[Sca-cooks] On Beyond Pretzel

lilinah at earthlink.net lilinah at earthlink.net
Wed Feb 20 10:34:47 PST 2013


Johnnae wrote:
> I think the problem here may be that the bakers and bread were highly regulated.
> The bakers were required to make loaves of certain sizes and weights. 
> So you end up with those standard rounded loaves most often being depicted in paintings.

Yup.

> If you look at breads associated with holidays or celebrations, there will be others depicted.
> There is a large Dutch diamond shaped bread which is known as a duivekater. You see it depicted 
> in paintings of the visits from Saint Nicholas. (Sometimes it is also made in the form of  a 
> shinbone.)
> https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/search/objecten?q=steen%2c+jan&s=artist&js=1&p=8&ps=12#/SK-A-385,87

It also appears in some market scenes

> Or in Jan Steen's painting of Baker Oostwaert and his wife.
> https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-390

This has one fancy loaf, although Steen painted mostly in the 3rd quarter of the 17th c.

> A search looking for festival or holiday scenes may yield something.

Indeed. Based on Bear's previous comments about enriched breads for celebrations / feasts / festivals / holidays, i've been searching for such scenes. I have collected a lot of paintings of market vendors as well. It's not because of bread - because it's mostly the same breads, round loaves, round buns, "torpedo" shaped loaves (ellipses with pointed ends) which are in scenes of bakers inserting breads into an oven, lots of pretzel-shaped things, the diamond shaped breads Johnnae mentions, waffles, possible pancakes... but no braided loaves.

It's easier to search for things in the 16th c., since there are genre paintings and still lives, market scenes and feast scenes. But as i search earlier and earlier it gets harder because there are no still lives or genre scenes, and i'm spending more time just scanning through masses of art and i haven't turned up anything yet. Is the braided loaf an out of period invention?

Urtatim (that's oor-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita



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