Bread drama

Long-time readers have perhaps been following my saga of starting a new, public, full-name-using Instagram account, for book publicity purposes initially, but also professional ones more generally. The algorithm there isn’t sure what to do with my barely-active self, but has formed a surprisingly coherent (if inaccurate) portrait. The account-holder is interested in earnest-hectoring stand-up comedy about being transgender and non-chafe bike shorts. Which, look, I’m not Chaya Raichik, if that’s for you, you do you. But I’d be more interested in ‘local antiques shop with gorgeous armoire’ or ‘Tim Curry young.’ If the algo had mistakenly pegged me as a gay man from 1960 it would be closer to the mark, but also not it, because I am also of course receptive to targeted ads for (some) women’s clothing in my area.

So imagine my delight when I had a suggested-for-you post that simply fell outside the usual pleas to watch bad versions of Hannah Gadsby. A post not of opposing politics, but simply orthogonal (my favorite word) to any of that. I hit a quick “like” as in bookmark, but also I think I am on Team Lahey here, insofar as there are teams, and it’s hard to say. What there is is DRAMA!

The backstory is that there is a massively popular New York Times no-knead bread recipe, first published there in 2006. It’s the one where you just pop the ingredients into a Dutch oven and wait three weeks or whatever and then you have a pandemic sourdough avant la lettre. As the non-owner of a Dutch oven I have periodically considered getting one primarily to make this bread, but have never taken the plunge so cannot attest to anything about it. Where was I? Oh right.

The recipe is credited to Jim Lahey, of Sullivan Street Bakery, which I absolutely went to circa 2004? 2007?, but has an “adapted by Mark Bittman.” And Bittman of 2026 is evidently capitalizing on his piggybacked bread celebrity to sell high-end (“loaves start at $12” and those be USD) FROZEN breads. Leahy has had just about enough of his name being affixed to things for which he earns zero $, and with bread going for $12 these days, zero won’t suffice.

The story has absolutely everything and that’s before you get into the details.

-There’s the eternal question of recipe ownership.

-There’s the you-got-the-wrong-guy angle. For it was the Times, where Bittman worked for a long time but no longer does, roping Leahy’s name into this, and not (apparently?) Bittman himself. Bittman is a food celebrity in his own right!

-There’s the NYT being shady in its attribution practices, something I’d know nothing about.

-There’s the shades-of-Alison-Roman-gate question of food personalities selling out, hawking merch, and doing so in off-brand manners. Why is Bittman, evangelist of home cooking, author of How to Cook Everything, selling glorified Stouffers to the masses? To make money, one presumes, and there are obviously more troubling things to sell than nice-ingredient-containing frozen bread. (Virtually every product on the market is more troubling.) But it’s off-brand.

Then comes the drama part.