnamon sugar just sprinkle them on here. Fold the left side to the middle, fold the right side to the middle. Roll the dough down from the top 1/3 and seal the edge using a karate chop! Roll it again, chop it again. Roll it again, chop it again. Now put it in a greased tin, cover it and let it rest for another hour or so or until doubled in size.

When it’s puffy and almost ready to bake, put the oven on 350F*. If you can put a pan in the bottom of your oven, do. You will pour water in this to create team. Optionally you can just brush butter or eggwash over the top just before baking.

Put the bread in the oven, then pour in a cup of water (if using). Bake at 350F for about 35-40 minutes or until nicely browned. Tip out of the tin and allow to cool fully before slicing and serving with butter, cheese, and all sorts of things that I can’t really eat now days.

Qq

*Experiment with temps. This was the recommendation from the Joy of Cooking but I always cook bread at higher temps than this. I bake my free-form round loaf at 475F. But I have yet to see any consensus on this topic. Some folks start the bread higher, pour in the water, then lower the temp. I would try 400F if I wanted to be adventurous.