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#it will be available in Finnish and English for now

jemichi90 · 1 year

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I’ve been e-mailing publishers in an attempt to get my picture book published for a year with no success. By now I’m so tired of writing those e-mails that I haven’t even been trying for a while. Doesn’t help that I have no agent. But since the book itself has been fully written and illustrated all this time, I figured that sitting on it won’t do anything, and since I can’t find it in me to approach publishers anymore, I might as well self publish it - like I did with my coloring book.

I’ve been watching the wholesome insanity that Bigolas Dickolas started on Twitter, and I’m hoping that even a little fragment of that weird luck with books and publishers within the Trigun fandom would extend to me as well. So, if you have / know kids that like pirates and fantasy, keep an eye on my blog! I’m ordering a proof copy to check if it looks alright, and then I’ll make the book public - which should be in a few weeks if there’s no problems with the book. ^^

#I'll make a proper announcement when it's available #gonna test this luck and hope I'll get a little bit as well #I will be begging on my knees for people to share the post when I publish the book #I have no income and I'm running out of my savings #so getting some sales would mean a lot to me #this book is very DnD inspired if you are into that #and has pirates #and themes about accepting differences in yourself and in others #and finding your place among new people #you could call it found family too #full page illustrations on nearly every page #it will be available in Finnish and English for now #possibly other languages in the future #I'll have to discuss that possibility with potential translators #since the rights are now entirely in my own hands #as is the marketing

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homunculus-argument · 10 months

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If you're writing something you're not familiar with in your own life, bear in mind that sometimes those Reality Is Unrealistic kind of things really do happen, but you have to bear in mind when that sort of thing is a thing, and in what kind of context. Like bilingual characters accidentally slipping into the other language without thinking.

Like just now abroad, standing at my booth and having no problem talking to the convention guests using english, there were so many times I turned around and almost started talking to my publisher in finnish. He does not speak finnish. Consciously, I am very much aware of this. However, I'm generally used to travelling with either family, friends, or my partner, who do speak finnish.

So out of habit, my brain would go "hmm. This is Foreign Place. I will speak The Foreign Language to the people I don't know. But the people to my left are The People I Am Here With. Default switch to My Language with My People."

And back when I was in nursing school, me and this schoolmate had a training period in Spain. I'm fluent in english and can somewhat manage to communicate in Very Creaky Amateur Unicycle Spanish, while my training partner made do with her creaky english and sheer determination. We both quickly learned which people in the staff spoke at least some level of english, and which ones flat-out spoke none. I didn't always manage to be there to translate between my work partner and the exclusively spanish-speaking ones.

And this one time, after talking with one of the nurses who did speak english, my work partner turned around to another one and - without thinking - just started talking finnish at this poor woman, not realising that something was off before seeing the deeply confused and mildly horrified look on her face. My work partner's brain had registered "Do Not English" for this one, and subconsciously automatically switched to the only other language available.

Languages are weird.

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shinonart · 7 months

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OLD GODS - Illustrations of Finnish Wildlife and Folklore is now available in both Finnish and English!

The newest edition of OLD GODS just arrived and is now available! It contains the text in both Finnish and English - all in the same book! The contents between the different editions aren't drastically different, but some adjustments had to be done to the layout to make all the text fit. The new edition has 76 pages total while the English onely one has 72 pages.

The new edition will take over once the English-only edition has sold out, and for this reason I have reduced the price of the English only edition.

OLD GODS is a collection of illustrations about Finnish wildlife and the myths and beliefs related to different animals. The artwork explores the mystical nature of many animals and portrays each as as ancient Finn could have seen them.

This book features 30+ ink illustrations, each accompanied by a written introduction to Finnish mythology and folklore related to the animals. The book also includes a step-by-step process for one of the paintings from start to finish.

Available on my Etsy and shipping worldwide (apart from some exceptions).

My shop and other places to find my art!

#old gods #art book #art zine #artbook #artbooks #traditional art #watercolor #artists on tumblr #animal art #wildlife art #mythology art #mythology #finnish mythology #folklore

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grantmentis · 21 days

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Women’s hockey news round up: May 8-19

Note that I don’t cover every transaction with this and try just to keep to the most “notable,” and also miss some things. There’s also some news that doesn’t have English sources and I do mg best to translate - if I messed up lmk!

PWHL (USA/Canada)

Head coach Howie Draper parts ways with PWHL New York and heads back to university of Alberta, but will still be an advisor

Abigail Boreen will not be available for PWHL Minnesota this finals, as she was a reserve player and they can only sign for one playoff series

Bauer will be the official jersey partner for 2025

Notable draft declarations: Klará Peslarová (confirmed), Anna Meixner (confirmed), Noemi Neubauerová (confirmed), Lottie Odnoga (confirmed - her SDHL contract has an opt out clause), Laura Kluge (rumored), Amanda kessel (rumored)

Forward of the year nominees: Alex carpenter, Marie-Philip Poulin, Natalie Spooner

Coach of the year nominees: Kori Cheverie (MTL), Courtney Kessel (BOS) & Troy Ryan (TOR)

Rookie of the year Alina Müller, Emma Maltais, and Grace Zumwinkle

Defender of the year, goalie of the year, and MVP finalists TBA

SDHL (Sweden)

(Important to note, for all contracts for SDHL and the other following leagues here I am unsure if they include opt out clauses for the PWHL unless stated otherwise)

Core players Mathea Fischers and Kayleigh Hamers extend with SDE

Danish national team head coach Mikkel Ry Nielsen was hired by Skellefteå AIK

Long time SDHL defender and Swedish national team player Linnéa Andersson extends with MoDo Hockey

18 year old Finnish national team star Sanni Vanhanen joins Brynäs after playing the last few years in Finland

Danish national team star who’s played in Sweden for some past seasons, Nicoline Söndergaard Jensen, joins Skellefteå AIK

Finnish national team center Jenniina Nylund returns to Brynäs

Naisten Liiga (Finland)

League announced that Next year, semifinals and finals will be best of seven instead of best of five

HIFK goaltender Kiia Lahtinen departs to play for university of Maine

Emma and Lida Lappalainen, sisters who played together in Roki and on the Finnish u18 team, are headed to HIFK

16 year old Italian forward, who played on both italys u18 team and senior team last year, Manuela Heidenberger, is headed to HPK

National team goaltender Anni Keisala returns to the league after playing in Sweden last year, now joining HPK

SWHL A/ Postfinance Women League (Switzerland)

Three Solid USports players join HC Davos Ladies: Elizabeth Lang, Courtney Kollman, and Joelle Fiala

HC Davos is also parting ways with their coach, Andrea Kröni, who plans to still have other involvement in the organization

Not May news, but I believe I missed it in my April round up and it’s important to note - HC Ladies Lugano has officially folded. They folded last year, were able to revive for a bit, then ran out of money. Truly heartbreaking, they were one of the most successful on ice teams in the SWHL’s history

#women’s hockey #PWHL #sdhl #Naisten Liiga #Swhl #postfinance women league

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emeraldskulblaka · 5 months

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Emerald Streams

Lay of Leithian

It's been a while since I last announced a stream more than one day in advance...! Two years ago, I streamed Finrod as part of this stream series, and now it's time for the second rock opera based on the tale of Beren and Lúthien!

From the unofficial website: Two different fates are woven together when Lúthien, an elven princess, falls in love with Beren, a hero of mortal men. To win her hand, Beren is sent on an impossible quest- to cut a legendary gem from the crown of the Dark Lord. So begins this battle between light and darkness, love and duty, in the most enduring tale of Middle Earth.

English, Russian, Finnish and Spanish subtitles available! This linktree contains links to the translation and is a fantastic resource.

When?

Friday, 12 January 2024

8pm CET / 7pm GMT / 2pm EST

room open from 7.50pm

Where?

[link removed]

password: leoleitian

no sign-up necessary, anons welcome!

Recording:

24 November 2022, pro-shot

Cast: Vilena Sokolova (Lúthien), Rostislav Kolpakov (Beren), Edrian Bernada (Sauron), Evgeny Egorov (Finrod), Ivan Grigoriev (Morgoth)

See you on Friday!

#emeraldstreams #lay of leithian rock opera #silmarillion

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dresshistorynerd · 1 year

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kinda random question but how do you go about researching? I’ve wanted to get deeper into fashion history than just watching youtube videos, but I don’t really know where to start.

ps. thanks for making such detailed posts. they’re really interesting to read.

Thank you! I'm really glad you've found my posts interesting!

This is great since I've kinda answered this in replies couple of times, but not properly. I very much understand the struggle. Dress history is a relatively new academic field and there's not that much reliable sources available and so so much unreliable sources everywhere. Internet of course has this problem but so does a lot of books too.

I thought this would be a short one and yet, here we are again.

Disclaimer: I'm writing this from a western fashion history perspective, since that's what I know best, but especially reading up on academic research and doing primary source research applies to non-western cultures too, though often it's harder to find sources for non-western fashion.

Getting started

Imo the best place to getting started is to read a book that gives a general timeline of fashion through history. I'm not sure if that's just how my brain works, but it helped me a lot of when going deeper into one period or another to understand the broader context and what roughly came before and what after. However these books are inherently difficult to make well, because there's so much nuance and variation in every period of dress history and if you're writing about the whole timeline through thousands of years and keeping it book length, there will need to be a lot of simplification to the point of inaccuracy. There's many popular fashion history timeline books with illustrations made for the book, but I would avoid those since non-contemporary illustrations often give a distorted image of the fashion, especially when it's about earlier periods in history. I've seen some really inaccurate illustrations depicting Middle Ages and Renaissance especially.

Costume and fashion: a concise history by James Laver - I'd recommend this as the starting point. James Laver was a art historian, an important pioneer of fashion history and curator of Victoria and Albert Museum, which has one of the most extensive costume collections now. The book is therefore based on serious academic study, but being a pioneer means you'll be outdated, when the field is more established, which is partly the case with this book. There's some outdated parts, but the images are primary sources and it does give good historical background. It should be taken as a starting point, not as the end point.

A History of Fashion by J. Anderson Black and Madge Garland - This is another similar book. It's more recent, but it also suffers from some outdated parts. The writers are not academics, but it has more primary source pictures which does help (at least me) understand visually what's being said.

Books

In a given subject I'm researching I usually start with seeing if I can find a reliable book on it or related to it, if I haven't already read much on it. Often what I want to research goes deeper into details than what a book usually does, so it will work as a starting point. As said it can be hard to find these books that are actually reliable, but here's couple of reading lists to help with it.

Here's a reading list by a retired professor of dress history from Helsinki University. It's very extensive and has a wide variety of books and papers listed. There's a bit of leaning towards Finnish sources, but most are in English and about more international western fashion.

Here's a reading list by @clove-pinks, who is excellent and writes a lot about the Romantic period, especially men's fashion here on Tumblr. These are all books that can be read free on Internet Archive, which makes the list even better.

Internet sources

There's a lot of bad sources floating around in the internet, but also some excellent gems. As dress history is such a new field, there's a lot of unexplored spots and lacking research still, but some troopers in the internet have done some great legwork in going through primary sources and gathering them together. These can be excellent especially when trying to research a specific garment, since often these blog posts are by historical costumers, who are detailing their background research in reconstructing a specific garment. It's not always easy to find them, since they might not come up in the first page of the google search, but I often find them through pinterest, where the blogs are linked into the primary source images and images of the reconstructed garments. Though be sure to look with blogs like that with critical eye. The best sign that it's reliable is when each image is given a source.

There's some more general sources too that need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Fashion History Timeline - This is a page with entries to the whole timeline of fashion as well as entries of specific garments. It's very well sourced and has usually pretty good image sources too. I will say though that it often gives a pretty limited description of the period focusing on some specifics, without giving a good overall picture, especially in the Medieval sections. The medieval sections are honestly pretty useless. It's at it's best in 19th century imo (I haven't checked out the entries to 20th century since I rarely research vintage styles, but I'd assume they are pretty good too). But since it has great sourcing it is usually informative. It just shouldn't be relied upon to give full picture of a period.

Wikipedia, History of Western fashion - In some ways this is the opposite of Fashion History Timeline. Wikipedia has articles on each period. The sourcing on these articles is often quite lacking and the information shouldn't be taken at face value. Especially the terms for the garments are often used in these articles in very questionable ways. However what these articles have is pretty good primary source image collections, and what is nice is that in Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern periods they are often divided into regions, and they often have images of working class clothing, which are for some periods really hard to find. These articles often don't either give a full picture of the period, but in someways the basic picture of the period is easier to grasp from these than from Fashion History Timeline. I use these mostly for the primary source images, and the texts of them should be taken with a bucket of salt.

Academic papers

Going deeper into something will inevitably require reading up on some academic papers. I'm lucky since I get access to a lot of academic publications through my uni, but JSTOR (my beloved) gives free access to 100 papers per month (you'll just have to make an account). Through google scholar you can search for papers on a given subject, or if you don't have access to other publications, you can just use JSTOR's search engine.

Primary sources

If some MVP hasn't already combed through primary sources to gather them on a give subject, you can do that too. It's not necessarily an easy task though. There's thankfully a perfect guide for that.

A Handbook of Costume by Janet Arnold - Janet Arnold was a legendary dress historian, who really defined the modern field. This book details the process of researching dress history and how to analyze primary sources. And it's free on Internet Archives.

I'll give some basics here though.

Extant garment

Most of us who are not academic historians don't have physical access to extant garment, but many museums have nowadays excellent digital archives of their costume collections. Here's a list of the most well known ones. MET and V&A has sometimes great descriptions of the clothing and their history, but not for every item.

MET Costume Institute

Kyoto Costume Institute

LACMA

V&A Costume Collection

Palais Galliera

Extant garments are of course the ideal sources to study, since they are the actual garments and not just representations or descriptions of them. Sometimes the collections even have pictures of the insides of the garments, giving invaluable information about their construction. However, extant garments have limitations for research, since there's a strong survivorship bias. Firstly, they heavily lean on later periods as textiles deteriorate relatively quickly. You won't find extant garments from Middle Ages, at most fragments of them. Secondly, they are mostly clothing of the upper classes. Lower classes used their clothing till they broke down, and even then often salvaged any fabric that could be salvaged for new clothing and other textiles. Upper classes didn't necessarily have to do that, so what survives is usually very expensive formal clothing that people would wear rarely and rather preserve than salvage the fabric from it.

Photography

Since camera was popularized in early Victorian era, you don't get photos before that. Photography is a great source from the times it was available, since yes it's still only representation of the clothing, but there's less artistic interpretation than in paintings and illustrations, though importantly, there still is artistic interpretation. As long as there has been photography, there has been photoediting. They of course used it for creepypasta purposes by editing them holding their own heads and editing ghosts into backgrounds, but also editing their waists smaller. Basically the exact same way photos are still edited. So no, this is not really how small the waist got in Edwardian era, since this is edited.

Another obvious limitation for early photography is that it didn't have colors, so popular colors of a given time period and given styles have to be found through other means. A great thing about photography though was that compared to painting, it was relatively cheap, and therefore a lot of lower class people were able to photograph themselves. We even get people outside in everyday situations not posing.

Photography can be found with search engines like google and pinterest, though they should be always sourced then. You sometimes come across very Victorian looking photos that are actually just modern photos that are well edited. And also it's important to date the photos, which might not be easily with photos just randomly floating in the internet. Libraries and museums sometimes have good digital collections of old photos. For example:

Digital collections of New York Public Library (NYPL) - It has a wide variety of collections including photography, fashion plates and other illustrations. I haven't found a great way to search through the collections, but the best way I've come up with is to search images within the Clothing & Dress topic, put some limiting filters, then click some right looking image and then go to the collection it was from. I bet there's an easier way but I haven't figured it out.

Paintings

A great thing about paintings and statues is that they date basically through whole history of organized civilizations. Paintings are more delicate so even with murals in antiquity, you'll get more surviving status from that time period. But because of the strong artistic interpretation inherent to these art forms, there's some tricky parts to them as sources for historical fashions.

You'll find a lot of paintings by just searching for fashion or paintings of a given period in google and pinterest, but it's sometimes tricky to source them to figure out where and when they were painted. Therefore I often check from Wikipedia a list of artists from a given time and place, and search their paintings from digital archives of museums. It also helps when you choose artists who were specialised in specific type of paintings. What kind of paintings depends on what you're researching and the time period.

Portraits are of course great sources. They depict the actual clothing an actual person wore and if the person was historically important enough you can find out who they were and gain a lot of context for the clothing. However, they are usually all rich people, though not always. Another thing to keep in mind is that sometimes portraits portray the subject in a costume. This became a pretty big trend among nobles in 18th century. They had costume parties and would have their portrait painted with their costume, but also there were trends of costume that were not even worn for parties, but only for having a portrait. Sometimes the painting would be painted like a scene and not like traditional portrait. Van Dyke costume (first picture below) in first half of 18th century paintings is one such example. It referred to mid 17th century fashion that was seen as timeless at the time. Peasant costume (second picture below) is another example of a popular costume for nobles to wear in portraits. Costume balls continued to 19th century, but after the popularization of camera they were mainly photographed. People would continue to dress up in costumes for portraits, but it wasn't as big of a trend as in 18th century.

Genre paintings were a genre of paintings that became popular first in 16th century Low Countries and then In Netherlands/Belgium area during the Dutch Golden Age (from late 16th century and thorough Baroque) and during Baroque's popularity all over Europe. Genre paintings depict normal everyday life of peasants, working class people and the bourgeois. During Baroque they often had elements of idealization, symbolism and even sexualization of the subjects, so they should be taken with a grain of salt, but they do usually depict accurately the clothes the people wore. Rococo era had a lot of these types of everyday scenes about the upper class. During the Romantic era peasants were heavily romanticized in genre paintings, but there was also a lot of genre paintings of bourgeois thorough 19th century that was wasn't as strongly romanticized. These scenes were sometimes also depicted in portrait form. Realism brought another interest into the genre and Realistic genre paintings often focused on the working class. They did the opposite of romanticism though and often exaggerated their subjects to look more wretched.

History paintings depict events and scenes that were for the time historical too. They became very popular in 19th century, when Historism was the dominant in arts, but they have existed long before. There's even some from late Medieval period, and in those earlier history paintings, the historical figures are usually depicted in contemporary clothing and there's no attempt at recreating historical styles. In later periods, especially during 19th century Historism they very much tried to recreate historical styles. This is why it's important to always source paintings. I've too often seen Victorian paintings used as images for Medieval fashions.

Religious paintings have sometimes a bit of the same issue. They were very popular during Medieval and Renaissance eras, and usually the biblical figures would be depicted in contemporary fashions, though not always, sometimes in vaguely "biblical garbs". Religious paintings also have the issue of often being highly symbolic, so sometimes the characters in them are not dressed for the situation, or a character that in the biblical canon very poor is depicted in upper class contemporary fashions.

Illuminated manuscripts

Medieval manuscripts with illustrations are invaluable sources for Medieval fashions. They are usually commissioned by royalty and detail historical narratives, so they mostly depict royalty and nobility, but some illustrated scenes depict commoners too. You often find images of the illustrations floating around in pinterest but they can be hard to source when the source is not linked (which is quite often). The illustrations can be spotted by the quite consistent style (though sometimes they are not from illuminated manuscripts but some other rarer illustrations like playing cards).

A lot of illuminated manuscripts have been digitized and British and French libraries have quite extensive online collections of them which are linked below. The manuscrips in those are mostly English and French of course but there's manuscrips from other places in Europe too, I've seen quite a lot of the German speaking area especially.

The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) The British Library

Fashion plates

Fashion plates became a thing in 1780s, so they are not useful for periods before that. They are basically illustrations that show the latest trends and they were published in fashion magazines. They don't reflect the way everyone dressed, since as they did show the latest high fashion and the people who would be wearing that were mostly young rich fashionable people. However, fashion at the time had a little different meaning than today as it was linked to dress code, and to be respectable you needed to follow fashion. So everyone, even working class people, would follow the new trends to an extent. This is especially true when we get to Victorian era, when mass industrial mass production and the emerging middle class made clothing cheaper and more available to more people. They wouldn't maybe follow every new trend or with every detail and with as much extravaganza or with the most expensive fashionable materials.

While the fashion plates didn't necessarily depict specific existing clothing, they were based on existing clothing and they were often used as guides for dressmakers. Kinda like you might go to a hairdresser with a picture of a famous person's hair or hairdressers sometimes use pictures of famous person's hair to show what they might do. And the people who might not afford something as extravagant as shown in a fashion plate, might still show it as a guide and get a simpler version of it made for them. People of the middle and lower classes especially would also use them as guides to sew themselves fashionable clothing.

Fashion plates are quite easily found on the internet, but as with other things, if you don't go straight to some organized archive, it might be really hard to date them accurately. Many bigger museums and libraries have fashion plates in their online archives, for example NYPL which I mentioned earlier.

MET Fashion Plate Collection - This is a pretty extensive collection.

Regional costume illustrations

When genre paintings became popular, artists didn't necessarily have the change to go and see what peasants wore in the places they were setting their genre paintings in, but because the whole point of them was to depict authentic real life, there was a need for illustrations of regional dress around Europe. And some artists would travel and create costume collections for resource to other artists. These are really invaluable to us today, though they should always be taken with a grain of salt, because sometimes the artists who created these drew dresses for places they never had even been in. For example some of these collections include non-European dress and they should all be probably disregarded as fantasy costumes basically. You can usually assume that the closer the region which dress they depict is to their own place of origin, the more accurate and based on reality it is. It's also good to try and google the artist and see if you can find information of where they actually traveled, because sometimes we know that pretty well.

These collections can also be found in the digitized archives of big museums and libraries, again there's some in NYPL collections.

British Museum's collections by Hippolyte Lacomte from 19th century

A collection from late 16th century on BnF archives

Honorable mentions

There's many other primary sources in different periods that can be helpful, but the ones I've mentioned are the major ones and easiest to access, when you're not doing academic research with institutional resources. I thought I might mention couple of other sources that have become handy to me as examples.

Magazine and news paper ads became wide spread in the Victorian era and from that onward is a great source. They advertise specifically ready-made clothing, so clothing that was much more available to a regular person and therefore can be really helpful to understand what a regular person might wear. I don't know a great source for them though. Many libraries have digitized old papers and magazines so going through fashion magazines is perhaps the best bet, but it's definitely a lot of combing though. Some people have though gathered ads in blogs.

Satiric comics can be surprisingly helpful for researching sort of alternative styles and seeing what trends garnered backlash. For example I've long been obsessed with Aestheticism and the other counter-cultural movements related to it, and there's quite a lot of women's Aesthetic extant garments, photos and paintings available, but very little of men's Aesthetic fashion. But then I found that Punch Magazine (conservative satire magazine) loved mocking the Aesthetes and therefore drew a lot of comics with men in Aesthetic fashion. Caution should be taken though since satiric illustrations do often exaggerate for comedic effect. For example the idea that 1770s ladies made ships out of their massive hair comes from a satiric illustration mocking the large and elaborate hair of the time.

Runaway ads of slaves and indentured servants are bleak, but can be helpful source for the clothing of poor people during 18th century. This is specific to US, but because of the colonialism poor people there would often wear at least similar clothing as those in Europe, especially Britain and France, which had the most colonial presence in that region. The clothes were described in great detail in these ads for identification purposes. These runaway ads can be also found in news papers of the era, many of which are digitized in archives of bigger US libraries, but it's definitely even more combing through. Though again some people have done some of that work already and documented it in blogs.

#answers #history #fashion history #dress history #sources #research #historical research

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torillatavataan · 2 years

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youtube

Kalevala laulettuna (Kalevala sung) is a channel by Sipo Herva and Lauri Palomäki, who aim to sing and record all of the Kalevala.

Subtitles are available in Finnish (so you can sing along if you want to!) and English. This is the first poem of the Kalevala, detailing the creation of the world and birth of Väinämöinen.

Ilmatar (featured in the first poem) by Joseph Alanen

The folk poetry the Kalevala is based on was always sung in the same metre.

The poetry was often sung to music built on a pentachord, sometimes assisted by a kantele player. The rhythm could vary but the music was arranged in either two or four lines in quintuple metre. The poems were often performed by a duo, each person singing alternative verses or groups of verses. This method of performance is called an antiphonic performance, it is a kind of “singing match”.

The Kalevala's metre is a form of trochaic tetrameter that is now known as the Kalevala metre. The metre is thought to have originated during the Proto-Finnic period. Its syllables fall into three types: strong, weak, and neutral.

#kalevala #suomeksi #finnish #kansanperinne #video #*

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trilobiter · 1 month

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Last year I picked up a copy of The Howling Miller, by Arto Paasilinna, at a library book sale. I picked it pretty much by chance, and now I've finally gotten around to reading it, about a third of the way through so far. It's been pretty good!

The English is apparently a translation from the French, not the original Finnish, which makes me wonder if there are not many Finnish-to-English translators available for such work. Naturally it's impossible to know what I'm missing after a double translation without some kind of reference, but there is a definite ironic edge to the prose that I enjoy.

#trilobiter #books #reading #the howling miller #arto paasilinna #language #finnish #translation

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bisonaari · 10 months

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Käärijä fanzine update!

Alright! Thanks to your gentle lovely bullying, I've finally read most of the documentation I had and took some notes of the stuff I will need help with for the Käärijä hats fanzine. This is gonna be a lot of work to organize, so I can't do this alone!!

So I'm calling for extra hands. If you're interested in helping me, you'll need to be sure to be mostly available for the next 6 months (being a bit extra with the time, but better safe than sorry.) By that I don't mean that you need to be there everyday full time, I'm not either lol. I mean that you won't be travelling for four out of those six months or something like that hahaha.

WHAT I ALREADY HAVE

Project coordinator: Me!

Artists coordinator: Also me!

Graphic designer: My best friend @drifloonlady (she's not in the fandom, but she does design for a living and I trust her with my life. Also she knows how to speak in Käärijä-style english she's a gem. And also she hosted a weird music panel at our local con with me for the past decade she's gonna fit right in trust me)

I WILL NEED HELP WITH

(you don't have to apply for only one thing!)

Project co-coordinator: your role will be to help me deal with how to organize all of this. Discussing with me about deadlines, artist submissions, general ideas, schedules, sending emails, etc etc

Social media manager: I suck at social media, so we'll need to update people on tumblr on a regular basis, answer asks, make an faq, show previews of the zine… all of that

Native english speaker: English isn't my native language and I make mistakes by the ton. We'll need someone to english proof every "official" communication we make, especially in the zine. Having spelling errors in the final zine because I can't english would be a bit sad haha

Native finnish speaker, maybe?: If we end up printing it, giving a copy to Käärijä and/or any member of his staff who would like one would be lovely, and in this case having a message for them in finnish would be interesting, especially considering Jere's english. Unsure if we're gonna print it, but if you wanna apply just in case, feel free to!

If you apply, as I said make sure that you're gonna be mostly available in the next six months. I'd also prefer if everyone applying was an adult, I sadly don't watch my language enough to be kid-friendly if we're gonna be chatting on discord on a regular basis hahaha.

KNOW THAT THIS IS ON A VOLUNTEERING BASIS ONLY. NO ONE IS BEING PAID FOR THIS PROJECT.

HOW TO APPLY

write me a dm no need to be professional for now hahaha

WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT

All the people selected in this process will be in the following week added to a discord server, so we can chat about a lot of stuff on organization.

After everything is decided, we'll make a whole blog dedicated to the zine, and then finally open artists submissions.

I don't know when these steps are gonna be taken, hopefully sooner than me reading the documentation has taken. Now that my health is better and I can read properly without brain fog, that should help lol. Also not being alone should help a lot

If you have any question whatsoever, don't hesitate to ask me anything about this! As you guys know I'm an open book, so if you have any concern they're all welcome :)

#käärijä #käärijä fanzine #thank you for being patient with me!

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mirjam-writes · 8 months

Text

My research process for Be Still My Soul

I was asked about my research for Be Still My Soul (GO human au fanfic set in Finnish history. It has also its own blog @be-still-my-soul-fanfic for extra notes and background info), and I was so excited for a reason to babble about my process! Thank you for asking <3

The question was this:

Can I ask what your research process is? How long you’re willing to spend on it and then separating things you’ve discovered while interesting might not be right for the story you’re telling

The quick answer to "how long you're willing to spend on it" is always "way too much", truly ridiculous amounts! But I was also building on a foundation of existing knowledge. I have no degrees on history, but we learned the basics of all this at school. I also loved to listen my grandparents stories of the olden times as a kid; not necessarily about the war, but farming, customs and architecture. My proper interest in the civil war period began in 2018, during the 100th anniversary year. There were a lot of events, articles and news about the war, so I decided to read some of them, including old classics, and visit some museums. When I stumbled upon a reference I didn't understand, I read more, and that was a whole rabbit hole... But! When I started outlining Be Still, I was able to base it on a lot of knowledge I already had, and was able to add the big beats of the love story to the real historical timeline.

Then I started writing. I took a scene or a short period I had outlined and started to ask myself questions. What needs to be shown for the reader to understand the next big beat. What do the characters know, what do they see, what do they think. I always started my research from something related to the outline BUT it definitely got off track and severely out of hand so often! I found new details I could add to the story, and a whole bunch of details I hyperfixated in, researched for days---and used only maybe in one offhand paragraph.

I left so much out, because it was, at heart, a love story and not a history lesson. And some things made no sense to be explained in the story because they were every-day stuff for the characters! So, from the very early on I realised I needed an outlet for all that extra info in order to not clutter the story, and that's how the blog was born.

My biggest tools for research during writing were

online newspaper archives (to figure out what people actually knew and discussed at any current day I was writing about, because nowadays we of course know a lot more about the stuff that happened, than the people knew when it was actually happening. I also used newspapers to search for important information like if Vaseline was already available in 1918 Finland)

national archive's online photo archive (to get visuals of locations, clothes, houses and other things, to be able to describe them better)

Wikipedia (especially for looking for right words; I searched for a spesific thing from Finnish Wikipedia, then opened the English article to see the English word for it, and to figure out if the word is what I'm looking for. And then I went to Discord to ask around on writer's channels if the words I was about to pick were actually general knowledge for English speakers)

census data (I've also done genealogy research for my family, so I still have a subscription to some neat archives. These I used to search for names and professions, and to count amount of servants in big houses, etc)

library (I'm sure our local library thinks I'm doing some important historical research :D I read several books about other people's research, and also fiction. But I have kinda ruined the fiction for myself because I can now spot all the mistakes, and also, in one case, when the author described a scene in vivid detail, I could tell exactly which museum archive photo they had used as a reference!)

Whenever I found something I got curious about, all my other research (and writing!) stopped and I started googling more and more information, which sometimes did end up into the story, but more often did not! But I'm the sort of history geek that likes these rabbit holes, so I didn't mind much.

(Unless it felt like I got no new words into the story for weeks!)

#my writing #about writing #historical research #writing historical

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demifiendrsa · 3 months

Text

youtube

Stellar Blade - Demo Teaser

The demo for Stellar Blade will be available via PlayStation Store on March 29, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. PT / 10:00 a.m. ET.

Demo details via director Kim Hyung Tae on PlayStation Blog:

The demo features a portion of the game’s first section—up to the first boss fight—and save data can be transferred to the full game when it launches.

The demo takes place from the very beginning of the game when Eve, a member of the 7th Airborne Squad is sent to Earth on a mission to reclaim the planet from the Naytiba, up to the first boss fight. This first stage will include the tutorial phase to help you familiarize yourself with basic combat features as you explore post-war Eidos 7, a human city now infested by the Naytiba, giving you an early grasp of gameplay mechanics that will serve you throughout the game’s story.

We also have a little surprise included for players who complete the first stage.

From the smooth 60 frames per second combat to the haptics, you’ll feel through the DualSense wireless controller, there are various charms of the game that you can only confidently appreciate through hands-on experience.

For those who complete the demo stage, you can carry over your save data when the full game releases on April 26, starting from the last checkpoint. Please note that save data must be stored on your PlayStation 5 system.

The Stellar Blade demo will be available starting Friday, March 29 from 7:00 a.m. PT / 2:00 p.m. GMT.

Alongside the demo, the full game will feature the following language options:

Voice Over: Korean, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Latin Spanish.

Text: Korean, English (United States), French, Italian, German, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Arabic, Turkish, Thai, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese.

Stellar Blade will launch for PlayStation 5 on April 26, 2024.

#Stellar Blade #Project Eve #SHIFTUP #Hyung Tae Kim #Kim Hyung Tae #video game #PS5

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truthdawn · 2 months

Note

Bread is a staple food prepared from a dough of flour (usually wheat) and water, usually by baking. Throughout recorded history and around the world, it has been an important part of many cultures' diet. It is one of the oldest human-made foods, having been of significance since the dawn of agriculture, and plays an essential role in both religious rituals and secular culture.

Bread may be leavened by naturally occurring microbes (e.g. sourdough), chemicals (e.g. baking soda), industrially produced yeast, or high-pressure aeration, which creates the gas bubbles that fluff up bread. In many countries, commercial bread often contains additives to improve flavor, texture, color, shelf life, nutrition, and ease of production.

Etymology

The Old English word for bread was hlaf (hlaifs in Gothic: modern English loaf), which appears to be the oldest Teutonic name.[1] Old High German hleib[2] and modern German Laib derive from this Proto-Germanic word, which was borrowed into some Slavic (Czech: chléb, Polish: bochen chleba, Russian: khleb) and Finnic (Finnish: leipä, Estonian: leib) languages as well. The Middle and Modern English word bread appears in Germanic languages, such as West Frisian: brea, Dutch: brood, German: Brot, Swedish: bröd, and Norwegian and Danish: brød; it may be related to brew or perhaps to break, originally meaning "broken piece", "morsel".[3][better source needed]

History

Main article: History of bread

Bread is one of the oldest prepared foods. Evidence from 30,000 years ago in Europe and Australia revealed starch residue on rocks used for pounding plants.[4][5] It is possible that during this time, starch extract from the roots of plants, such as cattails and ferns, was spread on a flat rock, placed over a fire and cooked into a primitive form of flatbread. The oldest evidence of bread-making has been found in a 14,500-year-old Natufian site in Jordan's northeastern desert.[6][7] Around 10,000 BC, with the dawn of the Neolithic age and the spread of agriculture, grains became the mainstay of making bread. Yeast spores are ubiquitous, including on the surface of cereal grains, so any dough left to rest leavens naturally.[8]Woman baking bread (c. 2200 BC); Louvre

An early leavened bread was baked as early as 6000 BC in southern Mesopotamia, cradle of the Sumerian civilization, who may have passed on the knowledge to the Egyptians around 3000 BC. The Egyptians refined the process and started adding yeast to the flour. The Sumerians were already using ash to supplement the dough as it was baked.[9]

There were multiple sources of leavening available for early bread. Airborne yeasts could be harnessed by leaving uncooked dough exposed to air for some time before cooking. Pliny the Elder reported that the Gauls and Iberians used the foam skimmed from beer, called barm, to produce "a lighter kind of bread than other peoples" such as barm cake. Parts of the ancient world that drank wine instead of beer used a paste composed of grape juice and flour that was allowed to begin fermenting, or wheat bran steeped in wine, as a source for yeast. The most common source of leavening was to retain a piece of dough from the previous day to use as a form of sourdough starter, as Pliny also reported.[10][11]

The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all considered the degree of refinement in the bakery arts as a sign of civilization.[9]

The Chorleywood bread process was developed in 1961; it uses the intense mechanical working of dough to dramatically reduce the fermentation period and the time taken to produce a loaf. The process, whose high-energy mixing allows for the use of grain with a lower protein content, is now widely used around the world in large factories. As a result, bread can be produced very quickly and at low costs to the manufacturer and the consumer. However, there has been some criticism of the effect on nutritional value.[12][13][14]

Types

Main article: List of breads

Brown bread (left) and whole grain bread

Dark sprouted bread

Ruisreikäleipä, a flat rye flour loaf with a hole

Bread is the staple food of the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, Europe, and in European-derived cultures such as those in the Americas, Australia, and Southern Africa. This is in contrast to parts of South and East Asia, where rice or noodles are the staple. Bread is usually made from a wheat-flour dough that is cultured with yeast, allowed to rise, and baked in an oven. Carbon dioxide and ethanol vapors produced during yeast fermentation result in bread's air pockets.[15] Owing to its high levels of gluten (which give the dough sponginess and elasticity), common or bread wheat is the most common grain used for the preparation of bread, which makes the largest single contribution to the world's food supply of any food.[16]Sangak, an Iranian flatbreadStrucia — a type of European sweet bread

Bread is also made from the flour of other wheat species (including spelt, emmer, einkorn and kamut).[17] Non-wheat cereals including rye, barley, maize (corn), oats, sorghum, millet and rice have been used to make bread, but, with the exception of rye, usually in combination with wheat flour as they have less gluten.[18]

Gluten-free breads are made using flours from a variety of ingredients such as almonds, rice, sorghum, corn, legumes such as beans, and tubers such as cassava. Since these foods lack gluten, dough made from them may not hold its shape as the loaves rise, and their crumb may be dense with little aeration. Additives such as xanthan gum, guar gum, hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC), corn starch, or eggs are used to compensate for the lack of gluten.[19][20][21][22]

Properties

Physical-chemical composition

In wheat, phenolic compounds are mainly found in hulls in the form of insoluble bound ferulic acid, where it is relevant to wheat resistance to fungal diseases.[23]

Rye bread contains phenolic acids and ferulic acid dehydrodimers.[24]

Three natural phenolic glucosides, secoisolariciresinol diglucoside, p-coumaric acid glucoside and ferulic acid glucoside, can be found in commercial breads containing flaxseed.[25]Small home made bread with pumpkin and sunflower seeds

Glutenin and gliadin are functional proteins found in wheat bread that contribute to the structure of bread. Glutenin forms interconnected gluten networks within bread through interchain disulfide bonds.[26] Gliadin binds weakly to the gluten network established by glutenin via intrachain disulfide bonds.[26] Structurally, bread can be defined as an elastic-plastic foam (same as styrofoam). The glutenin protein contributes to its elastic nature, as it is able to regain its initial shape after deformation. The gliadin protein contributes to its plastic nature, because it demonstrates non-reversible structural change after a certain amount of applied force. Because air pockets within this gluten network result from carbon dioxide production during leavening, bread can be defined as a foam, or a gas-in-solid solution.[27]

Acrylamide, like in other starchy foods that have been heated higher than 120 °C (248 °F), has been found in recent years to occur in bread. Acrylamide is neurotoxic, has adverse effects on male reproduction and developmental toxicity and is carcinogenic. A study has found that more than 99 percent of the acrylamide in bread is found in the crust.[28]

A study by the University of Hohenheim found that industrially produced bread typically has a high proportion of FODMAP carbohydrates due to a short rising time (often only one hour). The high proportion of FODMAP carbohydrates in such bread then causes flatulence. This is particularly problematic in intestinal diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome. While in traditional bread making the dough rises for several hours, industrial breads rise for a much shorter time, usually only one hour. However, a sufficiently long rising time is important to break down the indigestible FODMAP carbohydrates. Some flours (for example, spelt, emmer and einkorn) contain fewer FODMAPs, but the difference between grain types is relatively small (between 1 and 2 percent by weight). Instead, 90% of the FODMAPs that cause discomfort can be broken down during a rising time of 4 hours. In the study, whole-grain yeast doughs were examined after different rising times; the highest level of FODMAPs was present after one hour in each case and decreased thereafter. The study thus shows that it is essentially the baking technique and not the type of grain that determines whether a bread is well tolerated or not. A better tolerance of bread made from original cereals can therefore not be explained by the original cereal itself, but rather by the fact that traditional, artisanal baking techniques are generally used when baking original cereals, which include a long dough process. The study also showed that a long rising time also breaks down undesirable phytates more effectively, flavors develop better, and the finished bread contains more biologically accessible trace elements.[29][30]

Culinary uses

Bread pudding

Bread can be served at many temperatures; once baked, it can subsequently be toasted. It is most commonly eaten with the hands, either by itself or as a carrier for other foods. Bread can be spread with butter, dipped into liquids such as gravy, olive oil, or soup;[31] it can be topped with various sweet and savory spreads, or used to make sandwiches containing meats, cheeses, vegetables, and condiments.[32]

Bread is used as an ingredient in other culinary preparations, such as the use of breadcrumbs to provide crunchy crusts or thicken sauces; toasted cubes of bread, called croutons, are used as a salad topping; seasoned bread is used as stuffing inside roasted turkey; sweet or savoury bread puddings are made with bread and various liquids; egg and milk-soaked bread is fried as French toast; and bread is used as a binding agent in sausages, meatballs and other ground meat products.[33]

Nutritional significance

Bread is a good source of carbohydrates and micronutrients such as magnesium, iron, selenium, and B vitamins. Whole grain bread is a good source of dietary fiber and all breads are a common source of protein in the diet, though not a rich one.[34][35]

Crust

Crust of a cut bread made of whole-grainrye with crust crack (half right at the top)

Bread crust is formed from surface dough during the cooking process. It is hardened and browned through the Maillard reaction using the sugars and amino acids due to the intense heat at the bread surface. The crust of most breads is harder, and more complexly and intensely flavored, than the rest. Old wives' tales suggest that eating the bread crust makes a person's hair curlier.[36] Additionally, the crust is rumored to be healthier than the remainder of the bread. Some studies have shown that this is true as the crust has more dietary fiber and antioxidants such as pronyl-lysine.[37]

Preparation

Steps in bread making, here for an unleavened Chilean tortilla

Doughs are usually baked, but in some cuisines breads are steamed (e.g., mantou), fried (e.g., puri), or baked on an unoiled frying pan (e.g., tortillas). It may be leavened or unleavened (e.g. matzo). Salt, fat and leavening agents such as yeast and baking soda are common ingredients, though bread may contain other ingredients, such as milk, egg, sugar, spice, fruit (such as raisins), vegetables (such as onion), nuts (such as walnut) or seeds (such as poppy).[38]

Methods of processing dough into bread include the straight dough process, the sourdough process, the Chorleywood bread process and the sponge and dough process.Baking bread in East Timor

Formulation

Professional bread recipes are stated using the baker's percentage notation. The amount of flour is denoted to be 100%, and the other ingredients are expressed as a percentage of that amount by weight. Measurement by weight is more accurate and consistent than measurement by volume, particularly for dry ingredients. The proportion of water to flour is the most important measurement in a bread recipe, as it affects texture and crumb the most. Hard wheat flours absorb about 62% water, while softer wheat flours absorb about 56%.[39] Common table breads made from these doughs result in a finely textured, light bread. Most artisan bread formulas contain anywhere from 60 to 75% water. In yeast breads, the higher water percentages result in more CO2 bubbles and a coarser bread crumb.

Dough recipes commonly call for 500 grams (about 1.1 pounds) of flour, which yields a single loaf of bread or two baguettes.

Calcium propionate is commonly added by commercial bakeries to retard the growth of molds.[citation needed]

Flour

Main article: Flour

Flour is grain ground into a powder. Flour provides the primary structure, starch and protein to the final baked bread. The protein content of the flour is the best indicator of the quality of the bread dough and the finished bread. While bread can be made from all-purpose wheat flour, a specialty bread flour, containing more protein (12–14%), is recommended for high-quality bread. If one uses a flour with a lower protein content (9–11%) to produce bread, a shorter mixing time is required to develop gluten strength properly. An extended mixing time leads to oxidization of the dough, which gives the finished product a whiter crumb, instead of the cream color preferred by most artisan bakers.[40]

Wheat flour, in addition to its starch, contains three water-soluble protein groups (albumin, globulin, and proteoses) and two water-insoluble protein groups (glutenin and gliadin). When flour is mixed with water, the water-soluble proteins dissolve, leaving the glutenin and gliadin to form the structure of the resulting bread. When relatively dry dough is worked by kneading, or wet dough is allowed to rise for a long time (see no-knead bread), the glutenin forms strands of long, thin, chainlike molecules, while the shorter gliadin forms bridges between the strands of glutenin. The resulting networks of strands produced by these two proteins are known as gluten. Gluten development improves if the dough is allowed to autolyse.[41]

Liquids

Water, or some other liquid, is used to form the flour into a paste or dough. The weight or ratio of liquid required varies between recipes, but a ratio of three parts liquid to five parts flour is common for yeast breads.[42] Recipes that use steam as the primary leavening method may have a liquid content in excess of one part liquid to one part flour. Instead of water, recipes may use liquids such as milk or other dairy products (including buttermilk or yogurt), fruit juice, or eggs. These contribute additional sweeteners, fats, or leavening components, as well as water.[43]

Fats or shortenings

Fats, such as butter, vegetable oils, lard, or that contained in eggs, affect the development of gluten in breads by coating and lubricating the individual strands of protein. They also help to hold the structure together. If too much fat is included in a bread dough, the lubrication effect causes the protein structures to divide. A fat content of approximately 3% by weight is the concentration that produces the greatest leavening action.[44] In addition to their effects on leavening, fats also serve to tenderize breads and preserve freshness.

Bread improvers

Main article: Bread improver

Bread improvers and dough conditioners are often used in producing commercial breads to reduce the time needed for rising and to improve texture and volume and to give antistaling effects. The substances used may be oxidising agents to strengthen the dough or reducing agents to develop gluten and reduce mixing time, emulsifiers to strengthen the dough or to provide other properties such as making slicing easier, or enzymes to increase gas production.[45]

Salt

Salt (sodium chloride) is very often added to enhance flavor and restrict yeast activity. It also affects the crumb and the overall texture by stabilizing and strengthening[46] the gluten. Some artisan bakers forego early addition of salt to the dough, whether wholemeal or refined, and wait until after a 20-minute rest to allow the dough to autolyse.[47]

Mixtures of salts are sometimes employed, such as employing potassium chloride to reduce the sodium level, and monosodium glutamate to give flavor (umami).

Leavening

See also: Unleavened breadA dough trough, located in Aberdour Castle, once used for leavening bread

Leavening is the process of adding gas to a dough before or during baking to produce a lighter, more easily chewed bread. Most bread eaten in the West is leavened.[48]

Chemicals

A simple technique for leavening bread is the use of gas-producing chemicals. There are two common methods. The first is to use baking powder or a self-raising flour that includes baking powder. The second is to include an acidic ingredient such as buttermilk and add baking soda; the reaction of the acid with the soda produces gas.[48] Chemically leavened breads are called quick breads and soda breads. This method is commonly used to make muffins, pancakes, American-style biscuits, and quick breads such as banana bread.

Yeast

Main article: Baker's yeastCompressed fresh yeast

Many breads are leavened by yeast. The yeast most commonly used for leavening bread is Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the same species used for brewing alcoholic beverages. This yeast ferments some of the sugars producing carbon dioxide. Commercial bakers often leaven their dough with commercially produced baker's yeast. Baker's yeast has the advantage of producing uniform, quick, and reliable results, because it is obtained from a pure culture.[48] Many artisan bakers produce their own yeast with a growth culture. If kept in the right conditions, it provides leavening for many years.[49]

The baker's yeast and sourdough methods follow the same pattern. Water is mixed with flour, salt and the leavening agent. Other additions (spices, herbs, fats, seeds, fruit, etc.) are not needed to bake bread, but are often used. The mixed dough is then allowed to rise one or more times (a longer rising time results in more flavor, so bakers often "punch down" the dough and let it rise again), loaves are formed, and (after an optional final rising time) the bread is baked in an oven.[48]

Many breads are made from a "straight dough", which means that all of the ingredients are combined in one step, and the dough is baked after the rising time;[48] others are made from a "pre-ferment" in which the leavening agent is combined with some of the flour and water a day or so ahead of baking and allowed to ferment overnight. On the day of baking, the rest of the ingredients are added, and the process continues as with straight dough. This produces a more flavorful bread with better texture. Many bakers see the starter method as a compromise between the reliable results of baker's yeast and the flavor and complexity of a longer fermentation. It also allows the baker to use only a minimal amount of baker's yeast, which was scarce and expensive when it first became available. Most yeasted pre-ferments fall into one of three categories: "poolish" or "pouliche", a loose-textured mixture composed of roughly equal amounts of flour and water (by weight); "biga", a stiff mixture with a higher proportion of flour; and "pâte fermentée", which is a portion of dough reserved from a previous batch.[50][51]

Before first rising

After first rising

After proofing, ready to bake

Sourdough

Main article: SourdoughSourdough loaves

Sourdough is a type of bread produced by a long fermentation of dough using naturally occurring yeasts and lactobacilli. It usually has a mildly sour taste because of the lactic acid produced during anaerobic fermentation by the lactobacilli. Longer fermented sourdoughs can also contain acetic acid, the main non-water component of vinegar.[52][53][54]

Sourdough breads are made with a sourdough starter. The starter cultivates yeast and lactobacilli in a mixture of flour and water, making use of the microorganisms already present on flour; it does not need any added yeast. A starter may be maintained indefinitely by regular additions of flour and water. Some bakers have starters many generations old, which are said to have a special taste or texture.[52] At one time, all yeast-leavened breads were sourdoughs. Recently there has been a revival of sourdough bread in artisan bakeries.[55]

Traditionally, peasant families throughout Europe baked on a fixed schedule, perhaps once a week. The starter was saved from the previous week's dough. The starter was mixed with the new ingredients, the dough was left to rise, and then a piece of it was saved to be the starter for next week's bread.[48]

Steam

The rapid expansion of steam produced during baking leavens the bread, which is as simple as it is unpredictable. Steam-leavening is unpredictable since the steam is not produced until the bread is baked. Steam leavening happens regardless of the raising agents (baking soda, yeast, baking powder, sour dough, beaten egg white) included in the mix. The leavening agent either contains air bubbles or generates carbon dioxide. The heat vaporises the water from the inner surface of the bubbles within the dough. The steam expands and makes the bread rise. This is the main factor in the rising of bread once it has been put in the oven.[56] CO2 generation, on its own, is too small to account for the rise. Heat kills bacteria or yeast at an early stage, so the CO2 generation is stopped.

Bacteria

Salt-rising bread does not use yeast. Instead, it is leavened by Clostridium perfringens, one of the most common sources of food-borne illness.[57][58]

Aeration

Aerated bread is leavened by carbon dioxide being forced into dough under pressure. From the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries, bread made this way was somewhat popular in the United Kingdom, made by the Aerated Bread Company and sold in its high-street tearooms. The company was founded in 1862, and ceased independent operations in 1955.[59]

The Pressure-Vacuum mixer was later developed by the Flour Milling and Baking Research Association for the Chorleywood bread process. It manipulates the gas bubble size and optionally the composition of gases in the dough via the gas applied to the headspace.[60]

Cultural Significance

A Ukrainian woman in national dress welcoming with bread and salt

Main article: Bread in culture

Bread has a significance beyond mere nutrition in many cultures because of its history and contemporary importance. Bread is also significant in Christianity as one of the elements (alongside wine) of the Eucharist,[61] and in other religions including Paganism.[62]

In many cultures, bread is a metaphor for basic necessities and living conditions in general. For example, a "bread-winner" is a household's main economic contributor and has little to do with actual bread-provision. This is also seen in the phrase "putting bread on the table". The Roman poet Juvenal satirized superficial politicians and the public as caring only for "panem et circenses" (bread and circuses).[63] In Russia in 1917, the Bolsheviks promised "peace, land, and bread."[64][65] The term "breadbasket" denotes an agriculturally productive region. In parts of Northern, Central, Southern and Eastern Europe bread and salt is offered as a welcome to guests.[66] In India, life's basic necessities are often referred to as "roti, kapra aur makan" (bread, cloth, and house).[67]

Words for bread, including "dough" and "bread" itself, are used in English-speaking countries as synonyms for money.[1] A remarkable or revolutionary innovation may be called the best thing since "sliced bread".[68] The expression "to break bread with someone" means "to share a meal with someone".[69] The English word "lord" comes from the Anglo-Saxon hlāfweard, meaning "bread keeper."[70]

Bread is sometimes referred to as "the staff of life", although this term can refer to other staple foods in different cultures: the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "bread (or similar staple food)".[71][72] This is sometimes thought to be a biblical reference, but the nearest wording is in Leviticus 26 "when I have broken the staff of your bread".[73] The term has been adopted in the names of bakery firms.[74]