This painting, in tomb TT69, may offer us a way to understand the perspective the artist used in depicting breads on offering tables. What you see here is a common concept in tomb and temple art. The depiction of foodstuffs, often with bread on the bottom layer, displayed on an offering table. The offering tables…
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.
Detail from an Egyptian Pharaonic era tomb painting. Can this image help us read the perspective? Are the breads depicted standing upright, on one edge?
Ezekiel Bread, Book of Ezekiel, Torah
Ezekiel’s Vision, William Blake, (1803-05) There are many interpretation of “Ezekiel Bread” online, in cookbooks, and even in commercial products. While the most vocal interpretation is that it is a sprouted grain bread, all of the interpretations are for breads presented as being wonderful, good tasting breads. Reading the text taking into account period culture,…
Egyptian Bread from Temple of Edfu
Edfu is a Ptolemaic Temple located in Edfu, Egypt. Edfu lies between Luxor and Aswan. It is most commonly visited by tourists arriving by boat on the Nile. For the bread obsessed, this temple is important for the variety of bread forms depicted in bas relief that are often very different from the styles found…
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…
William Rubel 