BRB w/ Nathan P – Bees as Data Drones, Brioche-Hokkaido Buns & Zero to One
More ways bees can save the planet, making the perfect sandwich buns at home, and start-up tips from a controversial founder (#30).
Hi all,
Welcome back to BRB w/ Nathan P, a weekly newsletter featuring 💥1 Breakthrough, 🥘1 Recipe, and 📚1 Book on food & climate.
Before we get started, here are highlights of food & climate in the news this week:
9 things everyone should know about Maui’s wildfire disaster, including how you can help (Vox). My heart and thoughts go out to all those in Maui, stay safe.
Why Amyris is the latest beauty casualty (Vogue Business). It’s unfortunate that Amyris is going under, as they were one of the pioneers of yeast as precision fermentation workhorses. I hope their work will live on.
💥 Breakthrough: Bees as Data Drones
It’s well-known that bees are crucial in ecosystems for pollination. What they tell us about ecosystem health could be just as important.
Researchers at Belgian start-up Beeodiversity are extracting meaningful snapshots of environmental health by analyzing bees’ pollen.
Bees capture an incredible amount of data from pollination: one colony can gather pollen from 4 billion flowers on 700 acres in a year. This data enables biomonitoring, taking a pulse on environmental health.
There are three things analyzing bee pollen tells us about the environment:
🌺 Biodiversity: how many plant species are present, and how those populations evolve over time
🧪 Pollution: they detect the presence of pollutants like heavy metals, benzene, dioxin, etc.
🐛 Pesticides and fertilizer: they detect pesticide levels beyond fields and excess nitrate levels
Pollen analysis enables impact assessment and actionable insights, like planting targeted species or creating test areas for new land practices.
Beeodiversity currently operates in the US and in 10 European countries, with ambitions to turn every beehive into environmental health stations. Their insights can drive meaningful work towards better biodiversity and air quality.
Thanks, bees. If you want to help save the bees, consider supporting this cool initiative from a previous BRB to prevent bee colony collapse disorder with mycelial extracts 🍄
🥘 Recipe: Brioche Hokkaido Buns
Let’s face it: the store-bought stuff is sub-par.
Thankfully, you can now make them at home. This recipe is a hybrid between a French brioche and a Japanese milk bread (Hokkaido) and makes for a perfectly soft, pillowy, and chewy bun.
Impress your guests at your next summer BBQ – I guarantee they’ll rave about it for months. Scroll down for the recipe.
If you make it, please send pictures :)
📚 Book: Zero to One
Peter Thiel is the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, and admittedly a controversial figure. For one, his Thiel Fellowship encourages founders to drop-out of school to build their start-ups full-time.
Regardless of your thoughts on Peter, there are some gold nuggets on entrepreneurship in Zero to One: Notes on Start-Ups or, How to Build the Future.
Peter is adamant on a few key concepts for start-ups to succeed:
Avoid competitive markets by creating new niches they can monopolize
Build great products and invent effective ways to sell
Assemble a passionate team with a cult-like mission and revolutionary culture
Many concepts in Zero to One will be key to scale climate innovations and instill new ways of doing business. Highly recommend for any aspiring entrepreneur.
Some favorite quotes:
Every moment in business happens once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.
Creative monopolists give customers more choices by adding entirely new categories of abundance to the world. Creative monopolies aren’t just good for the rest of society; they’re powerful engines for making it better.
The best projects are likely to be overlooked, not trumpeted by a crowd; the best problems to work on are often the ones nobody else even tries to solve.
Thank you for reading – BRB next week ✌️
🥘 Recipe: Brioche-Hokkaido Bun
Ingredients:
Tangzhong (60g whole milk, 27g water, 20g flour)
120g whole milk
9g instant yeast
320g all-purpose flour
35g sugar
7g salt
1 egg
42g butter, softened
Egg wash (one egg + 1 tbsp water)
Instructions:
First, make the tangzhong. In a saucepan, add 60g of milk, 27g of water, and 20g of flour. Heat to medium-high and stir thoroughly until it thickens significantly. Place in a bowl and refrigerate.
Heat 120g of milk to 95F, then add of 9g instant yeast. Stir and let rest 10 minutes.
In a large bowl, combine 320g flour, 35g sugar, and 7g salt.
Add in the milk mixture, then the refrigerated tangzhong. Add in 1 whole egg and the 42g of softened butter. Stir with a spatula until it combines into a shaggy dough, then knead by hand for a few minutes until smooth.
Form the dough into a ball by folding in the sides of the dough and rolling out on a board.
Place in greased bowl in warm area for 1h30, or when doubled in size.
Deflate the dough, then divide into 6 parts (about 105-115g each) using a dough cutter.
On an unfloured work surface, fold in the ends of each small dough. Form into balls by pulling the dough towards you, then cup it with one hand and move in a circular motion to smoothen out.
Let rise for 1h, then lather with egg wash and cook for 16-18 minutes at 375F.
About Me
Hi there! My name is Nathan Paumier - I’m an avid reader, food enthusiast, and climate optimist. I started this newsletter after frequent questions on food tech, reading recommendations, and my secret recipes.
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