Author: William Rubel

I am an author who writes about traditional food and foodways. My book, The Magic of Fire (2002) is about hearth cooking. I have written an introductory history of bread, Bread, a global history (2011) and am currently writing a history of bread for the University of California Press. Other areas of interest include wild mushrooms, and specifically the treatment of Amanita muscaria in the historic record. I also write about Early Modern British Gardens, and for a more general audience, I write for Mother Earth News on bread, gardening, and more. I have an ongoing research project into the smoke-cured fermented milk of the Kenyan Samburu tribe. I am a co-director of the Samburu Lowlands Research Station, Lengusaka. I am the founding editor (1972) of Stone Soup, the magazine of writing and art by young people.

2 Subway. A New York Day, 1992.

Earlier, in the afternoon, another thin man, this one white, much older, wrinkled, missing front teeth, asked for money on the lower level of a subway station. He was unkept. He looked at me. And he said something. But I. I shook my head and he moved on, waddling, his legs far apart with crotch…

4 Donut Shop. New York City, 1992

Donut Shop 28th Avenue at 7th New York City, 1992 This donut shop has two U shaped counters, a shape that encourages conversation between customers and customers and staff. Midnight. Several of us are sitting at the U closest to the door. There is also a steady stream of people coming in off the street…

Historic American Rye and Cornmeal Bread, 19th Century New England

RYE AND INDIAN BREAD from Miss Leslie’s Directions for Cookery, 1840 This is a fabulous bread of a type that few of us have made. By volume, it is a 50/50 mix of rye and cornmeal. As with many 19th century American breads, it is mixed with milk. In this case, milk that has been…

American Bread Recipes from the 19th Century

These recipes were originally posted for people attending my Bread History and Practice Seminar #68 on American Bread, December 15, 2022. If you are attending the seminar, please make one of the breads that I am posting here so that we all have some experience with the taste and texture of the bread. Insights can…

Plaza. A New York Day, 1992

Night. Cold. A thin handsome black man with a mustache stands to the side of the Plaza Hotel. “Monday is a hard day for bums,” he says. I drop a quarter in his cup and walk on. Just behind, a woman in a long white cashmere coat approaches. “Monday is a hard day for bums,”…

The Sweater

This story is based on an encounter with an elderly woman in Prague a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union. An inflation had destroyed the savings of retirees. This woman is selling her possessions to survive. Sweater Prague, 1993 At the top of a wide stairway bringing subway passengers to a huge…

Raphael. A Story.

This is a story I wrote in 1992. It is based on my meeting a young Russian man in Trabazon, Turkey. Raphael His was the bright face who said a few words while I inspected three tin jumping frogs in the Russian Bazaar. A few days later he stops me at the market’s edge where…

Starch Gelatinization and Starch Conversion to Sugar in Bread Dough

For much of the 19th century, American breads, were often made with cornmeal and If you can get a bread dough into the gelatinizing temperature range appropriate a given bread grain — in the 19th century American context, rye, and corn — gelatinizes multiple changes will take place altering the taste and texture of the…

Miss Leslies Book of Household Management, 1840 “Rye and Indian” bread.

A mix of rye and cornmeal, “Indian,” in the vocabulary of 19th century American cookbooks, was a common bread in New England for most of the 19th century. Emily Dickinson won second prize for her version of this bread at an agricultural fair in Massachusetts in 1856. This bread pairs well with molasses which was…

Scalding Cornmeal: an American Baking Technique well into the 19th Century. Well worth reviving.

It was standard practice to scald cornmeal as the first step in American bread recipes that used cornmeal throughout most of the 19th century. Based on the extensive number of 19th century references to this method I think it is reasonable to impute the system back to the early use of cornmeal in the 17th…