I Don't Know About That - Bread

Episode Date: August 30, 2022

In this episode, the team discusses bread with video game designer and "the father of the Xbox", but more importantly, a bread enthusiast, Seamus Blackley. Follow Seamus on Twitter @SeamusBlackley ! Our merch store is now live! Go to idontknowaboutthat.com for shirts, hoodies, mugs, and more! Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/IDKAT for ad free episodes, bonus episodes, and more exclusive perks! Tiers start at just $2! Go to JimJefferies.com to buy tickets to Jim's upcoming tour, The Moist Tour.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Okay. Medicine, herbs and stuff. What's the difference? Who gives a fuck? I've been shitting myself all day. Welcome to the... Oh, God. I've got the runs, ladies and gentlemen.

I ate something that was no good, so there might be some pauses and whatnot. Fucking hell, I'm no good. You're rough. You really are struggling right now. I'm no good. I've fucking done some damage in Jack's toilet. It doesn't make you feel bad because that's got a lot of dust in Jack's toilet. They haven't dusted that off.

Are you airing out your room? He left the door open. It was very nice, but now my room smells interesting. Interesting? It'll be alright when you bring a girl back in 2028. I know the smell. I used to share a lot of hotel rooms with Jim. Yeah, people can holiday in Chernobyl.

I don't know. Can they? No. Is there tour buses in Chernobyl where you go around? This is where people had three titties. Russian soldiers just went there, and they got very sick. The Russian soldiers did? Yeah.

How's that going? Stop following it. It's still bad. Quality journeys. Oh, I know it's still bad, but the ukraine they're putting up a good fight are they doing all right it's still going i guess so that must be doing pretty well it's funny how you stop watching it the first the first week you watched it non-stop oh no they're getting near keeve is keeve still standing hold on a second here chernobyl tour eye-opening experience of the post-apocalyptic world you can can book a tour online, right?

Update. Starting from February 19th, the Chernobyl zone is closed for tourist visits for an indefinite period. The official explanation is due to technical reasons. Technically, the Russians are there. Technically still poisonous. There's a lot of problems going on here.

War. Some, yeah. Oh, God. Don't travel to the Kiev Technically still poisonous There's a lot of problems going on here Ward Some Oh god Don't travel to the Kiev region In particular Chernobyl zone We don't know why My brother Scott's son That's the voice that you can hear That you can't see

He's on holiday out here in America We can't see him You can see him You can see him In case they get you confused with Jim. I don't think our voices sound that much similar. No. No.

Not at all. You have some shows coming up in Durham. Yeah. Do I? You do. Yeah. September 8th in Durham. September 8th in Durham and North Carolina.

Nothing's finer. Durham Performing Arts Center. September 8th. September 9th. Ovens Auditorium in Charlotte, North Carolina. September 10th. finer. Durham Performing Arts Center, September 8th, September 9th, Ovens Auditorium in Charlotte, North Carolina. September 10th, Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Atlanta, that's selling well, that one. I looked at the ticket sales on that one.

That one will sell out. Great. And then you're going to make your way up to Victoria, Canada on September 22nd. The good people of Canada, they always come to see me. I love my Canadian people. Hello. You're going to be on the Save on Foods Memorial

Center. I think the Save on Foods Memorial Center is a minor league hockey place. I always sit backstage. It's always still cold in there. There's not even ice this time of year. Is this the poo on the stick tour? It is the poo

on the stick tour, but at the moment, if you wanted to see the poo on the stick tour right now, it would just be in a glass and the stick would be stirring it around with very little pressure against it. This would be a smooth, gliding stick. There'd be milkshakes you could stir. Any olives in there? No. Well, I tell you what, though.

I had pine nuts and there's full pine nuts. No one expects to chew those. Save this material for the Patreon. And then you're in Seattle and Portland in the following days, 23rd and 24th. And make sure to follow us on Instagram. On the big one coming up, Toronto. Toronto recording a special. We need people there for that.

November 4th. So buy tickets to that. That's all linked on your website. I've got to get the set ready. Follow us on Instagram, IDCat. And there's a link to our Patreon on there as well. IDCat podcast. IDCat podcast.

Yeah. We've only done 100 million. Patreon.com slash IDCat. And then you can get merch. You can get a poo on a stick. Poo. Poo on a stick to our shirt at idontknowaboutthat.com. Yeah.

I don't know. Anything else? I was on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune. That's all I can say. Oh, yeah. To come, TK. Yeah, yeah. It's going to be airing.

So I'm on it. Later in September, we'll be able to talk about it. It's going to be something. This is going to be remembered as one of the big tv moments celebrity wheel of fortune just so everybody knows super bowl 18 the finale of mash jim jeffries on celebrity wheel of fortune these are going to be your top three rated things in history we definitely have to have a viewing party when it comes out i don't know there's always some super bowl that did very well i I know, but Super Bowl 18?

I don't even know which one that was. It was the Jets versus the Ducks. The Jets versus the Raiders. No, it was the Raiders. In an all-time classic where Joe Montana was running back to Elway. No, the Redskins won by 29. Oh, back in the day when you could have a team. What are they called now?

Washington Football Club. No, no, they're called the Commanders. This is the thing with these. You've got the Cleveland Indians, the Guardians. The Guardians is just the worst fucking logo I've ever seen. It's like you've had all this time to slap together something good. You say that, but, I mean, the Oakland Athletics is a dumb name and logo. Over time, it just becomes.

I know, but it could have been better. Like the Miami Dolphins is dumb. A dolphin? Why? Because it's stupid. Everyone loves dolphins. This is the argument. This is the argument you used to have when you're a kid when you talk about your team. My team was the Bears and then your other

team was like the fucking Seagulls. Rabbits. And the rabbits, you you go that bear would kick the shit out of a rabbit yeah we definitely win yeah and then like you'd be like momming dolphins you were like if it was on the football pitch it would just die it was the dolphin well there was i think we're just talking about this because we're in hawaii the university of University of Hawaii was a college football team was terrible. They would always lose. And their helmets used to be a cloud with a rainbow coming out of them. That was their logo. And they would always lose.

They changed to like the Warriors. And it was like more of a, you know, Polynesian kind of looking. Just like an H, right? Yeah. It was like more of a like a South Pacific Polynesian. And they became a good football team after that. They got a better coach and recruited better, but they also psychologically was better than having a rainbow

on the side of their helmet. They gained confidence. Yeah, they did. With a cloud and a rainbow on the side. They were inclusive. Well, okay, but it wasn't good for football, is what I'm saying. Oh, no, inclusion never is. Never going to make football better.

Yeah. No one's ever looked at football and gone, oh, they're letting the dwarves play. never gonna make football better yeah no one's ever looked at football and go oh they're letting the dwarfs play how inclusive yeah

the football should just be played by big people yeah well Davos specifically I'll tell you what's not inclusive that NBA

oh just tall people yeah give me one short person I know you're gonna say Muggsy Bogues? He's still like 5'6". No, no, no, no, no. That's very short.

No, Muggsy Bogues is 5'2". Yeah, you're right. Yeah, he was a little tiny fella. He could go under people's legs. Spud Webb was 5'6". That's what I was thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he could still dunk 360.

Damn. Yeah, if he wanted to. Can he do it now? Maybe. That's how I rate people. I rate people on how they are now. That's right. You said you could beat some boxers now. Towards the end of his life, I could have beaten Muhammad Ali. I was a better boxer

than Muhammad Ali. I don't know if you could. Is this when he had Parkinson's? Yeah, right towards the end. Oh, yeah. You could have beaten him. Right after he was burnt by the fucking flame at the Atlanta Olympics and he was holding it too long as everyone was cheering and his fucking face was singeing away, I could have given him a good fucking going over,

I tell you, in the boxing ring. Yeah, okay. I was a better equestrian person than Christopher Reeve at the end and he did that. I was better than him. Yeah. Better than him. But he wasn't known for equestrian.

That's how he got the injury. He was no good at it. Exactly. I could have played a better Superman than him towards the end, but not a better Lex Luthor. Yeah. He looked like Lex Luthor towards the end. What about baseball?

Who are you better at baseball now? I can pitch better than Sandy Koufax. I saw him throw out the first pitch, yeahax. I saw him throw out the first pitch. Yeah, so I saw him throw out the first pitch. I don't know. No, I'm pretty bad, but he can't make the distance at all. I can just make the distance off to the side. Slightly better.

No direction. Yeah, yeah. I'm better pitcher than Sandy Koufax. Okay. I'll give it to you. All right. I'm better than any of those NFL players that have the problem with the brains. Better than them.

I can do that. Problem with the brain? What are you, Forrest Gump? Got the problem with the brains? Problem with the brains? She's got the problem with the brains. Yeah, let's talk about Forrest Gump. Is there a bigger cunt in movie history than Jenny?

Yeah. I'm going to watch that movie again and then write all the cunty things Jenny does. To him. Oh, fuck. She's a fucking. Yeah, you say that. Couldn't give any maids.

Yeah, but also, I mean, she does fuck them. Yeah, and then has his baby. No, no, she gets the AIDS later on. Yeah, yeah. She has the baby and doesn't tell him he has it. Go moves to another place. Yeah, but he's jogging around the country. He's also a billionaire or something like that.

And then when he's like five or six. Yeah, but I think that's virtuous because she wasn't taking him for his money, you know? No, it's because she had a rough up. She wanted some better dick through her and she didn't want to bloody be around Forrest. Yeah, she had AIDS. That's how she got it, through some good fucking.

No, I thought it was the needles. No, she got it because she slept around too much. It could have been a bit of both. She was on the IV drugs. They never said in the movie. Yeah, she was on the balcony. Yeah, she was going to fall off and hit the car. Yeah, but she fucks Forrest after that.

Yeah, you know, I mean, you know, look, you know, look, she let him touch the boobs. But she wanted it. He wasn't going to get sex from anyone else. Let's put it that way. He wasn't bad looking. He was athletically fit. He ran all day. He ran all day. So if you had

like a mentally challenged hot chick and she never touched a dick, you'd let her. I was right. I, you know, okay. You're about to go, I did and I didn't enjoy it and I regret it now. I was about to say something I saw on TV recently and it's a real life. No, I wouldn't let a mentally challenged woman touch my penis.

I want to reiterate that. Okay. Thank you for the clarification. Do you consider someone with autism mentally challenged? No. It's like 80% of our population these days. He's on the spectrum. That's a lot of people.

I don't want to let you touch my penis. Again. Too late. For the seventh time. Time for schmatz. Okay, please welcome our guest, Seamus Blackley. G'day, Seamus. Now it's time to play.

Yes, no. Yes, no. Yes, no. Yes, no. Judging a book by its cover. Boom. Okay. Seamus, are you here to talk about

Star Wars no alright is it movie based uh no when are we gonna do a Star Wars episode

not today not today because that's is that a is that a is that a prop behind you from Jurassic Park that looks like the font

uh that is in fact yeah my uh my wife was her first job was art department coordinator for jurassic park so those are actual props there we throw out and is it i thought i thought it was style was i thought for a second the tattoos on your finger spelt the word hoth no all right you

weren't just a big uh big hoth fan okay i did give him a hint that it's a it's a topic that you have been passionate we've heard you passionately speak about in the past. Oh, are you against? This is giving that impression. This is like when you give your wife a gift and you're like, I've heard you mention this five times, but it's not actually. Oh, so Seamus is against women's rights. No, let me.

Okay. Dogs. He's got dog mag. And so it's not movie related. Is it science related? It can be, yeah Sure Give me a hint

It isn't everything, it isn't everything actually This is something you always Harken back to the country you're from Are you a specialist Of Vegemite? No, I'm actually a Marmite man So You think that, you always say Oh my gosh, I love actually a Marmite man.

You think that. You always say, oh, my gosh, I love a lot of things about America, but I hate this. Is this a specialty in bread? You're doing bread? Yes, it is. That's what we're talking about. Okay, fucking hell. If you come in here, Seamus, telling me that American bread's all right,

too much sugar. Too much sugar. Hold on a second. How can you make bagels? Why don't you ask him first what he thinks? I'll find out. Why don't you ask him what he thinks about American bread? Do you like American bread, Seamus?

I wouldn't know everything that I know about bread if I actually could eat American bread. Yeah. Yeah, before you go on a rant, why don't you ask our guest? I know, but I just wanted to put my flag in. Make everyone sure. I don't think we're going to have any disagreements on this. Yeah.

What are they fucking doing, man? Let me answer this. Hold on. Imagine being an American. You're born here. You think this is what bread is. Yes. And then you wake up to the realization, oh god we are the baddies yeah yeah oh yeah yeah

you're the dark side and it's that and chocolate and it's like it's like i i my son because he's being brought up by me and all that stuff and he's traveling that type of stuff even my son now is like fucking american he doesn't swear but he goes bloody american bread uh bloody yeah okay and he won't eat hershey's he's like this chocolate's no good dad i don't know what i get trick-or-treating unless there's European chocolate. Well, I can't do that for you. Let me introduce Seamus properly. Seamus Blackley is known as the father of the Xbox. Seamus started out as a jazz musician, chickened out and went into theoretical particle physics. He worked on the team that found the Top Quark, which was the cheesy 1990s prequel of the

Higgs boson he's done a lot of random stuff including competing in aerobatics making submarine parts working on dinosaur movies and games and baking ancient bread yeah so he invented the xbox by the way you invented the xbox how did you do that tell me a lot of marijuana so Did you really invent the Xbox? Well, it was a big group of guys, but yeah, I wrote a memo and sent it to my buddy Bill Gates, and

he let us do it. So yeah, you know. There were plenty of months where the Xbox was me. And Brad's his hobby, but he's an expert on bread. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He knows more about bread than us, but that way. I'm all right.

We could do an Xbox episode. I'm going to ask you some questions about bread, Jim, and at the end of it, Seamus, you're going to grade him on his accuracy. Zero through ten, ten's the best. Kelly's going to grade him on confidence. I'm going to grade him on et cetera. And I just want to say, I've seen these questions, and I just want to say I think you might need to see somebody

about a couple of obsessive problems. And when we go through the questions, you'll see one theme keeps on arising. Yeah. That would be the yeast. Yeast infection. I think it's a little troublesome, but let's see if anybody else. So who needs help? Me or Forrest?

I actually didn't do this. I mean, I wrote the questions, but I just copied them from places I didn't come up with. Okay. I blame Forrest, though. Yeah, that's fair. You can blame me. Okay. We'll put all the scores together.

If you score 21 through 30, you're a breadwinner. Jim, 11 through 20, bread and butter, 0 through 10. Cassie, bread upon the waters of Satan. I don't know what that means. I found it somewhere. Why wouldn't you go in bread? butter, 0 through 10. Cassie bread upon the waters of Satan. I don't know what that means. I found it somewhere. Why wouldn't you go in bread? Well, there you go. That would have been funny.

Well, you're the comedian. All bread has one essential ingredient. What is it? Flour. Okay. How do people figure out how to make bread out of grass seeds? When do I get to grade them on this? We're going to ask all the questions.

It might take like five, ten minutes. Kelly's going to write them down on that Google Doc. You don't have to refer to them. I'll go back. We can do it question by question. We've done that before. I don't know. Scott, do you agree with flour?

Do you have a different answer? No, I agree. I'll tell you when I don't. What we usually do, Seamus, is we do it all at once. We'll go back and we just have a conversation going back through them. No, you're right with the first one. No, please. Yeah.

Okay. How do people figure out how to make bread out of grass seeds? Out of grass seeds? Like out of, yeah. Where do you think flour comes from? There would have been something. There would have been some grass seeds like out of yeah that's that's where do you think flower comes from oh there would have been something there would have been some grass seeds some guy bloody rubbed against a stone with a pomace thing and then it went all down and then his wife had a yeast infection and she sat on the rock and then the next day he fucking bred why is it called bread uh why is it called bread

why is this called red Bull? Someone named it. Someone goes from here on it'll now be called bread. What do you reckon, Scott? Yeah, no, no, that's right. Someone just said, ah, that looks like bread. Yeah, why are you called forest? Because my parents fucked in a forest. Yeah, yeah.

There you go. Okay, well, there's your answer. That makes more sense. Is that really what they said? Yeah, it was conceived in a forest. Oh, really? That's why my son was going to be called Daihatsu. What is the earliest known use or consumption of bread?

Earliest known. Oh, you would be going, Jesus had bread. It would be way before that. It would be in the Romans. They would have had bloody bread. They had it. I would go BC. I'll go 2000 BC.

Yeah. I'd go earlier than that. Later than that, I'd say about 500 BC. Okay. Because you said documented, didn't you? First documented. I just said when I was the earliest known. Known.

Yeah, they didn't have writing back then. What do you call that caveman all the time? Korag. Korag would have done it. Okay. Why is yeast added when making bread? It's a rising agent. It makes the bread puff up into bread.

Would you agree with rising agent? Correct. Rising agent. Very true. When was sliced bread invented? Aha! I know this is only because I saw a documentary on the food that made America, and I know that Betty White was older

than sliced bread, and Betty White was 100, so I'm going to say, and then she's been dead for 101, I'm going to say that sliced bread was invented around 97 years ago. Okay, and then? I'll say the 50s. No, no. And what was before that, sliced bread? You bought bread and you had a knife and you had a go.

You cut it yourself. Okay. How did the corn laws affect bread in the 19th century? Oh, there was a bloody corn shortage, and people were like, oh, that's my daily starch that I eat, and we're out of corn because there's been something that's happened with the corn taxes, the king and whatnot. And then they went, oh, fuck, I need something more filling

because I've got a hard day ahead of me, and so, well, let's put yeast and flour and make more bread. I should have asked this before. Who is the father of sliced bread? The father of sliced bread was invented in America. And I'm trying to remember the company. I don't know if it was Wonder White was the guy who first started doing it. I think it's the guy who invented Wonder White, man.

What's Wonder White? Wonder White's Wonder Bread. Okay. And then there's another... Is this what you're talking about, Seamus? Slicing bread? Is that the... Okay. You guys are very obsessed with the slicing. I work... The internet is obsessed with it.

I worked in a bakery for a while and we had a slicing machine. This is when I was about 15 or 16. I worked in a... Fucking terrifying machine. Oh, yeah, yeah yeah because you gotta feed it through that way and then you gotta get around the back and you gotta pull it out that way like that and then you gotta put it in the bag and it was we had a slicing machine it's just it's literally just 20 30 blades in a row just going and why was there opposition to slicing bread i think that's the last slicing why was there opposition to slicing bread well there

was opposition to it because there was other people going, oh, that's not how bread's made. That's not real bread. What if I want to just grab a tuft of bread and then dip it in dripping? You know what I mean? So people didn't want the slicing bread. They wanted to have their own freedom. And they also thought that maybe if you slice the bread,

each slice would go stale faster. I agree with that. It'd be freshness. How many loaves does one bushel of wheat produce? A bushel? Yeah. What's a bushel? Yeah. That's a hard question.

Yeah, yeah. I just wanted him to count for this one. Yeah, I'd say a bushel. How big is a bushel, man? I know you're supposed to count. I know, but I don't know what a bushel is. So I'm going to say 148 loaves of bread. I'll say 50.

Should bread be stored in the fridge? Why or why not? No, no. You should keep bread out on the counter. It should be kept at room temperature. You don't want cold bread. That's the answer. You don't want cold bread.

Who wants cold bread? Who's ever had bread delivered to the table in the restaurant and gone, oh, get it quick, kids. It's still cold. Or they bring it in a bucket of ice with wine. Everybody loves warm bread. I've never heard anyone go, oh, I love a lovely cold bit of bread. When did bread shift from being mostly made at home to being made commercially?

That would have been around the 1920s, 30s, when they're buying the sliced bread. You know, okay, so I know before there was a couple of companies that came in and they manufactured the bread. The problem was how to keep it fresh because everyone used to just buy bread individually from bakers and so you could get a different bread. So bread was a very regional product. And so I would say it went from going from home to commercial

when some basic preservatives were invented to keep it fresher for longer. So I'm going to say 1938 because everyone was too busy with the war. Yeah, I say 1951. Because everyone was happy because the war was over. Because the war was over. Because the war was over. Yeah, that's right. It needed more bread. As far back as the Bronze Age, people in many areas often baked bread

by pasting it to the inside of a clay oven. What modern bread is still made this way? Naan bread. Naan bread is done that way. Naan is slapped against the wall of a clay oven and then picked up with a hook. The Indian oven's in a tandoori oven. That is funny when you think you know

the stuff. What's that? You think it's funny? That's how they make it. I know, but when you don't know, when you think you don't know it or you don't know the thing, it's funnier. You just say come a lot. He knows a lot about bread. I don't know if you do. I don't know the answers to any of these. Which Italian bread literally translates from

the Italian language as the word slipper? Italian bread. translates from the Italian language as the word slipper? Italian bread. So the French. The friendship against the Italians. Slipper bread would have to be like a sort of flattish sort of. I know this. What are you telling? Focaccia.

Focaccia. I mean, slipper. That's what I reckon. Slipper bread. Slipper. Okay. Here, we'll get to all these questions, but we'll skip ahead here. In 1943, the government in the United States temporarily banned

which bread product as a wartime conservation measure? They banned bread in what year? 1943, the government in the United States temporarily banned which bread product as a wartime conservation measure. Was that because they needed the factory to have the factory workers do something else? They temporarily banned which bread product? I'll tell you. Wonder why? Donuts. Donuts? No. I've seen this year. Donuts came in way later. That was the guy with the Krispy Kreme cream i could talk about donuts all

day yeah say wonder but according to guinness world records which country has the largest consumption of bread per capita in the world yeah that that one's a tough one because it's if it's america that's you guys are gluttons for fucking punishment man if you're eating that shit over and over and over again i want to hope it's someplace with good bread, and I'm going to say it's the French because they're dipping it in cheese and shit, man, and they're always having baguette sandwiches and whatnot. I'll go Italians because of pizza. Pizza base is a bread.

It's a bread. I know, but it's a bread. You put stuff on it. Why does white bread have a white or light color? Because the sugar has been refined a lot more and it's had all the brown that's taken out of it. Bleach the flour. Most of the bread market in the U.S.

as whole wheat is actually white bread with what alteration? Cum. I did that one just for you, Forrest. That's weird because it's brown. I don't know what your fancy cum looks like. What is the soft inner part of the bread called? The soft inner bit of the bread.

So you've got the crust and then you've got the. I don't know what it's called. The dough. Not the dough. I'll say the inner loaf. Yeah, that's a good answer. Inner loaf, okay. From 1266 until 2008, it was illegal in England to sell bread that blank.

Fuck your mother. What? Because people, it was a respectful time. People didn't want that. After 2008, it's okay for bread to do that. Bloody, you got more liberal. Yeah, ever since. What were the years?

What were the years? 12. 1266 until 2008, it was illegal in England to sell bread that blank. It had sugar in it. Okay. Which country has the most diverse selection of bread and how many types? The most diverse selection of bread, I'm types? The most diverse selection of bread. I'm going to give it up to Australia.

You go there. It's got all the different. More than there are numbers, man. Okay. I've got a couple more questions here. Why does bread become sweeter the longer you chew? What? Because you go, I'm enjoying this.

Ah, this is sweet. No, the longer you chew because it breaks down all the eight essential amino acids and fatty tones. You start to say amino acids. You say that a lot on the podcast. That's okay. Ciabatta was invented in the 80s as a response to the popularity of what type of bread?

Ciabatta was in competition with focaccia. Yeah. Which, you know, a couple of Greek girls I knew growing up. Wait, I thought focaccia was Italian. No, no, no. They had Italian grandparents.

Okay. Don't be so racist for us. You don't know where they came from. But it's fucking focaccia. Okay. Focaccia. Ciabatta. It's time for dinner.

And they'd run in. Okay, last question. We'd have been throwing a beach ball naked in the backyard, Dad. And I'd go, oh, I didn't know. Last question. Have some bread. Named it after you. What spice can help halt mold growth?

What spice can help hold mold growth? Halt. Stop it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What spice can help stop it? Salt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Salt. Yeah, yeah. That stuff that you rub on your balls.

What? Lotrum. You would have put Lotrum on bread? It would work. I don't know if it would improve the taste, but it would definitely stop the fucking mold. Seamus. I've had so much mold next to my testicles

I've pulled up my underwear and a loaf of bread fell out. Okay. Seamus, zero through ten, how did Jim do on his knowledge of the questions we asked him about bread? Ten's the best. Ten's the best? Yeah. I give it a two and a half. I'm going to stop doing this podcast.

Everyone's mean to me. Scott came in going, I doing this podcast. Everyone's mean to me. Scott came in going, oh, I know everything. That's the lowest score he's ever had. Normally they give you mate. This is friendship, man. You know, you want me to lie to you? No, no, no, no, no, no.

Tough love, man. You're getting tough love here. All right, all right. But I was close on things, wasn't I? There was a lot of entertainment value. It was a lot of entertainment value. A lot of entertainment value. And it has value. I'm not going to say that it doesn't have value.

It's different from a fact, but it's entertaining. Kelly, how are you doing confidence? I think he was extremely confident. So I'm going to give him an 8. 8, so that's 10 and a half. I'm going to give you minus 5 so that you're inbred so yeah do you two think you could have answered those questions no no i don't know any of those

i don't know anything about that yeah i'm american we have bad bread remember i have bad bread why is american bread bad if would you say that american bread is bad that's the word yeah yeah well you know i'll tell you that uh the fact that i knew the answers to those questions made me feel like i've been really wasting my fucking life basically uh i had a lot of in-depth i have a lot of in-depth knowledge of like the corn act and what who the fuck wants to know about that like something you placed in my mind with that knowledge did you ever want to bring out an xbox bread game that was all like he starts off as a seed

and then he gets a bit bigger he becomes wheat and then he becomes, he gets pummeled and then he has a love affair with yeast. It's like The Sims but bread. Something went terribly wrong with the audio there but there's

bread in games. There's one really fucking weird thing that I realized when I started to get really into bread, which is that the Xbox logo looks a lot like a French bull loaf with slices on the top. Or a hot cross bun. Yeah, yeah. There's some kind of deep psychological imagery in there but american bread is crap because americans decided to commercialize bread and try to make it into an industrial product in a way that nobody else did so they wrecked it but actually it's the it's the english that are at fault the wonder bread

formula was actually derived in a place called Chorley Wood in Buckinghamshire and failed in Britain because British consumers were not interested in crap bread. But America, because of the size of America, didn't have a local bakery and it would survive transportation. And so it took off as a product. It succeeded. So trading longevity for flavor is why we have crap bread because then you had generations of kids

who thought that Wonder Bread was bread and then they'd buy the crap and then more factories get built and it feeds back on itself in a world of shit. Right. So let's go to these questions here. All bread is one essential ingredient.

What is it? Flour? I guess that's correct, right? No, there's plenty of bread that's not made with wheat flour. The thing that all bread has in common is leavening. There's something that makes bubbles. Bread is basically a foam that you harden in the oven, right? And it's made out of whatever.

And it's a very lucky thing for the human race that we discovered that you could like take fucking grass seed and grind it up into a powder and it would last forever so all winter long you'd have food because you can save it and when you want to eat it you can't just bake it because it becomes rock hard although the british did do that with fucking sea biscuits because they've tried every possible kind of crap food uh but if you leaven it you let it rise then it gets soft and the kids will eat it nobody doesn't starve but it was a total revolution because you had this food you could harvest once a year and then it would last the whole rest of the year and you could eat it as you needed it it was a big deal big technology a lot of people

most people credit the human races for what it's worth, where we are now, the progress of the human race with the discovery of that. Oh, yeah. I look around America and I look at all the fat people and I think, thank God we've got bread. Things could have gone horribly wrong if these people didn't have bread in them all the time.

That's totally true. Hey, I've got a question for you. What's damper? I'm going to check your bread knowledge. Yeah. Damper bread? I've made damper bread here. Australian like like railroad stowaway bread that you make over

a fire. I've done it twice. It's alright. But then I figured it out and it was really fucking good. Yeah, it's really good. You have it with a bit of golden twice. It's alright. But then I figured it out and it was really fucking good. Yeah, it's really good. You have it with a bit of golden syrup. It's lovely. Used to make it as kids and scouts on a fire. Lovely. Like Marmite or Vegemite,

golden syrup is a thing that the United States is behind the rest of the world on, man. Not having syrup. Shit. What's golden syrup? Do they use it in the golden gay time no although i want to show the world something any second is it your penis what's happening are you showing us your golden gay time underwear i bought them in australia they were they were just sitting there in target ice cream underwear Are you showing us your Golden Gay Time underwear? Golden Gay Time underwear. Let me have a look at this.

I bought them in Australia. They were just sitting there in Target. Ice cream underwear, yeah. Yeah, they say Golden Gay Time all over them. It's a good ice cream. Wonderful. But the golden syrup is like a sticky sort of. Maple syrup.

It's sort of, yeah, it's if maple syrup fucked honey. Somewhere in the middle there would be the best thing. But it's a lovely thing to cook with and to dip things in. I have a jar of it at my house. I'll let you try it tomorrow. Okay. How do people figure out how to make bread out of grass seeds? And Jim said you rub some pumice and wife got a yeast infection.

I don't know. She sat on a rock. That's where I got me two points. So yeast is a microscopic organism that lives on the grass seed, lives on wheat and all the shit that went before wheat. And it's just slowly eating the wheat. But it turns out that if you get it wet, it reproduces a bunch. And when it shits while it's eating, itits out carbon dioxide which is a gas so things get bubbly that uh where where you let the stuff uh eat a lot of grain and so my guess is that at some point somebody was growing a bunch of grain and they were just

eating it and they made a gruel or something and one day somebody left it out and forgot about it and it got bubbly and they tried it and it was good. So they were like, okay, let's try doing this a lot. And you can get two great things this way, which is I think part of the reason that the human race survived. One is you get like, you know, bread, you can bake it and you can get bread. You can eat it like a gruel. Second thing is the yeast will then make alcohol.

And so you can start making beer so you have you have the two greatest things for this early survival of the human race you have bread you can feed your family with and you have beer that you can drink after you do all the fucking work to make the bread bread tasty i gotta tell you shamus you obviously know what you're talking about but you also curse more than any guests we've had. And I like it. I do like it, though. I like it a lot. Makes me feel at home.

Why are you condemning the man? I don't condemn it. I like it. That's why it's called the Xbox. It's called the fuckbox. Normally we have stuffy professors on. I wish more of our guests cursed. I required a huge amount of media training at Microsoft.

I wish more of our guest hosts. Normally, we have professors. Paralytic levels of media training. It's usually us feeling guilty that we're somehow deflowering our guests. No, I'm enjoying it. Why is it called bread? Jim and Scott both said someone just named it. Yeah, of course.

Jim and Scott both said someone just named it. Yeah, of course. Well, so our word bread comes from Germanic, right? Because English comes from Germanic languages and Indo-European languages.

Ironically, given your obsession with sliced bread, the word bread actually means piece or part because you'd tear apart the bread to eat it and so uh given that that's what bread actually means slicing bread uh is not only just a sin because it's a terrible fucking thing to do it's actually like a violation of the meaning of the word itself ironically so you don't really like sliced bread. You would tear it apart. I know. I sometimes tear bread apart

but I like sliced bread as well. What's your best commercial loaf of bread where you go, that company, that's the one, the best commercial one? Well, in Los Angeles, the La Brea company does a really good job. They make really good

bread. La Brea? La Brea company does a really good job. They make really good bread. La Brea? La Brea. Plug. It's a great bakery. Yeah. They do a good job.

But, you know, I'm not a big fan of commercial baking. I'm a big fan of local bakeries. I'm a big fan of baking it yourself. I just like a cheap white loaf from Australia. Get a few prawns. Off you go. lovely sun breast i don't mind warbitons in britain in the wax paper is a nice bread warbiton but this is a thing this is a thing with the american bread was that australian and uk consumers won't accept shit bread so even the packaged breads in those markets

have to taste like bread. It can have a bunch of bullshit in them. It has three ingredients. It doesn't last forever. You got to eat it right away. You got to eat it right away. Yeah. But the thing is that consumers will demand that.

If you fed them American bread, they wouldn't buy it. So is there a market in America where someone just tries to make bread? Because I didn't know whether it was that America couldn't make good bread because of water or whatever produce or whatever the wheat wasn't right. It's their choosing to make shit. They have the means to make good bread, but they're not doing it. Yeah, there are a ton of talented bakers in the U.S., and you can get just exceptional bread if you know where to go in the U.S.

The problem is the consumers don't want it, man. They don't want it. If you make great bread and you put it in the store, it'll sit there. Because American consumers don't know. They don't know what it is because they've been trained to expect the flavor of the Wonder Bread and the other packaged bread. How long is the American bread lasting? How long does it last? A long time.

I've had some since the Obama administration. It can last a long time. Weeks. Weeks. All right, here's one for you, Scott. How long do you reckon milk lasts in America? About seven days? A month.

A month? Yeah, at least. Scott, Jim's brother lives in Australia. He's just visiting. What the hell are you putting in it? My wife is English and introduced me as an American to all sorts of mind-fucking-blowing things like leaving the eggs out and leaving the butter out. And it's fine. Yeah.

It's fine. Yeah. fine yeah it's fine yeah and you know things in america are like it's like you think that if you if you don't refrigerate your eggs they're gonna like you know explode like hand grenades or something or like you know give you botulism it's crazy yeah it's crazy but it's all just it all comes from the size of the united states so fucking big that products that you want to sell had to last for a long time during shipment when it was all shipped by railroad. And so they changed the flavor of things. And they changed the expectations of consumers so that the shit could travel. And it would taste like garbage, but it would travel and people would get it and they'd be so excited because they got bread, they would never normally

have bread or couldn't afford an oven. They get bread, they'd be psyched about it for their kids. And then the kids think this is how bread tastes. 50 generations later, we're complaining about how bread tastes like shit. But I think the people who did it were trying pretty hard to solve a hard problem of getting food around this giant country. So you can't really fault them. But they did give us a legacy of shit food. You know what they do here? And I said this to you, jim is for sandwiches in america they put more meat on it though so that you don't taste the bread so in america they're like

notice the bread but when i was in australia or if i've been in europe whatever they put less meat and i so i'll look at the sandwich i'm like this sandwich sucks and then you eat it you're like oh this is a good sandwich because the bread's better and then you eat it and you're like bread's meant to when you bite into bread it's meant to mush down and you should see your bite marks through it and then like it doesn't bounce yeah but american bread just stays thick with like you can see the bubbles and holes in the face you can't make fairy bread in this country can't do it what's fairy bread oh bloody delicacyacy. What it is, it's a thing you have at kids' birthday parties. You get a slice of white bread, just your basic bitch white bread, and then you put butter on it and then you sprinkle hundreds

and thousands, you know, those little things. Sprinkles on cupcakes. Cupcakes, yeah, you sprinkle that on and then you just eat it. Eat it. You have it at parties. Our mother would eat that. She'd eat that. Eat it. Have it at parties. Our mother would eat that. She'd eat that. For dinner.

Towards the end, she was having eight slices of fairy bread a day. You'd come in. She'd have a whole platter of them. There was only meant for kids' birthdays. But I tried to show Hank. I was like, oh, this is a delicacy. I tried to do it with American bread. Can't do it because you fucking butter American bread and it tears

because it doesn't have the right fucking consistency and doesn't have the right bite down. You need nice, moist fucking white bread for a bit of fairy bread. Bloody wonderful treat. Google it. You won't be disappointed. I think your mother achieved ultimate victory at the end is what I'm hearing. Just at the end.

No, no, no. I've said this. I said this, man. When I looked at her in the last sort of 10 years of her life, I used to think, oh, it's a waste of life. She's just sitting there eating fairy bread. And now that I'm getting older, I'm like, fucking hell, that was the life, eh?

She saw so much telly. Yeah, telly and fairy bread. Fucking get on board. Earliest known consumption of bread was Jesus? No, 2000 BC or 500 BC, Scott said. More like 5000 BC. I was close. How do you know?

Even before that. Well, so we found bread in ovens in archaeological sites. There's recently a paper that went about a thousand years even earlier than anybody previously knew. that went about a thousand years even earlier than anybody previously knew. But the Sumerians and the Egyptian empire, which lasted 5,000 years, they were incredible bread connoisseurs. And we've left huge numbers of records of all the bread and cakes and shit that they baked.

I think by the end of the Egyptian empire, the time of Cleopatra, there were about 200 different separate words for bread. That's how much they loved bread. Right. The first bloke that invented it, he must have had people over for dinner. Like, I've got something new for you. And they're like, yeah, just sit down.

Oh, no, no, there's a bloody foreign bloody food. Oh, I'd like to have a rock with my dinner. No, no, it's better than a rock. I'll give it a go. And also that fucking cunt, the Earl of Sandwich. Fuck that cunt. Saying that he invented the sandwich because he was at some poker game once and he goes, oh, you know what you do with meat?

Put it between the bread. And it's like, fuck off. We all figure that. It's like those cunts. You all figured it. It's like those cunts in Philly. You all figured it out. You were before they were all a sandwich. Anybody who had bread and another food item thought to themselves, whack that and that.

That guy didn't invent that. It's the same as Philly cheesesteaks. Here in Philadelphia, we've invented a sandwich. What is it? It's steak with cheese on a roll, and there's some onions. Any cunt that had onion, cheese cheese and meat and bread in their fridge organically made that invention. No, you're not responsible for the Philly cheesesteak.

We've eaten them in Australia for years. We call them steak sandwiches. Steak sandwich. That's right. I'll tell you what is a crime in the US.s is is the lack of meat pies of any kind australia i don't understand like how especially in america obsessed with meat obsessed with pie how the fuck could that not be a thing in the u.s the problem is the americans never use pastry in a very savory manner you might like go oh we'll have a beef wellington or some type

of thing but not like sausage rolls and meat pies and stuff. Australians will wrap anything in filo pastry. Don't give a fuck. So I was having a meeting with some executives for about a TV show years ago, and this company had just gone to film Peter Rabbit in Australia, right? And the lady was like, we just got back from Australia,

wonderful country, wonderful country wonderful country and then she went the food and I was like this yeah it's fine I was about to go it's fucking awesome isn't it like this right and she goes this everything's just wrapped in pastry with you people I don't get it I couldn't eat anything everything's wrapped in pastry and I'm like why would that ever be a bad thing that's like going going, oh, I met these girls. All they had was their tits out the whole time. You know what I mean? Like, I'm fucking, you're wrapped in pastries. Stop fucking bragging about what a good time you had.

Yeah, it was a terrible place. There was just money lying in the streets. No, the meat pie is a wonderful thing. I make my own sausage rolls. Occasionally I make meat pies and stuff like that. But no, a real good meat pie is a winner. No, as is a sausage roll, man. The greatest day of my life was meeting my wife, and I was like,

oh, this really cute English girl. And then she opened my eyes to all of these things, and I'm like, Caroline, I am thankful to you for all sorts of things. Sausage rolls is near the top. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm married to a British woman, right? Occasionally in a fight she'll call me a convict. They do that.

They're evil people. But the house is always filled with cabarets. Every movie villain is English. There's a reason every movie villain is English. Well, I've always said that the Brits get all the acting jobs. They can be like sort of dopey love interests in movies where they're like, I was just wondering if you, I found this hat and maybe it's yours.

And then they can fucking sit there and twirl around with a cat. Oh, Mr. Bolton. And then drive off in their fucking Jaguars. And then Australians, we all have to do the accent because we're not allowed our accent in anything. If there's no Bond villain that's like, Oi, cunt, I've made this laser cunt, right? They can't do that.

Even love interests, you're not allowed to have some bogan just show up in the middle of a film and just go, I want to help that fucking bird over there. They let Olivia Newton-John and Grease be Australian. Yeah, and look what happened to her. Look what happened to her. It took a while. It took a while, but bloody Olivia.

Moving along. Yeast is added to making the bread. It's a rising agent. Was that where Jim got a point, Jim and Scott? That was Jim's point. That was Jim's point. I have to point out, just because I don't want Jim to feel too good at any point, that there are also other ways to rise bread.

Damper bread, he brought up himself, no yeast. So to you. Damper's lovely. It's like a big, thick, sort of fluffier scone. We'll make some for you, laid out in the backyard. You can do it in the oven. You actually should, and you have to make it you, laid out in the backyard. Right. You can do it in the oven. You actually should, and you have to make it outside

or it's not fucking proper. All right. We'll get this out of the way all at once. Sliced bread. When was it invented? Who was the father? And why was there opposition? Do we know this?

It's in 1928. People have been trying it for a while. It was invented by a jeweler. The opposition was that, well i mean nobody likes change but also correctly another another point it required a lot more preservatives and it required a special packaging the point of fact this is why it was outlawed during world war ii because for some reason the us government wanted to save on wax paper, which it required to ship. They were like, okay, if we don't slice the bread, it'll last longer. We don't need the wax paper.

The wax paper will be used for the war effort. By that point, the United States had been so hobbled by sliced bread that people did not have bread knives in their homes. I was shocked to read. Nobody knew what the hell to do with the bread. And also there are a lot of silly things you can hear of like people saying, I had to slice 13 slices of bread today. And it was, it was like being an animal.

It was hilarious. So not in 28, I said, how many years ago did I say 28? You said 97 years ago. So pretty close. Yeah. What number would that make it?

Very close. Pretty close. None of us can figure that number out. Maybe 25. 25. All right. So I was close because I knew Betty White was older than Slice. That's nothing.

The fact that he got the answer right is nothing compared to the way that he got the answer. As a measuring stick. He tried. He showed his work and we appreciate that i remember an interview show saying she was older than sliced bread she wouldn't have been a lot older because she wouldn't have mentioned it then yeah yeah yeah um and then and so before that they were just using the knives or tearing it off like you were supposed to that's the name right yeah but it was you know it was it was it was a sign of civilization right and you know how these things go it's like if you have an iphone and and when iphones first came out and everybody had a fucking flip phone you get an

iphone now you were civilized you were like cooler right and this was the same kind of thing with the sliced bread it's like oh we have sliced bread in our house you fucking cavemen you you just have bread you have to slice yourself like an animal like a dog slicing your own bread you know and it it caught on and then it became necessary to have sliced bread otherwise you know you you were you know somehow like an animal and it happens today you know like the big problem with covid in china was that chinese consumers because of the stigma of the peasant economy in China, do not want to have food storage in their house. All their food is fresh because only peasants have preserved food. And if you haven't read about this, you should because it's amazing. So during COVID,

the government of China had to go through this extraordinary logistical challenge of getting a meal to everyone every day fresh because storing food in the house isn't cool because of a social stigma and bread was a similar thing there that was that was created by sliced bread so that when the government banned it so the bats just fly up to their houses or how did they do it how did they do what it was someone ate a bat that's where it came from you do it in your act you do it in your act that's what we got told with covid someone ate a bat that's not me being saying anything wrong yeah i know but we know that didn't

happen i don't know that's what the government told us can you trust that's what we were told someone ate a bat i don't think that's what happened but i you know look i know it is funny that they didn't go back and rescind that and be like hey and second thought like yeah that was the thing yeah someone had a bat um how you said the corn laws you know about the corn laws what is that how did that affect bread in the 19th century so the corn laws was a an incredible clusterfuck of of of epic proportion that ended actually in uh in in creating the career and myth of Benjamin Disraeli, the famous British prime minister. So what they did was they tried to protect corn prices for British farmers who were farming maize in the UK. And this caused a number of completely unwanted side effects, including that British farmers stopped growing anything besides

corn, that the people who were landowners because of the tariffs imposed by this act, which was designed to stop foreign competition for corn inside the UK, it completely fucked the economy over because the UK economy was basically agrarian at that point. And UK farmers were actually way ahead of the curve technologically compared to Europeans or Americans. And what it did was effectively completely reverse it because they stopped striving for technology. They stopped being the best farmers in the world. They became super dependent upon corn. Bread became impossible to find. And then when they rescinded it, there was this huge flood of foreign stuff, which put all the farmers out of business and all the land went for sale.

And then there was no infrastructure for making bread. And the entire thing became basically just an incredible clusterfuck. Similar to the kind of clusterfucks we see today from governments being idiots. But because it's in history, we don't realize that they were also absolute fucking boneheads in history as well and it almost destroyed england for the sake of protecting a few farmers who farmed corn there's a lot of theaters i used to play in um britain which were called the corn exchange there's one in Brighton and there's another one because they were these big sort of warehouse-y type rooms where people exchanged corn as a commodity and all that type of stuff.

And I always remember thinking, was corn that important? Am I going to go to a potato building next door? Like what the fuck's going on now? Now I know why. At some point, corn was Bitcoin in England. Yeah, yeah. It really was. Yeah, yeah. Corn was the big thing.

The corn exchange. Currency. How many loaves does one bushel of wheat produce? I think Jim said 148. You said 50? I did. Yeah, yeah. I don't even know what a bushel is.

I know what a... I've heard of them, but I just don't know how big a bushel is. A bushel is a basket, big basket. And you cram a bunch of wheat stalks into it after you harvest them. And that was the measure you used to sell it. Weirdly enough, it turns out that in one bushel of wheat, modern wheat, because different grains are different sizes and have different number per stalk. And so it changes. But with wheat, there are just about a million wheat kernels per bushel, which is pretty interesting and lucky because it's a completely arbitrary measure.

These are baskets made of rattan. And out of that, you can make about 100 loaves of whole wheat bread if you don't extract any of the stuff that makes whole wheat brown and about between 60 and 80 loaves of white bread. Right in the middle of you guys. It wasn't bad. I didn't get a point. Should bread be stored in the fridge of you guys. It wasn't bad though. Should bread be stored in the fridge? Why or why not? I did like your guys' answer. You don't want cold bread. No one says this. They say no, you shouldn't store it in the

fridge. You don't want cold bread. What do you say? So why does bread go bad? I mean, it gets moldy. But before it gets moldy, like three days or so of sitting on the counter, if you don't eat it, it starts to go off, right? It starts to get dry and the texture changes and it starts to suck. Yeah.

You toast it. Yeah, that's right. That's why you toast it beforehand. Incidentally, the invention of Vaseline. You know this story? No. This is the best. Vaseline was initially used in hot

climates by British Imperial people as a lubricant for toast. Because you couldn't have butter because there was no refrigeration. So people would spread Vaseline on their toast. Really? And eat it?

Yeah. What is he going to do? We're not going to try that later. So you're going on a trip, and you get your IPA, which has a ton of hops in it, so it won't go bad when it gets really hot like other beer would. And before you leave, you toast a fuck ton of toast. And then you store it in bags. It won't go bad toasted because there's no water in it. But, of course, you can't eat it because it's been toasted to hell,

like Melba toast. So how the fuck are you going to eat it? Well, there's no, there's no butter or cheese because you're in fucking Saudi Arabia, right? Like killing the indigenous population in order to send shit back to the UK.

So what do you do? Well, you spread Vaseline on it to lubricate it on the way down. And now you're a happy imperialist. And then what happened was, and the way that we use Vaseline now, one guy was fucking his bread and he was like the red was fucking his mother it was it was fucking his brother which is where that law comes from you mentioned earlier yeah

i just gotta imagine that that these guys guys had just the shits, like nobody's ever had the shits. I've got the shits today. I'm going to moat him today. Big shout out to a moat him. All the good work he does. They'll never be a sponsor, but they will be a sponsor. If I ate something a bit rough yesterday.

Make a good product. I've dropped a few pounds this morning. When did bread shift from being mostly made at home to being made commercially? Jim said 20s and 30s when basic preserves were introduced. I think Scott said 51. Yeah. Well, for most of human history, because ovens were really expensive, people did not have an oven in their house.

In fact, for most of human history, people would not have a kitchen in their house. And they'd go get food at an outdoor kitchen or a restaurant kind of a thing and then bring it home. This is what happened in Rome and in Egypt and in Europe up until really recently, like 16, 17 hundreds. Because stoves and shit for the kitchen was too expensive for most people to have. So you didn't have a kitchen in your house. So your bread would be baked in a bakery that specialized in doing that. You go get it every day. That's what you would do. Then people became wealthy enough to have stoves in their own house. And certainly, wealthy people did. So they started to make bread in their homes starting about then,

wealthy people did so they started to make bread in their homes starting about then 17 1800s uh and then uh it became unfashionable to uh make your own bread because there was packaged commercial bread available and you started to see the rise of that uh and and now it's gone back to to home to home baking but i think that you know so you, it's hard to actually put a pin in that. That's a weird question. So I was going to do a gimme because there are so many back and forth on that. The interesting thing about that is just to remember that historically having an oven was a huge fucking deal. It would be like buying like a car now. And most people just have an oven.

Right. But everyone has a car now. Unfortunately, they do. It's more like buying a car now. And most people just have an oven. Right, but everyone has a car now. Unfortunately, they do. It's more like a jetpack. Bronze Age people baked bread by pacing it inside of a clay oven. Well, modern Britain still made that way. Naan, is that correct? Yeah, and also in Arab arab cultures there's saj which is another kind of bread

baked in a different type of oven so that that baking technique goes back many thousands of years to to this to assyria um and uh you know was i mean and this is the surprising thing so at the beginning of the egyptian empire around the time they were building the pyramids, when, you know, the Egyptian pharaoh was essentially the king of the earth. They had just invented stone building. It was a brand new technology. So stone building had only been around for about two generations before they made the pyramids. So stone building had only been around for about two generations before they made the pyramids. And the logistical impressiveness and technological impressiveness of that is kind of astonishing. But they had not yet invented the oven in the sense that we know it today. So they baked their bread actually in pots called bedjet in beds of coals. And they fed the entire work group of the pyramids,

like 15,000, 20,000 big men moving stone blocks all day at the peak of the off-season when they were really going for it. They'd feed 20,000, 30,000 people a day from bread made this way. And the good thing about it is you could have whole football pitch-sized bakeries with these pots and the doughs in the pots baking sitting on coals. You can turn over a terrific amount of bread. We've replicated that. And it's really, really good bread. It's actually, in many ways, superior to oven bread. It didn't require an oven. And in fact, if you had an oven, you probably couldn't feed all those people. Because there's no way unless you had you know a factory of ovens you could do that whereas if you bake in a pot outside you can so um so there are a lot of

different ways to do this baking baking in pots baking in vessels baking in ovens baking outside of ovens baking over a fire every culture has its own thing and they're all completely different so this is a very this is a question without an answer okay and it was scott correct as focaccia is the italian word for slipper that's the bread that means slipper it was not yeah and then that so later the question was ciabatta was embedded in eighties as a response to the popularity of what type of bread. Then you said, the Italians already had focaccia. So ciabatta is like focaccia made into a little loaf.

And it really does look like a little slipper when it was made back then. And it was in direct response to the popularity of the baguette. The Italians wanted to have something like a baguette to make sandwiches on. Why can America make bagels so good and why are bagels better from New York? What's going on? If you look at my Twitter account, I have a huge, big thread and tutorial on making New York bagels. New York bagels came from Ashkenazi Jewish

immigrants to New York in the 1880s they were actually invented in poland um under laws where in order to bake with white flour that had the bran extracted from it uh jews had to bake uh in a specific shape with a hole in the middle it was very racist right uh so they brought that with them uh this incredible technique of just taking because they're very poor right so they take a bag of wheat they would mill some of it into flour they would let the rest of it sprout they would mill some of the sprouted flour and then the rest of the of the sprouted uh wheat that they they would they would then boil it down to make malt extract sweet syrup and they would combine those things together to make bagels.

So like three ingredients, salt and water and the bag of wheat with natural yeast from the air. And they would find on the, you know, growing on the wheat kernels, like I said. And they'd make these bagels. And when you make them that way, you actually figure out how to do that by hand. They're fucking extraordinary. They're absolutely fucking extraordinary. And like I said, you can go see this tutorial. I was very surprised by this. And they taste just like a proper New York bagel is supposed to taste.

It's when you start to bake them like bread, and you don't use that traditional technique, and you skimp on ingredients and just use white flour. That's when you start to get shit bagels like supermarket bagels, which is what you get almost everywhere else. It's not, it's not the water or anything else's technique. And I should say about bread, all bread has basically three ingredients, water,

salt, and wheat, right? The yeast comes in the air. It's everywhere. You can add yeast or you can do set quote unquote sourdough where you get yeast from the air. But the incredible thing about bread is the only difference between a bagel and ciabatta

and a baguette and a loaf of sourdough, the only difference is technique. The only difference. That's it. The ingredients are the same. And by the way, your Twitter handle is at Seamus Blackley. That'll all be posted on our YouTube and all the... Blackley. It's a, well, that'll all be posted on our YouTube and all the, I don't, I, I'm sorry. I just, I was getting, I was getting worried when I say that, because then I get a flood of people asking me a million questions about how to make bagels. And I spend half my day giving like online support for bagel making, but still it's pretty cool.

We're still going to give it out, but it's Seamus Blackley, S-E-A-M-U-S-B-L-A-C-K-L-E-Y. I bought a bread machine and it came with the recipes of what you're meant to do and the thing stirs. In the morning, it's lovely. Your house smells like bread. Everyone enjoys that. But they still, I don't know if it's because I bought it in America, they still said to put a bit of sugar in there.

Is there ever a reason to put sugar in bread? Is that an American thing or do other countries do it as well? When you're making cake. No, but that's cake. It's not bread. Yeah, that's why. Who was it? Some comedian, one of my favorite things is to make glue,

you have flour and water. If you add eggs and sugar, it's cake. Where did the glue go? Anyway, so they add sugar to get the yeast going faster um and uh because the yeast eats sugar but usually what the yeast has to do is it has to crack apart the the starch in the wheat um starch is made of a huge line of sugars and so an enzyme called amylase breaks the starches apart and makes sugar which is also why when you chew the bread more, it tastes sweeter because your saliva breaks down the starches into sugar so you taste them.

So normally that's what happens. But if you're a commercial bakery, you add some sugar to it in order to make it faster. Right. Okay. So it's in this category of stuff you do to food to make it more convenient to make, not to make it healthier or to make it taste better. It's just to make it more convenient to make, not to make it healthier or to make it taste better. It's just to make it more convenient to bake. Why does bread become sweeter the longer you chew? Is it because there's sugars in it? Or is it Jim said amino acids?

Because your saliva breaks down the carbohydrates in the wheat. And when it breaks them down, they form simple sugars. You taste those. it's true of all carbohydrates if you chew potatoes long enough they'll taste sweet as well because your saliva breaks down because your body processes the sugar you and the yeast eat the same shit you eat sugars wow at a basic level okay so country that has the largest consumption of bread per capita and the most diverse selection of bread do we know these no fucking idea okay all right what was the answer oh i don't know what mike yes you might you might want to say germany germany makes a lot of really cool

germans they got a lot of bread yeah yeah germans was the most german germans have really good bread really if you want like you think you're pissed off about american bread talk to a german living in the us oh i think yeah really is like being set to a prison planet for Germans. Well, it's not like they haven't done that before to someone else, so call it even. Why does white bread have a white or light color? Because the sugar has been refined? That's what Jim said?

It's because the wheat has three parts it's got an inside called the endosperm which is white stuff which is all the starches and and and enzymes and shit and then it's surrounded by two different layers there's a germ and and another layer and uh those things get stripped off to make white flour and they're left in to make whole wheat flour. So if you just mill wheat, you get this very, you know, nutritious brown stuff. And then what you do is you do what's called extraction, which is basically like a fancy name for sifting. You sift the shit out of it and you extract by weight 20 percent, 30 the of the flour uh as bran and you're left with this white stuff which is why in poland in the 1800s the government regulated it because it was more

expensive and it was you know they were fucking racist so it was only catholics who were supposed to have it is there any health benefits to bread i've just i've never had my doctor do some tests on me and go, are you eating enough bread? Yeah, bread is amazingly nutritious and if you eat wholemeal bread like people historically did, because historically people needed a little bit of extraction just to get the big bits out and the rocks and stuff so that the bread wouldn't break your teeth and so that it would rise. That's got a huge amount of fiber and a huge amount of protein and minerals and vitamins in it.

And it's very healthful. The Wonder Bread side is very unhealthful. It's got a lot of sugar in it and minimal nutritional value against the calorie content. So in America, it's very weird. Like I think in other countries probably, I don't know this for sure, people who have bread-based diets where the bread has a lot of the whole meal in it or where like in Germany, they make bread out of all sorts of different types of grains and chestnuts and you name it and it's all delicious shit. Yeah.

It's really good. Really good. Why can't I buy good hamburger buns? In-N-Out have good hamburger buns. Five Guy have good hamburger buns. I can't get them for my own home. Dave's Killer Bread does a fairly good one. How are these fast food places getting good buns

and I have to have shit? I should put a plug in for Dave's Killer Bread. I love those dudes. Yeah, yeah. Dave's Killer Bread's all right, man. I can eat Dave's Killer Bread. Change things up for me. And Dave's Killer Bread, if I'm correct, it's all prisoners making it, right?

It is. There are dudes who are like turning their lives around with that bread and they're skilled bakers and it's a thing you should support. It's badass. I did buy one once and found a file in the middle of it, though. I don't think it was meant for me. Why were they sending it out? Because he was meant to send it to his mate still in prison,

and then he sent it to me, and I was like, do it. I figured I had to come back in. I like Dave's bread. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, I should buy it more. Yeah. Okay, we've got a couple more questions here. What is the soft inner part of the bread called?

Inner loaf? No? Yeah, you have to get comfortable with your inner loaf. No, it's called the crumb. The crumb. The crumb. And then ciabatta, we answered that one.

Oh, from 1266 until 2008, it was illegal in England to sell bread that blank. Do we know this? Yeah, it was illegal to sell bread not by weight and it was illegal to sell bread that wasn't either four or 800 grams and this was because when baker when when commercial baking first started there was a lot of swindling people with like for instance you know you know in sourdough loaves you can get those big voids in them where there's nothing big air pockets right and you slice it open and you like go to

put butter on it just falls through right so they would make loaves with very little wheat in them that were just basically balloons and sell them um because they're coming by volume and so they're trying to figure out how to stop those guys from swindling consumers okay last question here what spice can help halt mold growth? Jim said Lotrimine. I think that's wrong. I think Lotrimine definitely would stop mold growth. I'm just unsure if it's a spice or not. And that's really. Tastes better than Vaseline.

Mold growth. So, so sourdough lasts a really long time because of the sourness that's lactic acid. The yeast has a bacteria that is, uh, symbiotic with it. Uh, and as the yeast produces CO2 during the bread rise, it excretes lactic acid as it's poo. And that lactic acid actually retards the development of mold. So the sourdough lasts for a really long time um the ancient egyptians used to always put uh spices in their bread um we see uh uh you know a variety and i don't know how i don't know if any of them actually retard growth and i'm not sure the egyptians were interested in that either because all their bread was eaten in one or two days uh as has been the case in cultures for a long time i really think it's the modern world with the railroad and specifically

the size of the US and maybe Australia that cause people to start experimenting with bread lasting a long time. I'll bet if you ask people in the 1700s about bread lasting a long time, they'd be like, why would you need bread to last a long time? You don't need it. Same with milk. You get it. You take it. You move on with your day yeah they used to leave it on the scoop i used to like day old bread day old bread was toasting bread just one day you had it fresh the first day the second day you tasted it yeah and there wasn't so much abundance then it was like there was no two day old bread because everybody'd fucking eat

it like yeah i grew up in a family of five if there was a loaf of bread the loaf of bread was gone that was that was the thing and then if there was a few slices left we bought another loaf of bread like we didn't grow up with a lot of money but we grew up with bread money we could get bread on a regular basis um all right shamus this is a part of our show called dinner party facts we ask our guests to give our listeners like some obscure interesting fact about subject uh this being bread that they can use to impress people at a dinner party or a bar uh you got something for us uh i already gave you all the cool shit that i know i don't just i just don't know that much shit you know no i think a lot of shit about brad so here are two that are really good.

Ancient Egypt. Okay. Two uncommon, the pyramids, right? The, the pyramid of Kufu, the big pyramid,

its name in Egyptian means the horizon, uh, of the Pharaoh's name. Cause he, they literally modify the horizon. And if you haven't seen it, it'll fucking blow your mind. Um,

these people were badass they owned the entire known world in trade they defeated every enemy they were the richest civilization probably in history they lasted 5 000 years their gods were worshipped for three times longer than christianity has existed they had no currency they never had a monetary system it was all barter and in the old kingdom when they were building the pyramids the unit of currency was a loaf of bread well that wouldn't work you'd have one guy who would have like 50 loaves of these house you'd be like i'm the richest man in town two days later poor again yeah well it it worked because it kept everybody

working it kept everybody working. It kept everybody pretty equal. And you had to, you know, keep on integrating. You had to keep on connecting with society in order to stay afloat. It's like all barter societies. And it was managed really well. There was a huge bureaucracy in ancient Egypt that managed all this. Anyway, the point is, the dinner party fact is that they bake their bread in these pots called bedja.

And the pots were not only bread baking it was also a currency measuring system because the volume of the bread was worth one loaf and when you got paid for your work on the pyramid or because you bought a donkey from somebody or whatever else you were doing you were paid in units for this loaf so that's how important bread was all right cool well that's why you went out and you earned the bread that's how important bread was. All right. Cool. That's why you went out and you earned the bread. That's right. Yeah. That's where that saying came from. No, you don't eat bread.

You know, in Egyptian terms, your upbringing, you were actually fantastically fucking rich, by the way, you know, with all the bread money. Yeah, we had bread. We had bread at our house. We never short of bread. You can find Seamus. Fairy bread, normal bread, all the bread.

Damper. Yeah. You can find Seamus Blackley on Twitter, shamus blackley follow him on there is there anything else you'd like us to follow you on or anything you want to promote that you're doing or you want to stay invisible i want to stay invisible you get any xbox money anymore no the guy in the back of the corner just like watching and judging that's me just judging that's what I want to do with my life too. Thanks for being on the show, Seamus. Look, if you ever had a party and someone comes up to you and says,

you know, American bread doesn't make me want to kill myself, go, I don't know about that, and walk away. Good night, Australia.