I have a love-hate relationship with Civilization. I’m down with the art and all. I love me some cathedrals and castles, decadent styles, chronicles of kings and the evolution of cultures. But man, this Civilization thing, it was a devil’s bargain, you know? First off, the whole thing was a punishment, according to the old Hebraic texts. Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and suddenly Jaweh has to kick them out of Eden, their hunter/gatherer paradise. And why? Because if you have knowledge AND immortality, you become a God. Can’t have more than one of those running around. So: now that you have all that knowledge, there’ll be no more idle plucking of grapes from verdant vines, Adam. It’s the fields for you, where In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. Agriculture, civilization, mortality. |
And, as people like Jared Diamond and Yuval Harari have argued, with sedentary agricultural-based civilization you get larger populations, sure (you need all those extra people, actually, as chattel); but you also get hierarchies, property, large scale war, wide-spread famine and disease, God-kings, slave labor, etc.
James Scott goes further in his book Against the Grain, arguing that no hunter-gatherer society would willingly trade up for agriculture-based civilization. Why would they? Hunter-gatherers who lived in places of relative abundance with a wide variety of food-types to be had with far less labor that agriculture demands: why would they willingly sign on to exploitation, subsisting on a single food source obtainable only through inconceivable toil (at least that portion of your crop not claimed by those God-kings and their minions). Scott argues that of course they wouldn’t, unless they were coerced. Which, he claims, they were. We were kidnapped into civilization.
And writing? Literacy? Starts out as a necessary tool of oppression. The first written languages are accounting records, necessary for taxation, for gathering, storing and distributing the fruits of our labor, the sweat of our brow. There you have it: Civilization is a con. In these cheerful (well-grounded) accounts of our origins, agriculture and its bullying psycho-foster child civilization set humans in a perpetually antagonistic relationship to nature; Nature must be tamed, altered to suit our appetites. And it’s clear where that’s got us. Yay civilization. |
Still, there’s bread. The staff of life. It’s the best. And when it’s freshly baked, it good on a whole other level altogether. A loaf thirty minutes out of the oven can be transcendent.
The problem is that unless you live near a bakery, fresh bread is a pleasure that is hard won. It takes planning and experience to pull off. It takes time and a level of commitment that, given the lives many of us lead (again, thanks civilization!), put this pleasure out of reach for many of us.
The problem is that unless you live near a bakery, fresh bread is a pleasure that is hard won. It takes planning and experience to pull off. It takes time and a level of commitment that, given the lives many of us lead (again, thanks civilization!), put this pleasure out of reach for many of us.
Which is why this recipe has changed my life. I read about it first in Mark Bitman’s New York Times column a few years ago, and first gave it a try one semester while I was on sabbatical taking care of my toddler son. I was shocked at how easy it was, and how amazing the results were. Three or four minutes mixing (I use a broad butter knife) and then you just leave it alone for 18 hours. Dump it on a towel, wait a couple of hours more, than into the oven, and that’s it. The loaf that comes out is genuinely one of the best loaves I’ve ever tasted, after a lifetime of frequenting bakeries (and a couple of years working at the legendary D&G bakery on Mulberry street in Manhattan’s little Italy). |
So now I really don’t buy bread anymore. On Saturday I throw the ingredients together and on Sunday I bake. I slice the result and freeze it, using it for sandwiches and soups throughout the rest of the week.
It imposes a delicious discipline and rhythm to my week. Kind of like all the one governing the lives of farmers since civilization began. But easier, and tasty.
As compensation for five thousand years of oppression, famine, disease and the ultimate destruction of the environment it consumes, it’s not much. But man, it’s good.
It imposes a delicious discipline and rhythm to my week. Kind of like all the one governing the lives of farmers since civilization began. But easier, and tasty.
As compensation for five thousand years of oppression, famine, disease and the ultimate destruction of the environment it consumes, it’s not much. But man, it’s good.