[Sca-cooks] History of Bread and baking

[Terry Decker]

If she is focused on Italian, reference Platina.  It has descriptions of 
preparing bread and rolls.  Bread recipes are in very short supply in period 
as baking was a seperate art from cooking and bakers kept their recipes and 
techniques to themselves.  If she is willing to use recipes from the Roman 
Empire, try Michael Grant's work on Roman Cookery.

Dupaigne (History of Bread) is interesting but not particularly useful. 
H.E. Jacob's Six Thousand Years of Bread is probably more useful for 
history.  David is limited as her work is on English yeast baking while most 
southern European baking was from starter rather than ale yeast. 
Toussaint-Samat has some useful information in A History of Food (beware of 
Franco-centrism).  There should also be a number of things out in the 
Florilegium as there is an entire section devoted to bread.

If she has any questions, give her my email address.  I may have the answer 
in my baking library.

Bear


> One of my students is preparing for Pentathlon over here in CAID.  I have 
> a number of books, but as I recently lost my sounding board for 
> suggestions (Mistress Huette)... I wanted to make sure I was covering all 
> the bases when pointing her in the right direction for documenting bread 
> and baked goods.
>
> What books would you all use/suggest for documentation for bread history? 
> I have "history of bread" (author and book under a pile of books currently 
> yikes) and I have an Elizabeth David book on baking and it's history. I 
> have a ton of books scattered in my house, but these are the ones I could 
> think of off the top of my head. Head is still a little fuzzy since I lost 
> Huette, so I apologize for sounding like a bonehead.
>
> Italian suggestions would be nice as that is what she's focused on. I have 
> Scappi, but haven't read it fully yet. No idea if any bread or baking 
> references in there.
>
> Suggestions welcome. Help always appreciated.
>
> --Mercy