John Davidson

Cooking with Wheat - What Are Wheat Berries? John Davidson

Publisher Marketing: Cooking with Wheat - What are Wheat Berries? Table of Contents Introduction What Is a Wheat "Berry" Nutritional Specifications of Wheat The difference between parboiled And Cracked Wheat Our Daily Bread Plain White Bread How Do You Get the Right Flour Consistency? Shaping the Dough Making Plaits Dinner Rolls Mini cottage loaves Testing the bread Making a Cheese Loaf Perfect Bread Tips More Traditional Wheat Dishes Bulgur Pilaf Tabbouleh- Tabouli Salad Frumenty Cous-cous Appendix Traditional Chicken Soup Panjiri- Pinnis Conclusion Author Bio Publisher Introduction When man decided more than 10,000 years ago that he had had enough of having a life as a hunter and wanted to settle down as a farmer, that was a signal change in the history of mankind. Prehistoric history does not tell us where man first began cultivating cereals as a grain for his family and for the people of his settlement. But archaeological excavations have found vestiges of this cultivated plant in settlements more than 10,000 years old in the Mesopotamian region. I would not be surprised if this wild grass was first cultivated in the area, especially near the river Tigris, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Babylon, etc. After that, the cultivation of this particular wild grass, in the form of wheat spread all over the world, including Europe, Asia, Africa, - especially Egypt, where this grain was brewed into beer and drunk in large quantities by Pharoah and peasant alike millenniums ago - Turkey and all the places where there were hungry mouths to feed, and there were fertile lands to provide that grain to feed them. This book introduces you to one of these most prolific and healthy cereals - wheat. Wheat in its original form was a wild grass. Down the ages, it began to get domesticated, and the grains grew larger. Instead of being harvested by the wind in its wild form, the grains stayed attached to spikelets, until the farmer came with his scythe to harvest a rich crop of golden wheat. Contributor Bio:  Davidson, John John Davidson was born in Barrhead in Renfrewshire in 1857. He spent his childhood years in Greenock, and after working as a pupil-teacher and briefly attending Edinburgh University, taught in schools in Glasgow and Perth. In 1989 he moved to London where he made his living as a journalist and critic. Several dramas had been published while he was still in Scotland, but in the 1890s he turned to poetry, and published several collections which were very popular: In a Music-Hall (1891) and Ballads and Songs (1894) amongst them. These were poems which chronicled urban working class life, and his sense of outrage at the poverty of the ordinary man, as expressed by the much-anthologized 'Thirty Bob a Week'. At the beginning of the new century he moved away from the lyric and began writing in blank verse which incorporated much scientific language; this series of Testaments were not as successful as his earlier ballad style, though Hugh MacDiarmid was to pay tribute to Davidson's attempts to combine poetry with scientific ideas. Despite the early popularity of the poetry, financial difficulties constantly plagued Davidson; he had had no choice but to continue with the journalism he disliked in order to support his family and other dependents. Sadly the money worries, combined with ill-health and depression, drove him to committing suicide in 1909.