1. Oil-on-canvas breakfast tableaus were popular with the 17th-century Dutch masters.
2. Before coffee and tea became standard breakfast fare in the Western world, beer soup—a brew of hot beer, bread, eggs, butter, and cheese—was a choice breakfast beverage.
3. There are currently 25 oatmeal stouts brewed in Maine.
4. In 1894 in Michigan, flaked cereal was invented by mistake when a pot of cooked wheat was left to go stale.
5. Big cereal manufacturers in the mid-20th century started promoting breakfast as the most important meal of the day to sell their products to the American public. Despite that marketing mantra, about 25% of the U.S. population regularly skips breakfast.
6. In 2022, Maine farmers grew 2.1 million bushels of oats.
7. Maine-based Grandy Organics sells 10 types of organic granola, including Super Hemp Coconola, Maple Mulberry Crunch, and Swiss Style Muesli.
8. A cooked egg is solid yet supple because heat transforms its proteins from tightly packed amino acids to an entangled network of long protein molecules.
9. To hard-boil an egg, the yolk must be cooked to 174ºF; for a soft boil, the yolk must reach 158ºF.
10. Every sourdough starter has its own microbe population. Since the baking process kills the good bacteria in the starter, sourdough toast doesn’t bring probiotics to the breakfast table. But whole-wheat sourdough toast serves a prebiotic function, as its fiber feeds good bacteria in your gut.
