Bread Recipe

 You have looked far and wide for a bread recipe that is both healthy and delicious and now you have finally found it!

It has become popular in the past ten years for hip cats to utter the phrase "no ethical consumption under capitalism". Maybe you've heard it. Maybe you haven't. But what is this statement really all about? Lets break it down.

The word "consumption", here, refers to the purchasing and use of products. 

You are a "consumer" when you go to the grocery store and purchase the food that you and your family will be eating that week. You are a "consumer" when you step into a mattress store to try to find something that you hope will give you better sleep and fix your back pain (it probably won't). 

You are consumer when you urgently order flowers for the moms for mothers day, lest they abandon you and leave you on the curb. 

You are a consumer when you finally pull the trigger and get that new riding mover for your sloping rural lawn. 

You are a consumer at the gas pump.

You are a consumer.

These are just a few of the many ways that you may find yourself "consuming", in this world. 

Now the word "ethical" comes before consumption, and this is a key word. Ethical, here, suggests the

The phrase "no ethical consumption under capitalism" then accurately points out that every purchase we make is tied, through the ornate network of global capitalism, to the oppression of at least one group of people who share this planet with us. 

In 2016 when Donald Trump won the national election, I felt a certain sense of dread. I am sure many of you felt the same way. What would happen to our country in the hands of this reality show star who had openly supported such racist ideas?

But also would our country stay as one? We were already so divided into “the right” and ”the left”, would we be able to weather the upcoming conflicts without reducing to civil war? Leading up to the election I had actually seen Donald Trump speak, just a few days after seeing Bernie Sanders speak in the same auditorium. When Sanders spoke, the lights were bright, the stage was at the center of the room and the atmosphere was positive and friendly. The audience members interacted and mingled and laughed. In contrast, when Donald Trump took the stage, the lights were low, the stage was far separated from the crowd, and the crowd itself was arms-folded, quiet, uncomfortable. In addition, the crowd was encouraged to turn and “boo” the press on several occasions. The pain and the tension and the atmosphere of terror, they are all a choice. 

So my original worry was that Donald Trump’s militaristic attitude would spread. That solving problems with violence and aggression would become more pervasive, surely the left would identify evidence for impeachment, the right would disagree, and with strong disagreement over the validity of our leader, tensions would rise and rise until they erupted into some level of Civil War. 

In reality, much of this has happened, but the greater effects have been the increasing presence of white supremacy and policing. It is hard to tell whether this presidency has created new white supremacists, or whether they have simply become more confident and outspoken in their racism. Probably it is both, but in the end we have seen a drastic rise in the prevalence of explicitly racist rallies and militia. Alongside this, we have seen increasing presence of policing from ICE, who have also become more confident and started probing for unlawful immigrants in places that used to be safe. 

At the same time, the past four years have seen the massive increase in the community of incels. If you have not heard this term,  Incels are “INvoluntary CELibates”, or men who struggle to find sexual encounters in the modern day, and have decided that this is an injustice not only against them, but against the entire community of men. Incels find themselves in need of retribution against the global community of women who have apparently “wronged” them. 

Altogether, these factors suggest that the age of Trump is the age of selfishness and fear. Trump is very talented at identifying the American people who would seem, in so so many ways, have direct access to a “good life”, but where we still struggle to have medicine and stay out of poverty. Then Trumps magic trick is to point a finger at the culprit, uniting the community of “disadvantaged” against a false enemy. The case of incels appears to be an extension of this attitude of finding a “problem” in our lives, and placing blame on a lazy target. 

And in Fall 2020, around 70 million people across the US voted for four more years of overt hate, intolerance, explicit racism, along with the deaths, cages, and civil unrest that come along with it. They are all around us. These are the people we must learn to communicate with. These are the people we must heal. 

Anyway, here is our recipe for bread:

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup All Purpose Flour

1 tsp salt

1.5 tsp dry active yeast

some medium grade water

a bowl

some cloth or saran wrap or something

big baking sheet

get out a cup of your water. make sure it is…. pretty warm. I’m gonna say around 80 degrees. then mix the yeast into the water. dont try too hard, just get it wet. Leave this yeasty water out on the counter for like 5 minutes. 

In the meantime, mix the salt and all the flour together in a bowl. 

Then slowly add the yeasty water while grabbing and squeezing it together with the flour. It will get messy. 

Dont be shy. Really get in there.

Get another cup of water. Same temp as before and mix that one in too. Keep mixing water in until all the dough is wet. Like just before water starts to pool. It should be a smidge shiny. 

Now cover it and leave it overnight. Like 7 or 8 hours. 

In the morning, surprise! its only another hour until breadtime. Take the cover off the bread bowl, smell the yeasty aroma of that freshly matured dough. It should have roughly doubled in size by now. And we are gonna let it rise one more time. 

So get your hands really wet and grab that dough and flip it over. Fold it into itself a couple times. Cover it up again to keep the bread contained. 

Preheat the oven now. Put the item you are gonna bake the bread in there to preheat too. A big broad cast iron skillet is best, but feel free to get creative with other flat metal items. When the oven alerts you of sufficient heat, take that sucker out (with an oven mitt u silly goose) and splash some olive oil onto it. Plop your dough onto the hot oil and spread it around. Put the whole ordeal into the oven and bake it for a while. Maybe 15 minutes. No wrong answers. 

Then take that stuff out and share it with your friends. Or eat it alone and get your moneys worth. 

All dough and bread making successes are owed to our friend and honorary Mike, Maria Fernanda Boza Cuadros aka Mafe.

No questions thanks.