““Scientists were earnestly trying to elucidate the spontaneous generation of mice as late as the seventeenth century, when Jean Baptista van Helmont reported that “if one presses a dirty shirt into the opening of a vessel containing grains of wheat, the ferment from the dirty shirt does not modify the smell of the grain but gives rise to the transmutation of the wheat into mice after about twenty-one days.”11 He also had a recipe for creating scorpions by carving a hole into a brick, filling it with dried basil, and placing it in the full sun.””
![“2. Users of bells and whistles such as grapes and milk in their starter vs. flour-and-water minimalists. (Lest you reflexively award moral victory to the purists, note that the grapes side includes such heavy hitters as Nancy Silverton and the man Anthony Bourdain describes as “[God’s] personal…” quote by Sandor Ellix Katz](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/41e/sandor-ellix-katz-41579_gold-rush_2-users-of-bells-and-whistles-such-as-gr_2698552.jpg)
