There is no question about this. Manchet was the “best bread” in most of Early Modern England, with a comparable bread considered “best” in Continental Europe, as well. This will have been the case for hundreds of years. Precision is not possible, as documentation is so scarce, but there is no reason to suppose the…
Category: Bread
English Muffins circa 1750s
The muffin that the English understood as a muffin — the muffin of the “muffin man”, the widely recognized itinerant muffin seller on the streets of English cities, especially London, from the mid-19th century well into the 20th — is known internationally as the “English muffin.” This differentiates from the American muffin, which is single-serving…
Bread History Workshop #17: Making Historic Breads for the Holidays
There is no lecture associated with this week’s event. The week, what is usually a Bread History Seminar and Workshop will just be a workshop. Also, this week, it is on WEDNESDAY, December 23, (NOT THE USUAL THURSDAY) at 9am Pacific. This is 11 am in Columbia, noon in the East Coast, 6pm in Belgium,…
A Fabulous Horse Bread by Gervase Markham, 1607
The big author for horse breads was Gervase Markham (ca 1568-1637 ). Markham is the horse trainer who perfected the type of breads fed to race horses as part of a structured exercise program for race horses, thus establishing horse training on a modern basis. The custom at the time was for men to agree amongst themselves to a cross country race three months in advance and then to begin a training regime.
Bacon Sandwich, circa 1747
Totally serendipitous find form a Google Books search. This is from the completely obscure “Soldier’s Vade Mecum; Or the Method of Curing the Diseases and Preserving Health in Soldiers” by Luca Antonia Prozio. In terms of diet, Ponzio seems to imagine Calabria as a kind of Arctic. A greasy bacon sandwich is the staple food….
Cock Breads — 18th Century Breads for Fighting Cocks
The following text is from the “Royal Art of Cockfighting” by Robert Howlett, published in London, 1709. The portion of the text I reproduce here concerns the breads fed to fighting cocks — known in the period as cock-breads. A couple things I’d like you to note. Firstly, in the section, “Of the several Ways…
American Pullman Loaf, also called Sandwich Bread circa 1920
The Pullman Loaf , also often published under the more generic name, “Sandwich Bread,” is the classic American soft white crustless bread identified with morning toast, diner grilled cheese sandwiches, and school lunches. It became the focus of attention for the more industrial bakers in the first half of the twentieth century, whose industrial take…
Tandoor Oven 2,600 Years Ago
The tandoor oven (there are variant spellings) is ancient. There had been tandoor-style ovens for thousands of years before this terracotta figurine was made. The YouTube video that follows shows someone making an oven very similar to the one pictured above: There are lots of good YouTube and Vimeo videos that show baking in the…
Bread on a Spit: Fragment from Atheneus
ΕΓΧΕΙΡΟΓΑΣΤΟΡΕΣ From 6 Athenaeus 645bc ἐγὼ μὲν ἄρτους, μᾶζαν, ἀθάρην, ἄλφιτα,κόλλικας, ὀβελίαν, μελιτοῦτταν, ἐπιχύτους,πτισάνην, πλακοῦντας, δενδαλίδας, ταγηνίας. Fragments 6 I [have, provide] loaves of bread, barley cake, porridge, barley groats, rolls, bread on a spit, honey cake, cupcakes, barley gruel, flat-cakes, barley cakes, pancakes. Reading in translation is always problematic. One has to trust the translator to have gotten it…
Male Bias in the History of Bread: Logo for Fleischmann’s Yeast
When The American yeast company, Fleischmann’s, had a pictorial logo in the first decades of the twentieth-century, they made it male. From the Neolithic and up until very recently, women were responsible for most of the process of producing bread. With the limited exception of baking bread in commercial operations and certain grain planting processes,…
William Rubel 