The First Bakers – Archaeology Magazine

“About 14,400 years ago in the Black Desert of northeastern Jordan, someone was tinkering with the recipe for the perfect pita. This auspicious moment in culinary history has been captured by researchers who sampled the contents of two stone fireplaces at the site of Shubayqa 1. The team, led by University of Copenhagen archaeobotanist Amaia Arranz-Otaegui, found that the people living at this small campsite, hunter-gatherers who belonged to a culture known as the Natufians, were making unleavened bread-like products at least 4,000 years before the dawn of agriculture …”

The Complete Guide to Buying, Cleaning & Seasoning Cast Iron Pans

See on Scoop.itHistorical gastronomy

My mom gave me two of her cast iron pans that she inherited from her mother, which her mother inherited from HER mother. My pans are now over 100 years old and they are as smooth as glass and amazingly seasoned. … Cast irons are so great because they are so versatile. In one pan, I have a nonstick skillet, pizza stone, dutch oven, griddle, and even a cookie sheet. Plus I can take it camping and leave it tossing around in my trunk for a few weeks and it’s still perfect (though anything fragile in the trunk may be dented). 

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The World on a Plate (bookreview of Bee Wilson’s Consider the Fork)

See on Scoop.itHistorical gastronomy

The history of cookware—and, by association, the history of cooking and how we eat—is a topic as formidable as the history of civilization itself. Few books this side of Paul Johnson’s “Modern Times” have turned so much meat into a digestible, entertaining meal. The danger is that one ends up with a series of mezze, tasty but loosely connected facts. In the case of Bee Wilson’s “Consider the Fork,” the author is blessed with an assemblage of entertaining tidbits and particularly lucid prose.

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