Tony Shahan, historian of milling, and director of the Newlin Grist Mill, suggests we make a maslin bread — a bread of mixed wheat and rye OR a bread that somehow reflects the trade in export flour between North American and the United Kingdom in the later decades of the 18th century. The first cookbook…
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.
Thursday, August 20, 2020 Seminar: Milling from The Ancient World world to the Early 19th Century
I am very excited to announce that Seminar #12, the first of the August -December series of Thursday Bread History Seminars will be led by Milling Historian, Tony Shahan. Register at EventBrite. The seminar takes place via Zoom at 9am Pacific Time. This is 10am in Columbia, noon in New York, 5 pm Ireland and…
Nicolas de Bonnefons, Recipe for Rubel Seminar #11
Nicolas de Bonnefons wrote two fabulous books in the 1650s. One, the Jardiner Francois, was translated by John Evelyn and published under the title, The French Gardiner. I have written an annotated edition that I will publish — one day. Bonnefons followed up the gardening book with a book called Les Delices de la Compagne….
Recipes for Seminar #10: Sourdough
Most of the Seminar #10 on sourdough is being led by Karl de Smedt, founding curator of the Puratos Sourdough Library. He is suggesting a pancake and/or waffle recipe for the Thursday, July 16, 2020 Seminar/Workshop. “So we hewed off some of the inside logs of the cabin, and soon had a roaring fire. With…
Thursday Bread History Seminar/Workshop #10 July 16, 2020, 9am Pacific: Sourdough
We are back again this Thursday with an exciting Seminar/Workahop. As always, you need to register with EventBrite for this Zoom meeting. In terms of time zones, this Seminar/Workshop works for people from the California and South American Pacificas Coast through to India, where the Seminar starts at 9:30 pm in Bangalore. For easy reference,…
July 9 English French Bread Seminar/Workshop with William Rubel
This page provides the recipe and mise en place information for participants in my Thursday Seminar/Workshop #9 on English French Bread. If you are registered for the Seminar I suggest you also register at my Facebook group: Bread History and Practice. That is where participants post images of their breads and we continue the discussion…
Recipe for bread by Louis Liger, 1711
This is the recipe and mise en place for my Zoom bread history seminar/workshop for Thursday, June 25, 2020, 9am Pacific Time. Please have the ingredients weighed out for the start of the seminar. Another Manner for Very Delicate Bread, by Louis Liger Le Ménage des Champs et Jardinier Francois, 1711 (pp. 16-17) Sometimes, when…
Mise en Place for Flatbread Seminar/Workshop #6
This week I am introducing flatbreads through an introduction to the history of bread. This is just an introduction to flatbreads. I am planning further sessions just on flatbreads led by people who are more expert than I am. It looks like we will be able to organize a session on flatbreads from the Indian…
The Miller’s Thumb
Stone milling is the art of grinding grain into a meal, and then through sifting and re-grinding (and re-sifting), refining the product into the quality flour one wants for the finished product. While sifting determines the final quality of flour, the ratios of what is produced (and thus profit) depends heavily on the precision with which…
A Website with 7,000+ Watercolors of Fruit!
It is blackberry season and I just came across this amazing USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) website containing images in high resolution scans of of 7,300 fruits (mostly apples). Enjoy! Here is an article, The collection of pomological watercolors at the United States Department of Agriculture, published in 1982 in the Journal of Botanical…
William Rubel 