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How Far Have We Fallen? The Food Edition.
Have we truly lost the art of critical thinking? Do we just blindly believe what we are told? Even when it is a blatant lie?
Today’s example:
Note the claim of No-Knead Bread Mix. I bought a box of this mix last year at the beginning of the COVID lockdowns, thinking I might need a loaf of bread sometime. I made it last week, two weeks after the expiration date on the enclosed yeast. It turned out okay, but the instructions were a little confusing. After mixing the yeast, water, and flour I was supposed to form a ball of the dough in the bowl, then flatten and fold ten to twenty times. Guess what folks? That’s called kneading. I have made enough bread from scratch to recognize the process. And it would have been a lot easier if I had turned it out onto a flour-covered board rather than trying to flatten and fold dough in the bowl. Does Fleishmann’s just assume that anyone who buys a no-knead bread mix doesn’t know what kneading is in the first place? And if we just call it flatten and fold, no one will ever know?
This is how they get you. Even though I was able to say, ‘wait a minute, this is kneading’ would everyone have that same reaction? Are first-time bread makers really that afraid of kneading? Would sometimes bread bakers start to question what kneading really is? After all the box says NO KNEAD. Fleischmann’s wouldn’t lie. Would they question other supposed knowledge? After all, if they cannot identify kneading while kneading, what else have they been wrong about? Or would they proudly claim they made a no-knead bread, denying reality?
Don’t get me started on ‘sugar-free’ protein bars that are full of sugar alcohol. How dumb do they think we are? Or are we, as a society, really that dumb?
Published in General
I hope that most of them are that dumb…
No. they voted as democrats. Damn!
Catch 22…
Last week, I made bread from scratch without any electricity and cooked on a bar b q grill in the freezing weather. It was OK, but I should I have kneaded it more. Life is now full of lies that we are told and now we are expected to repeat them back.
LOL, that’s pretty funny.
Knead you ask?
Why bother with critical thinking when we have critical theory? There is no objective reality, so there’s no kneading if we say there isn’t. There’s no sugar in the protein bars if we believe there isn’t. It’s much more convenient this way.
As someone who makes bread a lot, I knead in the bowl all the time. I have a big, wide glass bowl, and kneading right in it means I don’t have to clean sticky bread dough flour off my counter after kneading it there.
That said, folding and flattening definitely means kneading. But, ten to twenty times is on the low side for number of times to knead. Some recipes tell you to knead for ten minutes, which is more than a thousand times if you knead like I do. Ten to twenty folds is more like rolled biscuits. So it could be called low-knead, not no-knead?
Weird pseudo-deception on the part of a company I usually think well of.
Now that I’ve written out the word “knead” so many times for the previous comment, I find it looks odd. Does anyone else have that experience? I remember once reading a National Geographic article on silk, its history and production, and found myself totally distracted by the word “silk,” which began to look wrong. . .
Well, it is “Country White.”
Kneadless to say I’m surprised the directions didn’t read, “Punch and fold, punch and fold, punch and fold….until the dough no longer rises.”
Yes – “spoon”, and “screen” are two recent ones for me – the latter while reading a statement by Mr. Bingley in Pride and Prejudice.
Yes – when I write reports for my job I find myself looking at words I’ve typed a thousand times and wondering if they are spelled correctly. Interesting.
Happened to me once with “knife.”
kurious ;>)
The real issue is that there obviously was not a picture to go with every step. Perhaps a link on the back of the box could take the consumer to a YouTube video that would show the process step by step. With helpful photos, who kneads words?
That information is only available on a knead to know basis.
Oh, no! We are channeling 10 Cents!
And I have had that “word looks wrong” countless times. It’s interesting to see that I’m not alone in that.
Not to be a pain in the neck, but patting and folding is a little bit different from kneading, although I’m surprised to see it used for the bread pictured on the box. Folding is a technique borrowed from croissants and biscuits. Patting is a little gentler than kneading.
I make a lot of bread, and I’ve been learning and experimenting this past winter. This King Arthur flour recipe for baguettes and this one for their crispy pan pizza make use of this patting and folding technique, which is different from kneading. It creates lovely layers that trap air and create holes in the dough into which sauce can settle delightfully. :-)
My sister and I used to repeat words over and over until they sounded funny. It was a “go to sleep” game…
There is no such thing as a general art of critical thinking. “Critical Thinking” is not a skill. The ability to think critically is entirely dependent upon domain, and one’s knowledge of same.
The first loaf of bread I ever made I dropped on my foot and broke a toe. It has never gotten better. Not until I started making the no-kneed (I suppose that means elbowed) bread from America’s Test Kitchen (I think they’ve changed the instructions since then). It sits wet for 18 hours, and then you fold it four times or so and pour it into parchment paper lining a preheated Le Creuset. I’ve streamlined the process a lot over the years, but the bread turns out like Italian table bread, bubbly and chewy the way I like, and when I drop it I no longer need steel-toes.
Panera sells really good baguettes for about $3.
Thanks. I can eat a baguette in one or two sittings, depending on the footage. I used to make six 18″ baguettes at a time. I now just eat wonder bread. Maybe I’ll start baking them again, if just for the smell in the house. :)
We get them mostly for home-made bruschetta, but yeah, I can snarf one of those things down in no time.
When my (now) wife and I were in Paris in 2002, we made a meal or two by buying a couple baguettes and a stick of butter. Then we didn’t have a knife in our hotel room, so we used the roomkey to cut and spread the butter. It’s one of the main things she still brings up about that trip.
I make a bread like that too in my Creuset. :-) It’s wonderful.
Ah, now you bring up a psychic pain. We haven’t been able to go back to Italy in a couple of years. I took to bringing my own knife and bread knife, plastic cutting board and espresso maker and heating element with us. Breakfast in the room would be baguette, a salad made with fresh vegetables from the market the day before, dressed with spare red wine from the night before and olive oil, with fresh herbs and marinated olives and two kinds of hard cheeses and sliced cured meats. It sure beat the hotel breakfasts.
Is it no-knead as well?
Yes. It’s this one.
Thanks. You inspire me to bake again.
People, people people. Two words: Kitchenaid Mixer.
It’s the waiting and then getting back in time to do the second rise and then the punch down. Sometimes, I’m off by four hours.
With no-knead, I put the bowl out in the evening and bake it the next morning.
Sorry, Juliana, I know this was supposed to be about truth in advertising, but you must know — how can we not talk about bread.