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Fiddling with Flavors: Making Healthy Bread Taste Better

Does the secret of flavor lie in the Maillard reaction?

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OLFACTOMETER
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OLFACTOMETER

Devin Peterson sniffs odors coming out of the gas chromatograph.

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BRENDAN BORRELL / © SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
SNIFFING BREAD
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SNIFFING BREAD

Another view of the olfactometer.

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BRENDAN BORRELL / © SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
BREAD IN A BOTTLE
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BREAD IN A BOTTLE

Moskowitz holds two vials of bread odor.

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BRENDAN BORRELL / © SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
COOKING THE BOOKS
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COOKING THE BOOKS

A data sheet listing all the smells Moskowitz recorded from a bread-sniffing session: From popcorn to puke.

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BRENDAN BORRELL / © SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
SCENT ON ICE
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SCENT ON ICE

A refrigerator full of fragrant chemicals.

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BRENDAN BORRELL / © SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
YOUR KITCHEN IS MY LAB
thumb: YOUR KITCHEN IS MY LAB
YOUR KITCHEN IS MY LAB

A Mixmaster vies for bench space with other equipment in the food chemistry laboratory

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BRENDAN BORRELL / © SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
QUANT COOKING
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QUANT COOKING

A gas chromatograph and mass spectrophotometer.

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BRENDAN BORRELL / © SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
THE COOK IN THE KITCHEN
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THE COOK IN THE KITCHEN

Peterson stands by his equipment.

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BRENDAN BORRELL / © SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
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  1. 1. Oblate Spheroid 12:53 PM 4/2/09

    The unproved hypothesis: Bread, any bread, is a healthy food. Six million years of human evolution did not involve the consumption of grains in any large percentage of total dietary calories. Only the last ten thousand years have seen the human cultivation, cooking and consumption of grains. Grains are toxic if not cooked. Mainstream science needs to be more careful.

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  2. 2. skass 07:01 PM 4/19/09

    You quote Devin Peterson as saying "We bake things but happens to them?" This looks like a typo on your part. Can you double-check your notes and let us know what he said?

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  3. 3. Amandine in reply to Oblate Spheroid 07:32 AM 6/29/09

    But that doesn't mean that evolution does not occur in 10,000 years. For example, southeast Asians have an unusually larger quantity of enzymes in their saliva to digest carbohydrates such as amylase. Which is probably why I and most of my family/friends have an insatiable appetite for rice.

    There's also this hypothesis that precursors to modern humans had an appendix to digest grass.

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