bread, beer & yeast ancient ovens Colonial American ovens bread pans bread & the French Revolution Anadama bread Artisan breads bagels baguette banana nut bread biscuits & crackers Boston brown bread brioche bread pudding

bruschetta & garlic bread campaillou challah coffee cake corn bread croissants croutons crumpets & scones English muffins flatbreads: pita, naan & lavash flower pot bread focaccia French toast galette

hot cross buns Irish soda bread monkey bread pain de campagne pancakes & crepes panko Parker House rolls pretzels sally lunn sourdough sticky buns (cinnamon rolls) tea cakes toast

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Bread, beer & yeast

The history of bread and cake starts with Neolithic cooks and marches through time according to ingredient availability, advances in technology, economic conditions, socio-cultural influences, legal rights (Medieval guilds), and evolving taste. The earliest breads were unleavened. Variations in grain, thickness, shape, and texture varied from culture to culture.

Archaelogical evidence confirms yeast (both as leavening agent and for brewing ale) was used in Egypt as early as 4000 B.C. Food historians generally cite this date for the discovery of leavened bread and genesis of the brewing industry. There is an alternate theory regarding the invention of brewing. Some historians believe it is possible that brewing began when the first cereal crops were domesticated. Sources generally agree the discovery of the powers of yeast was accidental.

"No one has yet managed to date the origins of beer with any precision, and it is probably an impossible task. Indeed, there are scholars who have theorized that a taste for ale prompted the beginning of agriculture, in which case humans have been brewing for some 10,000 years...Most archaeological evidence, however, suggests that fermentation was being used in one manner or another by around 4000 to 3500 B.C. Some of this evidence-from an ancient Mesopotamian trading outpost called Godin Tepe in present-day Iran- indicates that barley was being fermented at that location around 3500 B.C. Additional evidence recoverd at Hacinegi Tepe (a similar site in southern Turkey) also suggest that ancient Mesopotamians were fermenting barley at a very early date...There is no question that fermentation takes place accidentally (as it must have done countless times before humans learned something about controlling the process), and most investigators believe that barley was first cultivated in the Fertile Crescent region of lower Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Grain is heavy to transport relative to the beer made from it, so it is not surprising that there may be evidence of ale in these outposts and not unreasonable to suspect that accidental fermentation did occur at some point in the ancient Mesopotamian region, leading to beer making."
---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Conee Ornelas, Volume 1 [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge] 2000 (p. 619-620)

"It seems that the discovery of ale was stimulated by the process of bread-making. At some stage in the Neolithic era people had learned that if, instead of using ordinary grain, they used grain that had been sprouted and then dried, it made a bread that kept unusually well. Something very like this was used in brewing. The Egyptian process was to sprout the grain, dry it , crush it, mix it to a dough and partially bake it. The loaves were then broken up and put to soak in water, where they were allowed to ferment for about a day before the liquor was strained off and considered ready for drinking."
---Food in History, Reay Tannahill [Three Rivers Press:New York] 1988 (p.48)

"Leavening, according to one theory, was discovered when some yeast spores--the air is full of them, especially in a bakehouse that is also a brewery--drifted onto a dough that had been set aside for a while before baking; the dough would rise, not very much, perhaps, but enough to make the bread lighter and more appetizing than usual, and afterwards, as so often in the ancient world, inquiring minds set about the task of reproducing deliberately a process that had been discovered by accident. But there is an alternative and even more likely theory-that on some occasion ale instead of water was used to mix the dough. The rise would be more spectacular than from a few errant spores and the effect would be easy to explain and equally easy to reproduce."
---Food in History, Tannahill (p. 51-52)

"The brewing of beer may well have occurred soon after the production of cereal crops, and no doubt for a long time beer was home-produced and in the hands of housewives responsible for preparing the gruel or bread...the first production of beer may be reasonably considered as an accidental discovery resulting for the malting of grain for other purposes."
---Food in Antiquity: A Survey of the Diet of Early Peoples, Don Brothwell and Patricia Brothwell, expanded edition [Johns Hopkins:Maryland] 1998 (p. 166)

On the Web

• History of bread
• Bread making in Ancient Egypt
• Bread timeline...antiquity to present

RECOMMENDED READING:
English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David
Six Thousand Years of Bread, H.E. Jacob
The Story of Bread, Ronald Sheppard and Edward Newton

Ancient ovens & baking

"The most important part of the baker's equipment is, and always has been, his oven. For six thousand years and more it is the oven, however crude or complex, which has transformed the sticky wet dough into bread. It is the oven which influences the final character of the loaf; the effieciencycy of an oven, or lack of it, can determine the success or failure of any bread baker's business. It is the heart of the baking process...It was the Egyptians who first used a manufactured portable oven. This was a beehive- or barrel-shaped container of baked clay, usually divided into two by a central horizontal partition. The lower section formed the fire-box in which were burned pieces of dried wood, foten taken from the Nile, or even dried animal dung. The upper part, accessible from the top, was the baking chamber. An oven of similar shape, but often constructed of hollowed stone instead of clay, was used by the early Jews. Instead of placing the dough pieces for baking on the bottom or sole of the baking chamber, the Jews put the pieces on the sides. Being damp and sticky they remained in place intil they had dried out, when they fell to the bottom of the oven. The Jews also had fixed ovens in some of their houses, frequently in the main rooms. These ovens or hearths took the form of clay-covered hollows in the floor which were heated with burning wood. When the heat was sufficient the embers were raked out and the pieces of dough placed in the hollows and covered over. In Jerusalem there was a bakers' quarter where bread was baked in tiers of stone-built ovens, or furnaces as they were called in the Bible. In Ancient Rome bread ovens in the public bakeries were originally hewn from solid rock. These ovens were heated by the familiar method of burning wood in the baking chamber, raking out the ashes and putting in the dough to bake. The oven opening was closed with a large stone, sometimes sealed with clay. Ovens which worked on this principle, but were constructed of bricks or small stones, may still be seen in the ruined city of Pompeii. The fact ovens based on this simple design formed the majority of those in use throughout Europe until little more than two centuries ago. Although some of the early Roman ovens had chimnesy to improve the draught and carry away steam, it was many centuries before chimneys were commonly used or dampers incorporated so that the heat could be more effectively controlled."
---The Story of Bread, Ronald Sheppard & Edward Newton [Charles T. Branford:Boston MA] 1957 (p. 107-109)

""When I break your staff ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and shall deliver your bread again by weight; and you shall eat, and not be satsified." ---Lev. 26:26. This type of oven may have been a small earthenware cylindar called tannur in the Bible as it is by present-day rural north Africans who still use it. A fire is kindled in the bottom and the dough is slapped against the hot interior walls, yielding curved disks of bread. Many other sorts of oven have been discovered in Israeli excavations. Larger, bi-level ovens have been unearthed which would have been more suitable for baking commercial quantities. They have a top rack to hold the loaves, while the fire below is stoked with "the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven..." (Mt. 6:30). These baking techniques and others were known to the Romans, whose own commercial bakeries were not established unitl a relatively late date (171-168 B.C.). Once Roman administrative genius was applied to even so commonplace a task as breadmaking, the results would be impressive."
---The Bible Cookbook, Daniel S. Cutler [William Morrow:New York] 1985 (p. 371)

"Many kitchens had a oven, furnus, sometimes called a fornax...The oven consisted of a square or dome-shaped hollow construction of brick or stone, with a flat floor, often made of granite, sometimes lava. It was filled with dry twigs when lit. When the flire was spent, the glowing embers were swept aside. The first heat of the glowing oven was suitable for baking unleavened or thin breads. Pizzas are still cooked this way, and this type of oven is still considered best for baking top-quality bread. Thin breads go in first, then large round loaves to in, or meat dishes, and the door is closed. After an hour or so, these are removed, but the oven is still hot, so finer pastries follow, then dishes that require the least heat, such as meringues."
---Around the Roman Table: Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome, Patrick Faas [Palgrave MacMillan:New York] 2003 (p. 132)

Compare with Colonial American ovens,

When did we start baking square-shaped bread in pans?

Food historian Elizabeth David sums this topic up most eloquently:
"Bread baked in pans or tins of uniform shape and capacity was a late development. Indeed, it seems to have been mainly a British one, Holland being the only other European country in which the method is in general use. In France only soft sandwich loaves and rusk bread are baked in tins, provided with a sliding cover so that almost crustless tops and perfectly even shapes are achieved ..Before the advent of mass-produced tinware English household bread was either baked in earthenware crocks glazed on the inside only, or the loaves were hand-moulded and fed into the oven on wooden peels in the ancient manner, as was our bakery bread. In the seventeenth century, deep tin or wooden hoops and, more rarely, round iron cake pans were used for yeast cakes, and there were earthenware dishes for pies, broad tins' for gingerbread, tin patty pans, plates and oven sheets for small cakes, biscuits and confectionery...and occasionally wooden dishes for moulding rolls or small loaves--Robert May [English cookbook author: The Accomplist Cook, 1660] specifies these--but until the turn of the eighteenth century no menion is made in cookery books of tins for bread-baking. That they were in used long before that, probably in the early years of the century, seems certain, but it is Mrs. Rundell, writing in the second editon of A New System of Domestic Cookery (1807), who makes the earliest English cookery book reference I have yet found to tin loaves: If baked in tins the crust will be very nice', says Mrs. Rundell. It is curious to reflect that without those tins we might never have had the sliced wrapped loaf. Dear Mrs Rundell, would she have been quite so pleased with the innovation had she forseen where it was to lead? And how was it that only the Dutch and the English took readily to bread baked in tins while the system was obviously rejected by the rest of Europe? Of course, at the time it muth have seemed wonderfully convenient--it still does--to settle a batch of dough comfortably into space-saving tins, simply cover them with a cloth and transfer them into the heated oven when the dough had risen for the second time. This means much less handling in the shaping of the dough; the tricky notching, cutting or scotching', as the earlier writers called this part of dough management, could be dispensed with; and if the dough had been made up too slack no harm will be done; it would be confined within the walls of the tin and so could not spread and flatten out, but would spring upwards. By the early nineteeth century domestic cooking methods had aleady much changed. In the towns coal ranges with ovens were being installed in kitchens, so the separate bakehouse with its special bread oven was often abolished, and housewives or their cooks no doubt found that in the new ovens bread baked in tins or crocks was more satisfactory than the old hand-moulded crusty' loaves, the all-round exposure to high heat in a small space without radiation from above causing a hard crust to develop before the inner part of the loaf had properly grown...In stpite of the new tins and the new ovens, which certainly didn't become common until after the middle of the nineteenth century, most householders continued to make their bread as they had always done, often taking the prepared dough to a communal oven or to a local bakery to be baked. When Eliza Acton [English Cookbook author: Modern Cookery fo Private Families, 1845] did this at Tonbridge she put her dough into large round earthen crocks, rather shallow, wide at the top and with sloping sides. The tin loaf was given short shrift by Miss Acton. The loaves are technically called bricks, which are baked in tins,' she remarks, are of convenient form for making toast of for slicing bread and butter.' "
---English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David [Penguin:Middlesex] 1979 (p. 206-9)

About yeast
"Yeast has been used in the preparation of food and drink for as long as there have been leavened bread and beer, but it was only in the 19th cnetury, thanks to the work of Pasteur, that its nature was understood...Yeast is a single-celled fungus, of which hundreds of species have been identified. Those of the genera Saccharomyces and Candida are the most useful. The single cells are very small: hundreds of millions to a teaspoonful. Instead of feeding by photosynthesis, as green plants do, they feed on carbohydrates...and excrete alcohol. They breathe air and exhale carbon dioxide...Despite the simplicity of their structure, yeast cells can operate in alternative ways; one that suits bread-making and one that is right for brewers. Given plenty of air and some food, yeast grows fast and produces a lot of carbon dioxide. It is the pressure of this gas which makes the bread rise. Only a little alcohol is formed. However, in a fermentation vat, where there is almost no air but an abundace of food in the form of sugar, the yeast cells change to a different mode, breathing little and concentrating on turning sugar into alcohol. The same species of yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, constitutes both baker's and brewer's yeast...Beer leaven, known as barm, was used for bread-making until quite recent times. The making of beer, black bread, and the alcoholic drink kvass were traditionally linked in Russia...it is no longer true that the same yeast is used for brewing and baking...In addition of fermenting and flavoring other foods, yeasts themselves may also be used as food. They contain much protein and all but one of the B vitamins (B12)...They are consequently used to provide dietary supplements for countries whos diets are deficient in protein."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 855, 857)
[NOTE: according to this source, yeast is also used to make kefir, koumiss, soy sauce, sake, and the fermentation of cocoa to develop the flavor of chocolate.]

• Fermentation
• The science of yeast
• How Stuff Works, yeast
• Progress of the Yeast Industry

BREAD AROUND THE WORLD
If you would like to learn more about the history of bread and how it relates to different cultures ask your librarian to help you find these books:

1. English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David [Penguin:New York] 1977
   ---general oververview and details regarding different types of bread products (muffins, soda bread, scones, etc.)
2. The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999
3. The History of Bread, Bernard Dupaign [Harry N. Abrams:New York] 1999
   ---excellent illustrations, text highlights interesting and unusual facts
4. The History of Food, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat [Barnes & Noble:New York] 1992, Chapter 8 "The History of Bread and Cakes."
   ---best overview of the history, evolution and symbolism of these items.
5. A Mediterranean Feast, Clifford A Wright [William Morrow:New York] 1999 (p. 548-576)
   ---evolution of grain, methods, and popular recipes
6. Nectar and Ambrosia, Tamra Andrews [ABC-CLIO:Santa Barbara] 2000 (p. 41-2)
   ---symbolism of bread in religion and mythology
7. The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999
   ---separate historic entries for specific types of bread
8. World Sourdoughs From Antiquity, Ed Wood [Ten Speed Press:Berkeley] 1997
   ---ancient baking methods & modernized recipes

   Recommended for K-8 lesson plans:

9. Bread and other cultures, University of Pennsylvania
   ---lesson plan for middle schoolers
10. Bread around the World, Oklahoma City Schools, Grade 2
11. Multicultural exploration with bread, University of South Florida, elementary grades
12. Bread Around the World, Jo Ellen Moore & Gary Shipman
    ---Grades 1-3; lesson plan with posters
13. Bread, Bread, Bread, Ann Morris (Foods of the World)
    ---K-3 book; nice photos and simple text, covers 29 countries
14. World Atlas of Food, Jane Grigson [Mitchell Beazely:London] 1974 (p. 50-51)
    ---contains an excellent full-color two page graphic illustrating breads from different countries.
15. You Eat What You Are: People, Culture and Food Traditions, Thelma Barer-Stein [Firefly:Buffalo] 1999
    ---food notes arranged by country, highly recommended.

These are the oldest breads of all. Quickly cooked, extremely delicious, and practically portable, and incredibly versatile. Originating in places where fuel was scarce, flat breads are traditionally baked in portable clay ovens called tandoors. Recipes evolved according to place and taste. Middle eastern pita, Indian naan, and Armenian lavash are three popular examples. New World tortillas are similar products. Flatbreads can be leavened, or not, depending upon the recipe.

Naan

"Naan.
A roti of fine white maida, leavened, rolled out oval in shape, sprinkled with nigella (kalonji) seeds and baked in a tandoor or ordinary oven. Small, mud plastered ovens closely resembling present-day tandoors' have been excavated at Kalibangan, and Indus Valley site. In about AD 1300, Amir Khusrau notes naan-e-tanuk (light bread) and naan-e-tanuri (cooked in a tandoor oven) at the imperial court in Delhi. Naan was in Mughal times a popular breakfast food, accompanied by kheema or kabab, of the humbler Muslims. It is today associated with Punjabis, and is a common restaurant item, rather han a home-made one, all over India."
---A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food, K.T. Achaya [Oxford University Press:Delhi] 1998 (p. 170)

Lavosh, lahvosh, lavash, Armenian cracker bread: a flat bread with ancient roots. According to the food historians, Lavash was/is popular in the Caucasus and neighboring middle-eastern regions. The ancient recipe remains virtually unchanged. Current applications for this bread product reflect a broad range of culinary adaptation and professional creativity. Foodservice professionals agree wraps (of all kinds) are hot. Lavash are baked in tandoor ovens.

"Lavash
a thin crisp bread usually made with wheat flour made in a variety of shapes all over the regions of the Caucasus, Iran (where it is often so thin as to be like tissue and can be almost seen through), and Afghanistan. It is leavened and baked in a tandoor. Lavash is served with kebabs and is used to scoop up food or wrap round food before being eaten...Its origins are ancient and it is also known a lavash depending upon the region. As in the other countries of this region large batches of this bread are made and stored for long periods. "
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 445)

"One of the things that is absolutely compelling about flatbreads is that they are old, really old. Many of the flatbreads eaten today have changed little over the last several thousand years. Flatbreads, such as sanguake in Iran, lavash in Armenia, and fetir made by the Bedouin in Israel, are all of ancient origin. When people first began cultivating grain, flatbreads were an obvious solution to the problem of how to turn hard grain into edible food; the grain could be pounded into flour, mixed with water, and cooked on a hot stone. The earliest method of cooking flatbreads probably involved spreading a dough or a batter over a very hot rock, then peeling the bread off from the rock when it had finished cooking, a method still used by the Hopi in making their remarkable blue corn piki bread. It is also very much like the Bedouin breads from Jordan. Oven-baked flatbreads most likely came into existence not long after, as the idea was essentially the same. Instead of cooking the bread on a rock that had been heated in, or over, a fire, the bread could be baked in a "room" of hot rock or clay that had been preheated with fire. A tandoor oven (an oven of ancient origin still in use all the way from western China to India to Mali in central Africa) operates on this principle. After the oven is preheated, flatbreads (often called naan) are slapped against the hot oven walls, then skillfully lifted off when they are done. Ovens can bake more bread than skillets or stove-top methods, and in a shorter period of time, but they also tend to require more wood, coal, or dried dung, whatever the local fuel resource happens to be. The Bedouin in southern Tunisia and Algeria use an exceptionally low-tech and fuel-efficient baking method. Hot coals are placed into a hole that has been dug into the desert sand. The bakers place flattened pieces of bread dough onto the coals and then cover it with more coals and sand. When the breads are baked (a timing learned only from experience), the sand is pushed aside and the breads lifted out. A few slaps get rid of any sand still clinging to them. For most people who eat flatbreads on a daily basis, the breads are a staff of life. For a villager in north India, a town dweller in Uzbekistan, a Kurdish nomad in eastern Turkey, a day without flatbreads is unthinkable. Flatbreads are a part of every meal, day after day, year after year. "
---By Bread Alone: Ancient Ways Turn Hard Grain into Edible Food, Bergen Record, Feb. 19, 1995 (p. L 5)

LAVASH IN ARMENIA

"There are many different flatbreads baked throughout the easter Mediterranean, the Middle East and India--from pita or naan--but lavash is perhaps the oldest. This bread-in-various shapes and sizes, and in textures ranging from soft and pliable to crisp and crackerlike--is a staple throughout Armenia and in parts of Georgia, Iran, and Lebanon. Armenian lavash has been prepared in the same way for thousands of years: Long sheets of dough are stretched and baked in a clay oven similar to an Indian tandoor. The nomadic peoples crisscrossing Asia knew a good thing when they saw it: A filled and rolled-up lavash sandwich might be the ultimate in picnic fare (easily transportable, its food, eating utensil, and container all in one). Lavash is also delicious served with stews such as Morrocan tagine or an Indian curry, or with a favorite dip."
---The Lowdown on Lavash, Jane Daniels, Gourmet, Sept. 1997 (p. 157)

"Armenians like to eat bread with almost everything, and the two traditional types of bread in Armenia are lavash and matnakash. Lavash is a particular favorite -- flat bread rolled into circles and prepared in earthenware ovens in the ground (tonirs). Lavash is used to wrap Armenian cheese or meat spiced with onions, greens and pepper, and marinated before barbecuing over fire or in a tonir." ---http://www.oneworld.am/armenia/cuisine/

"A selection of Armenian cuisine
Food in Armenia is one of the chief attractions. Each region has its own unique cuisine with its own special flavour. For gourmands the long list of delicious local dishes is provided: kololak, khaplama, tolma, basturma...Lavash - the national thin, paper like bread of Armenians. It is baked in tonyr and they are so transparent that the sunrays pass through them. Armenians use it also as a plate, a saucepan, a spoon. Many dishes are cooked on mild fire, covered with lavash. Traditionally Armenians eat their food folded in lavash."
---Armenian cuisine

Related foods: focaccia, pizza & pancakes/crepes.

What is a tandoor oven?
The classic oven used by peoples of India from ancient times to present (including the Medieval period) is called a tandoor. This special oven can be used to cook a variety of foods, including bread.

Tandoor. The middle Eastern clay oven, found from Arab countries to India. The original Babylonian form of the name, timuru, is probably related to nar, the Semitic word for fire...In the tandoor, the breads (necessarily flat in shape) are slapped onto the vertical wall, where they bake quite quickly by a combination of radiant heat and convection. After the day's bread-making, casseroles and other dishes may be baked in a tandoor (as in a brick oven) to use the residual heat. In cold climates, the tandoor also heats the house, like the hearth in Europe...In the Middle Ages, skewered meats were more often roasted in a tandoor than over burning coals, as they still are in Central Asia. Tandoor meat cookery has been popular in India since 1948, when a Kashmiri restaurant named Moti Mahal became a fashionable dining spot for politicians in New Delhi. As a result, Indian tandoor restaurants have sprung up all around the world."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davison [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 781)

"In India the processes of baking, roasting, and grilling are all achieved by tandoori cooking. This is because the food is prepared in a tandoor, which simultaneously bakes, roasts, and grills. The tandoor is believed to have originated in the northeastern part of Persia (present-day Iran). Its use spread to different parts of the continent with migrations, and as a result, today the tandoor is used in all of Central Asia...In India the tandoor was initially built for the purpose of baking breads (still its main use). The dough is stretched and shaped into flat breads and smacked onto the sides of the pit, to which it adheres. It puffs up and bakes in 7 to 10 minutes. The cooked breads are then peeled off gently with long metal skewers specially designed for this purpose. In the earlier part of the nineteenth cnetury, in Peshawar, a city in the northwest frontier region of Pakistan (the part of India), an ingenious method for cooking meat was invented and introduced. Today, it has become one of the most popular cooking methods in India. In this process, whole chickens and large chunks of lamb were threaded on specially designed long skewers, lowered into the tandoor pit, and cooked. Any food thus cooked was referred to as tandoori food...Just about any meat that can be threaded on skewers can be cooked in a tandoor."
---Classic Indian Cooking, Julie Sahni [William Morrow:New York] 1980 (p. 80-1)
[NOTE: This book also cotains recipes for classic Indian breads, though no additional history or reference to Medieval times.]

"Tandoor. At the Indus Valley site of Kalibangan were found small, mudplastered ovens with a side opening 'very strongly resembling the present-day 'tandoors'. Live embers are placed at the bottom and fanned briskly so that they glow, raising the temperature of the clay sides. Thick, slighly leavened wheat rotis called naan and tandoori are slapped on to the sides to cook, with some puffing and surface charring in patches. Meat and fish can also be tandoor-grilled."
---A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food, K.T. Achaya [Oxford University Press:Delhi] 1998 (p. 247)

"A tandoor is shaped rather like the juge jar in which Ali Baba hid from the Forty Thieves. It is usually sunk neck-deep in the ground or, if built above ground, is heavily insulated on the outside with a thick layer of plaster. The charcoal fire on the flat bottom of the jar should heat the sides of the tandoor to a scorching point about halfway up, and to a hot glow for the rest, diminishing, of course, near the neck. To achieve this particular distribution of heat, the tandoor has to be lit at least two hours before anything is cooked in it, and longer if it is not frequently used."
---Foods of the World: The Cooking of India, Santha Rama Rau, [Time-Life:New York] 1969 (p. 138)

Food historians confirm bread has been baked in clay vessels from ancient times forward. Clay vessels were also used for slow cooking meats and stews in several cultures and cuisines. The Indian tandoor is one of the popular examples. Clay pots & ovens were an efficient, effective, and economical way to cook. Flower bread is indeed a modern twist on a very old theme!

About baking with clay:

"The earliest method of baking bread was to place lumps of dough, unleavened, on hot stones in the embers of a wood fire, and leave them to cook until they were hard. In other words it was the bakestone sytem, and after countless thousands of years it still survives...Baking on stones was followed...as early as the Bronze Age in Europe by the method of inverting a pot over the bread and surrounding this pot oven with hot embers. By this means the bread was protected from the ashes, and the covering pot drew the dough upwards, so that, even before the discovery of leavening, it would rise slighty, and lighter bread resulted. The inverted-pot system was certainly still quite commonly used in Britain less than a century ago...Another baking utensil similar in effect to the inverted iron pot was the dome-shaped clay cooking bell evolved by the earliest potters of Greece...This agian, or something like it in metal, has survived until today, and very useful it is. Oven proper seen to have come into being as a means of combining the hearth or baking stone and the covering pot in one single fixed construction, some of the earliest ovens having an opening at the apex through which the bread could be introduced The opening was sealed with stones or pieces of clay, and live embers piled up all round and over the oven. The crude beehive-shaped or tunnel-like clay ovens with a front opening which developed later provided a more satisfactory way of feeding the bread into the oven...the brick-built oven with tile floor, as distinct from the archaic little clay oven, which probably originated sometime betweeen 3000 and 1800 B.C.. Like the Athenian cooking bell and the primitive quern, the rough clay oven had its counterparts for several thousand years, among its descendants being our own seventeeth-century Devon gravel-tempered clay oven walls...These crude ovens differ hardly at all in form from those of the Neolithic Age."
---English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David, American edition with notes by Karen Hess [Penguin:New York] 1980 (p. 155-7)

"...fireclay ovens were not invariably built into the wall but sometimes left free-standing...'They make such use here... of Cloume ovens, which are earthenware of several sizes, like an oven, and being heated they stop em up and cover em over with embers to keep in the heat.'."
---ibid, (p. 178)

"It was the Egyptians who first used a manufactured portable oven. This was a beehive-or barrel-shaped container of baked clay, usually divided into two by a central horizontal partition. The lower section formed the fire-box in which were burned pieces of dried wood, often taken from the Nile, or even dried animal dung. The upper part accessible from the top, was the baking chamber."
---The Story of Bread, Ronald Sheppard & Edward Newton [Routledge & Kegan Paul:London] 1957 (p. 107)

"Baking an unleavened loaf under a pot, rather than on a bakestone or griddle, would draw the dough upwards so that it would rise slightly, resulting in lighter bread."
---Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food: Processing and Consumption, Ann Hagen [Anglo-Saxon Books:Norfolk] 1992 (p. 15) "Baking: Hearthes & Ovens

In Asser's version of the story of Alfred and the ‘cales', loaves are burning at the fire; in the Claude MS. The loaves are on a pan with the fire underneath, while Matthew of Westminster's version has the bread under the ashes of the fire to bake. Axbakenne hlaf and heorobacen hlaf are two variants in translations of Gregory's Dialogues. One of the leechdoms instructs ‘bake him a warm loaf on the hearth'....but another prescribes ‘an oven-baked loaf'...Ovens were enclosed--in their simplest form an inverted pot covered with embers. A clay-lined oven had been built into the chalk rubble walls of what was evidently a cooking hut on the sixth/seventh-century site at Puddlehill, Beds...Monastic and other large establishments of the middle period had bakehouses...However, in a peasant's household bread would presumably still have been baked at the hearth fire."
---ibid, (p. 17-18)

Our survey of contemporary U.S. magazine/newspaper articles indicates the resurgance of interest in clay baking in the early 1980s. La Cloche brand stoneware [Sassafras Entertrpises, Inc.] containers were marketed to upscale consumers in high end gourmet supply shops.

Where does Flower Pot Bread fit in?
Our research indicates this novelty baked good became popular in the late 1960s. We do not find any particular person, place, or restaurant credited for the "invention" of this loaf. Early print references in British souces may indicate the item originated there. The use of cracked wheat and other natural grains connects some flower pot bread recipes with the "back to nature" health food movement du jour.

"Terracotta flower pots make admirable bread moulds. Anyone who still possesses some of these now nearly obsolete pots may like to try the following method. The best size of a pot for a loaf is 5 1/2 inches in diameter by 4 1/2 inches deep. First temper the pots for baking by coating them liberally outside and inside with oil and leaving them empty in the oven while bread or something else is baking at a fairly high temperature. Do this two or three times. Once they are well impregnated with oil the pots will need very little greasing, and the baked loaves will slip out of the pots without the slightest sign of sticking...The trick about making good flowerpot bread is to bake the loaves upside down. This is easier than it sounds: when the dough has fully risen for the second time, break it down, knead it very thorougly and divide it into two equal pieces. Shape and fit each into a warmed and greased flower pot...What hapens when the loaves are under the flower pots is that during the first few minutes of baking the dough springs up and fills the pot, producing a perfectly even and well formed loaf, whereas if the pot is put upright into the oven in the normal way the dough rises unevenly over the top, making an untidy loaf with a mushroom top which often sticks to the sides of the pot...Cracked wheat or coarse oatmeal can be scattered at the bottom of the pots and on the sides before the dough is put in."
---English Bread & Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David, American Edition with notes by Karen Hess [Penguin:New York] 1980 (p. 309-310)
[NOTE: Complete instructions & recipe for flowerpot bread are also found on these pages. We can fax or scan if you like.]

"A few years ago an attractive-looking propriety brown loaf, baked in a flower-pot shape, the outside scattered with cracked wheat grains was commony sold by London bakers and dairy shops. This loaf seems to have vanished..."
---ibid, (p. 73)

"Puffy, light whole wheat breads are displayed in real clay flower pots. Baked by Britisher Heather Linsley Ross--in her New York apartment--the flowerpot breads are selling fantastically well as centerpieces."
---"Food with a Homespun Flavor," Rosalie Greenfield, new York Times, November 21, 1971 (p. E6)

The oldeset recipe we have (in an American source) is dated 1969:

"Flower Pot Bread
2 cups milk
3 tbsp. sugar
3 tbsp. shortening
3 tsp. salt
1 cup lukewarm water
2 tsp. sugar
2 env. dry yeast
6 cups sifted flour
Melted shortening
Wash and thoroughly grease three red clay flowerpots 5-in. wide and 5-in. deep. Bake pots at 375 deg. 5 to 10 min. Repeat the process. Scald milk in saucpan. Remove from heat and add 3 tbsp. sugar, shortening and salt. Stir until shortening is melted, then cool to lukewarm. Combine lukewarm milk, then stir in 4 cups flour and beat well. Add remaining flour and mix well. This is a sticky dough. Turn dough into a greased bowl and brush top with melted shortening. Cover with waxed paper and towel and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled, about 30 to 45 min. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead lightly. Divide dough into three equal parts and place in well-greased flower pots. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk. Bake at 375 deg. 35 to 40 min. with a double thickness of foil on oven rack under pots. Serve in pots using real or fak flowers "growing" from them. Makes 3 loaves."
---"Flower Pot Bread on Spring Menu," Amy Vanderbilt, Los Angeles Times, May 29, 1969 (p. F8)

Related foods? Pitta & pizza.

• The Culinary Institute of America
• French Culinary Institute
• Artisan Bakers
• La Brea Bakery
• Daniel's Rustic Breads

Secret History of Bagels/The Atlantic
History of the Bagel: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans
Bagel statistics--from the American Institute of Baking.

Recommended reading: The Bagel: The Suprising History of a Modest Bread/Maria Balinska

Food historians tell us bread was "invented" in 10,000BC. Techniques spread throughout the world and evolved according to custom, cuisine, and local grain. Baguette, the hard crusty loaf we currently associate with France dates only to the Industrial Revolution. Steam ovens, made possible by scientific advancement, are key in the manufacture of this particular bread. In fact? Baguette is not French at all...it was invented by the bakers of Vienna.

"A baguette is a long thin loaf of French bread of the type more commonly known in English as 'French stick', or more vaguely still, as 'French loaf'. The term has become increasingly familiar in English since the 1960s. It means literally 'littlerod', and is a diminutive form derived ultimately from Latin 'baculum', 'stick staff'."
---An A-Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 15-6)

"Notes on French Bread. For nearly all English people who have ever set foot in France, the words French bread' evoke a golden-brown baguette or a long thin ficelle, the crust crisp and sweet with its characteristic leaf-shaped surface cuts, the crumb white and pitted with irregular holes, many of them very large. To us, the holes are a part of the proper character of this kind of bread...the French do use a good deal of soft flour, because that is what is produced from the wheat grown in France. So they have long ago adapted their bread techniques to their flour. Or rather, what they adapted was the 'Vienna' technique, and this didn't happen until some time in the mid nineteenth cnetury; it was the Viennese oven, with its steam injectors and its sloping floor, or sole, which was mainly responsible for creating the tradition of French bread as we know it today. English bakers, and indeed many of the older French ones, still call this type of bread 'Vienna' bread, the true French bread being the old round or cylindrical hand-shaped 'pain de campagne' or pain de menage', plump, and crossed with cuts to that when baked the crust is of many different shades, gradations and textures and the crumb rather open and coarse. It is this bread which is now enjoying something of a revival in France, perhaps because the Vienna type has not taken very kindly to the short-time dough maturing and the rapid mechanical kneading and moulding techniques of the 1970s, partly because a well made 'pain de campagne' keeps much better than baguette' loves, which is to day that it will stay moist for as long as two days, even three, whereas the long, crusty, thin loaf is, as we know, stale within an hour of emerging from the oven, and for the French three days is a long time to keep a loaf of bread."
---English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David [Penguin:Middlesex] 1979 (p. 363-4)
[NOTE: This book contains far more information on the history and evolution of French bread than can be paraphrased here. Ask your librarian to help you find a copy.]

A survey of 19th-20th century American cookbooks reveal some recipes for French bread but none for baguette. This might imply this is the provence of the professional baker. This professional baking text confirms:

"Remarks concerning hearth breads--Vienna bread, French bread, Hard crust rolls.
Vienna Bread which is made by either the Straight or Sponge-Dough method, differs in nearly every shop, and in many bakeries is far from being the genuine article. It requires a semi-tight dough and more age than for Pan Bread. Likewise for best results, a good supply of low pressure steam for the oven is indispensible. It was the carefulness of the Vienna baker, together with the good material employed, that made his loaf famous. It is chiefly care and workmanship that give Vienna bread its quality. After the loaves are moulded, they are laid, smooth side down, on cloth-covered boards, with the cloth pinched up between the loaves, and allowed to rest until double in size; then cut and baked with a good supply of steam. If no steam is available, wash with water before cutting the loaves. Other bakers lay the loaves in boxes or on boards in specially built covers, dusting the boards with corn flour, rice polish, flour or finely ground bread crumbs, setting the loaves far enough apart to prevent sticking. If boxes or boards are used in this manner, loaves must be laid smooth side up....French Bread is handled in much the same manner, only it requires a softer dough. Hard crust Rolls can be made to good advantage from either French or Vienna dough."
---A Treatise on Baking, Julius E. Wilfahart [Fleischman Division, Standard Brands Incorporated:New York] 1927 (p. 356-7)
[NOTE: (1) The 1907 edition of this book contains a brief reference to Vienna bread which is greatly expanded in this edition.]

There is a rumor that Napoleon ordered his bakers to make long, thin loaves so they could be transported in his soldier's pants. According to the food historians this is not true:

"The baguette was said to have been invented during Napoleon's Russian campaign when he ordered a new shape of bread that could be carried down his troops' trouser legs. In fact, it was introduced in the 1920s after a new law banned bakers from working before 4am. They did not have enough time to bake a fresh boule for breakfast, so they created the baguette."
---"Marching on its stomach," Sam Coates, The Times (London), August 19, 2004, Home news; 6

"American hyperbole is selling French bread abroad and, as the subsequent article shows, American beer even in Munich. Upon entering a boulangerie, the mastery of a good French baker is mouth-wateringly apparent from the buttery croissants and pains au chocolat displayed at child's-eye level. The baguettes are stacked high behind the counter, their crusts crackling softly as the heat seeps out of them. Lately this has become a moveable feast. Boulangeries have appeared in cities across the world: Au Bon Pain in the United States, D(acute)elifrance across Asia as well as countless patisseries in Europe. Of course, such establishments also sell other breads, and cakes. But they deal chiefly in authenticity, wrapping themselves in the tricolore, boasting in cute French phrases of baguettes made from French flour kneaded by French hands. Sometimes they try even harder to establish their pedigree. The baguette was invented during Napoleon's campaign in Russia, gushes the blurb of one. Traditional round loaves took up space needed for extra clothes. Napoleon therefore ordered a new shape of bread to be designed that could be carried down the soldiers' trouser-legs. What a load of old brioche. The ingredients might come from France, but the marketing is straight from Madison Avenue. The baguette is unmistakably French. It is also often delicious. But it is not that much more traditional than the TGV express trains that slice their way through the French countryside. The French word for baker is boulanger, he who makes boules, or round loaves, not a "baguettier" who makes sticks. In fact the baguette dates back to the 1920s, and its progress has done to traditional French baking what the white sliced has done to the British loaf. Changing technology was partly responsible for the baguette's introduction. By the 1920s most French bakeries were equipped with the steam ovens needed to caramelise the starch on the surface of the loaf to give it a golden, slightly translucent crust. History also played a part. The first world war created a shortage of manpower and traditional loaves prepared from a sourdough became too labour-intensive for many bakers. But the coup de gr(circumflex)ace was legal. In October 1920 a new law came into force that prevented bakers from working before 4am, which meant that they did not have time to bake a fresh boule for the breakfast table. They thus turned to the rapidly prepared baguette. The baguette was a wow. Bakers liked it because it was convenient to make and stayed fresh for only a few hours. Hence customers visited bakeries two or three times a day. Consumers liked the baguette because it is whiter and sweeter than sourdough breads. As the flour got whiter, the proving accelerated and the crumb became more like cotton-wool, France's traditional breads, once almost as numerous as its cheeses, were forgotten. And yet, just as the baguette is waging a campaign of Napoleonic proportions in international markets, at home there has been something of a revival of traditional baking. Elizabeth David noted the trend as far back as the late 1970s, in her classic book on bread and yeast cookery. In France itself, Lionel Poil (circumflex) ane, a baker on the Left Bank in Paris, has built a career--and a business--baking loaves in the traditional 19th-century way, with a rich, slightly sour flavour."
--- "French bread abroad. Sold with an American accent," The Economist, September 27, 1997, U.S. Edition, MOREOVER section

In 1993 the French government officially defined baguette. Additional investigations, courtesy of Jim Chevallier.

[1830]
Brown Bread, American Frugal Housewife/Lydia Maria Child

[1884]
Raised Brown Bread, Boston Cooking School Cook Book/Mrs. D.A. Lincoln
(next page has recipes for sour milk brown bread)

[1896]
Boston Brown Bread, Boston Cooking School Cook Book/Fannie Merritt Farmer

[1914]
"A Brown Bread Recipe
1 cup Aristos Flour
2 cups graham flour
2 cups Indian meal
1 teapoon soda
1 cup molasses
3 1/2 cups milk
A little salt
Beat well and steam for four hours. This is for sour milk; when sweet milk is used use baking powder in place of soda."
---dislpay ad, Aristos [brand] flour, Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette [IN], March 8, 1914 (p. 8)

[1936]
"Boston Brown Bread.
Combine:
1 cup yellow corn meal
1 cup rye flour
1 cup graham flour
3/4 tablespoon soda
1 teaspoon salt
Combine in a separate bowl:
2 cups sour milk
3/4 cup molasses
1 cup chopped raisins
Add the liquid to the dry ingredients. Pour the batter into a buttered mold. Fill it 2/3 full. Steam it for 3 1/2 hours...This batter may be steamed in smaller molds or baking powder cans for 1 1/2 to 2 hours."
---Joy of Cooking, Irma S. Rombauer [Bobbs-Merrill:Indianapolis IN] 1936 (p. 324)

Campaillou is a contemporary artisan French sourdough bread composed in the rustic style. The concept is ancient; the modern product is a brilliant marketing coup. Back to (delicious!) basics. Campaillou is generally is described as "light rye sourdough." About sourdough.

Although Campaillou's concept is ancient, the earliest print references we find to breads with this name are from the early 1990s. This coincides with the birth of the artisan (aka artisanal) bread movement. We find no references to Campaillou in Larousse Gastronomique (1938, 1961, 2001), Julia Child's cookbooks, Beard on Bread/James Beard or other bread history books.

Qu'est-ce que Campaillou? Descriptions & photos I & II

Campaillou in the news:

""Maison Blanc started 10 years ago because we couldn't find decent French bread anywhere in Britain and we needed it for the restaurant," says Jenny Blanc, who was then partner with her former husband, the chef Raymond Blanc. "When we started, there wasn't a part-baked frozen or ready-to-cook petit pain in the shops and supermarkets didn't even sell croissants. Now you can buy them anywhere, albeit many are frightful. "Opening the bakery was something of a landmark. It became so successful because it was the first real taste in Britain of a genuine French product." Until then, "French" loaves in Britain had been made with English or Canadian flour by British bakers. The Blancs set out to import French flour. They could then offer authentic French bread made with French flour by French bakers. "We still buy from our original suppliers. We were their first customer in the UK, now they have lots more. It wasn't difficult getting them to deliver, but we had to take a large consignment, three or four months' supply. Now they've got a depot and an office and everything in this country and we get supplies weekly. "Originally we ran the bakery more as a hobby, because our main interest was in the hotel and restaurant. Then, about two years ago, when the business was divided, I decided to develop it because there is now such a demand for speciality breads."..."Baguettes are still our best sellers. In addition, everyone is looking for something that says health and quality and looks rustic. The traditional French flours we use don't contain any additives." It is only the flours for the English breads made at Maison Blanc that contain any improvers.Four bakers, under chef boulanger Olivier Bileau, make the 42 different types of loaves and rolls produced in the bakery every night. They start work at about 7pm to make the bread doughs, prove, shape and then bake the loaves in one of three ovens. The speciality French breads go into either a rack oven or a flat oven and the English tin and cob loaves in a standard baker's oven. The doughs are mixed by machine but every French loaf, except the baguettes, is shaped by hand. A loaf from Maison Blanc takes about five hours to make. The paysan, cereale, Parisien, campagne, campailloum seigle, tournesol, bavarois rye, pain de son, pain a l'oignon, country grain, marbre and various pains aux raisins and olives are more-or-less round or oval. The pain aux noix has a curious flat top, made by rolling a flat edge from the basic round and folding it back over the loaf. The tresse is a dextrously executed plait dressed with poppy seeds and the meule couronne a crown-shaped baguette. The rolls are in different shapes, including the Maison's mini Oxfordian which started life in the shape of a mortarboard but has now evolved into a plump roll with a cross cut in the top. There is also a hybrid flat ciabatta made with French flour but light golden, less floury than many and delicious. The baguettes - batard, couronne, Parisien, tresse - are made with meule flour, a coarsely stoneground unbleached white flour from the Beauce region. Cereale is a mix of four flours: rye, barley, oats and rice plus wheatgerm and rye. Campagne is a light white bread; marbre a marbled mix of doughs from rye and campagne flours; country grain contains rye, oats, rice, wheat, maize and buckwheat flours and sesame and sunflower seeds. Campaillou contains some sourdough starter along with the yeast and is crusty and moist. Tournesol is a wheat and rye flour with sunflower seeds; pain de son has added bran and is covered in crushed bran. "We've always had a core of French bakers, but we have had one or two good English bakers who have picked up the French techniques very well. Patisserie is another matter. It is many years of training, more difficult and all our patissiers are French," says Jenny Blanc. She has a cordon bleu training. "I spent several years cooking in my parents' hotel, the Rose Revived at Newbridge, a lovely little Cotswold hotel and restaurant on the river. But my experience is really on the business side and I don't cook now."---"Boom-time catering to the upper crust - Maison Blanc. (1 of 2)," By Janette Marshall, The Independent - London, 6 April 1991 (p. 35) "Brakes has turned to traditional breadmaking methods to produce its new range of part-baked Artisan Breads aimed at providing a premium bread offering for operators wanting to add variety, quality and a point of difference without the hassle or skill involved in making it from scratch. The breads are made using natural and premium ingredients such as spelt, Campaillou and Camp Remy flours. Some are bulk-fermented for up to eight hours, a process which reduces the need for yeast and allows the flavours to develop and spread throughout the dough. The dough is then stone-baked, which gives the bread a strong crust and unique appearance. Those launched under the Real French brand are made in France from wheat grown a minimum of half-a-mile from any roads."
---"Daily bread," Caterer & Hotelkeeper 22 February 2007

"Euro doughs Traditional breadmaking methods are the mark of Brakes Premier Artisan Bread Range of part-baked breads that require just a few minutes in the oven. They are bulk-fermented for up to eight hours to reduce the need for yeast and to allow the traditional flavours and ingredients to spread through the dough. The dough is carefully handled to retain air, and stone-baked for a strong crust and deep flavour.Four lines under the Real French brand are made from wheat grown a quarter-of-a-mile from any road. They include Pavé Rustique Pavé Rustique Multi-Cereals, with brown and yellow linseed, sesame and sunflower seeds and an oat flake finish the hand-finished, chewy Baguette Artisan, made from rich Camp Rémy flour and the Artisan Bread Selection, which includes lines made from a 50-year-old starter dough.Other breads include Focaccia, an Olive Bloomer, a hand-cut, Soil Association-certified Organic Bloomer, using organic and malt wheat flour, and the Campagne Rye Boule, a blend of French wheat, light rye and Campaillou flour. Pack sizes range from 10 to 30 rolls."
---"Buy It: Baking sense," Caterer & Hotelkeeper, 26 June 2008

What is challah? (includes picture)

Thrifty cooks have been finding creative ways for using up stale bread since the beginning of time. The connection between stale bread and soup dates to the Medieval times, when soup was served in sops (pieces of stale bread). French onion soup is classically topped with a crust of stale bread

Croutons, purposely spiced and gently toasted, are more refined twist on this culinary theme. One might reasonably argue croutons were inspired by biscotti and other ancient twice baked goods.

"Crouton. Derived from the French crouton, has been an English word since early in the 19th century, whereas two other connected French culinary terms, croute and croustade, have remained French...All these terms derive from the Latin word crusta, meaning 'shell'. Thus the outside of a loaf of bread is the crust or croute. Crouton, the diminutive form, usually refers to the familiar little cubes of toasted or fried bread which might originally have been cut from a crust...It first appears in French in the 17th century when it is described as 'a little piece of bread crust served with drinks'. In recent times, croutons are often added to fish soups, and occasionally to certain salads."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 229)

"Croutes for soup. Thick slices of French bread (flute) which have been partly hollowed out or cut in two lengthways and dried in the oven. Croutes are served with all kinds of soups, usually separately, either plain, garnished or filled...In the Middle Ages, the thin slices of bread soaked in stock, wine or milk, which were served with gruels or liquid stews, were called soupes. Later the name croute was given to lightly browned slices of bread served after the soup: these were coated with puree, garnished with crayfish or asparagus tips, and moistened with partridge gravy or cooked au gratin using Parmesan cheese."
---Larousse Gastronomique, Completely Revised and Updated edition [Clarkson Potter:New York] 2001 (p. 380)

The Larousse de la Langue Francaise [Librarie Larousse:Paris, 1969 ] traces the word crouton in French print to 1596. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the oldest instance of the word crouton in [English] is 1806.

You can view several 19th century crouton recipes published in American cookbooks courtesy of Michigan State University's digital cookbook collection (recipe search: crouton).

True Irish soda bread seems to have originated in the mid-19th century, when bicarbonate of soda was first used as a leavening agent. Prior to this time, similar breads were made with sourdough and barm brack, yeast created by fermenting ale. About leavening agents.

"Soda bread...The bread has been a particular speciality of Ireland since the late 19th century. In Ireland the use of bicarbonate of soda or bread soda in bread-making was commonplace by the 1840s and certainly by the second half of the 19th century soda bread had become an established feature of the Irish diet. Its popularity can in part be attributed to the fact that rurual Ireland did not have a strong tradition of yeast bread manufacture. Until the late 19th century bread-making was considered an entirely domestic procedure and executed with a limited range of utensils; the pot oven or bastible and the flat iron griddle. These utensils were ideally suited to soda bread preparation and the soda itself provided a convenient, storable, and predictable leaven regardless of the strength or weakness of the flour...Traditionally a cross was cut into the dough, which helped in the even baking of the bread and assisted in the quartering of the loaf afterward...
---The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999(p. 732)

"Soda Breads. Quickly made breads, griddle cakes and scones with bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar or tartaric acid became popular in Ireland, Scotland and England well over a hundred years ago. The properties of chemical raising agents had been appreciated early in the nineteenth century, and experiments with commercially practical formulas had been successful during the 1850s, and earlier...At first, chemical mixes seem to have been used mainly to lighten home-made biscuits, girdle scones, oatcakes, and other bakestone products which had previously been made without any benefit of any aerating agen. It was only later, after they had been much advertised as yeast powder, dried yeast, yeast substitute, that housewives began to think that chemical mixtures could...replace fresh yeast in their tea cake, spice cake and bread recipes...At that period, German or compressed yeast, much like the bakers yeast we know today, was increasingly replacing the old ale yeasts and barms, as was very generally known, although incorrectly, as dried yeast...It is try that well-made Irish soda bread, baked over a peat fire and with meal ground from soft Irish wheat unblended with imported high gluten grain, is unsurpassed for flavour. The draweback with these breads, even when made in ideal conditions, is that they quickly become dry, so are only at their best when freshly baked..."
---English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David [Penguin:Middlesex England] 1977 (p. 517-8)
[NOTE: This book is considered THE source for information on all types of bread cookery, including yeast and barm. Historic recipes are included. Ask your librarian to help you find a copy.]

How was Irish bread leavened prior to sodium carbonate?
"One of the oldest of all leavens is the sourdough method, and like many great discoveries it probably came about by accident. An old fable describes what happened. Long ago in the "stone age" when a woman made bread by the simple expedient of mixing ground corn and water together and baking the dough on hot stones or in the fire, a gound girl had just put down a loaf to bake when her lover invited her to go on a hunting trip. Off she sped, leaving the mixing bowl unwashed. When next she went to mix a cake in the bowl, a lump of sour fermented dough from the last baking was mixed in with the new dough. The result, of course, was delicious spongy bread which gained her the reputation of being the best bread-maker in Ireland, to her immense satisfaction. Even her lover had to admit that she was a better cook than his mother. Barm beer or liquid yeast obtained from beer-brewing was used from early times. Sowans (fermented juice of oat husks) was another traditional leaven, as was potato juice (potatoes grated and the juice allowed to turn sour). Bread soda, which would act not only as a leavening agent, but create the traditional soda bread, did not come into use until the first half of the 19th century. Cream of tartar and commercial baking powders continue to be used down to the present time."
---Land of Milk and Honey: The Story of Traditional Irisn Food and Drink, Brid Mahon [Mercier Press:Boulder CO] 1998 (p. 73-4)

"Surprisingly it was not until the first half of the 19th century that bicarbonate of soda was introduced, enabling cooks to bake the wide range of soda breads for which Ireland is so now famous."
---Irish Abroad [includes recipes]

Related food? Election cake.

Monkey bread (aka pull-apart bread, bubble bread, Christmas morning delights) is descended from traditional sweet, yeast rolls with centuries of history. Food historians tell us the first peoples to make sweet, buttery rolls with cinnamon were ancient Middle Eastern cooks. These recipes and spices traveled to Europe in the Middle Ages with crusaders, travellers, traders and explorers. Recipes varied according to culture and cuisine, but the concept remained stable. German kuchen, French galette, Pennsylvania Dutch sticky buns, and monkey bread all descended from these old recipes.

Culinary evidence confirms the practice of combining little balls of dough in one pan for cooking was popular in the mid-19th century. Parker House rolls are perhaps one of the best known examples. Pioneers and cowboys also favored one-pot baked goods because they adapted easily to portable Dutch ovens. Early-mid 20th century American cookbooks are full of recipes for refrigerator rolls; dough chilled overnight which could be used to make breads of many shapes and flavors. "Clover leaf" rolls with cinnamon and butter toppings were common. Monkey bread became popular (by that name) in the 1980s, presumably because Nancy Reagan served them at the White House. The earliest mention we find for monkey bread in the New York Times was printed in 1976.

How did monkey bread get its name? Food historians offer several theories (see below). All are interesting; none are definative.

"Monkey bread. This pull-apart yeast bread, also known as "bubble loaf," began showing up in women's magazines and community cookbooks back in the 1950s. There are two types, a savory and a sweet...The sweet is also known a bubble loaf because the dough is pinched off and rolled into balls. These are dipped in melted butter and then layered into the pan with a flavoured sugar mixture or a caramel or brown sugar glaze."
---American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century, Jean Anderson [Clarkson Potter:New York] 1997 (p. 312)

"Monkey bread. A sweet yeast bread, sometimes mixed with currants, formed from balls of dough, laid next to one another, which combine during baking. The origin of the name is unknown, though it has been suggested that the bread resembles the monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana), whose prickly branches make it difficult to climb. There is also a fruit called "monkey bread," from the baobab tree...of Africa, but there is not evidence of any connection between it and baked bread. It is probably that the name comes from the appearance of the baked itself, which resembles a bunch on monkeys jumbled together."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 208)
[NOTE: According to the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition) the term "monkey-bread," meaning the fruit of the baobab tree, dates in print to 1789.]

"Since monkeys are known for gleefully pulling at, well, everything, it makes sense that an audience-participation loaf should be called monkey bread. Formed of balls of dough and baked in a ring mold, monkey bread emerges as golden puffs that are irresistible to both hand and eye. The idea is that you pick it apart like a bunch of . . . that it's more fun than a barrel of. . . . You get the idea. (The actual cucumber-shaped fruit of the baobab tree that goes by the same name isn't much good to anyone except its namesake -- unless you're in the market for a float to hold up your fishing nets.) With a kind of simian stealth, monkey bread has entered American cuisine, not through high-end restaurants but via the food pages of newspapers across the country and Internet chat rooms. Cindy Crawford prepared her family's version on "Good Morning America" just in time for Christmas 1999, and even in this carb-abhoring age when Dr. Atkins rules supreme, it was one of the two most requested recipes of 2002 from the Chicago Sun-Times Swap Shop column. Variations range from those heavily sweetened with pecans and cinnamon, a virtual coffee cake, to ones with blueberries, butterscotch and even Parmesan cheese, garlic and herbs. But we're not exactly talking haute cuisine. Way too many versions use frozen biscuit dough, and many encourage the participation of children in the cooking as well as the eating. But while no four-star chef seems to have proclaimed his devotion to monkey bread, there is one exemplar of high style and taste who has happily attached her name to this confection. Nancy Reagan served monkey bread in the White House, especially during the holidays, and her recipe was printed in the American Cancer Society Cookbook, published in 1985. Not surprisingly, her version is monkey bread at its purest and most elegant: buttery and yeasty, as much brioche as bread."
---"Just Say Dough," Michael Boodro, The New York Times, February 23, 2003 (Section 6; Page 64)

"The origin of the name "monkey bread" is anyone's guess. One reader wrote that the name is derived from the amount of "monkeying around" needed to prepare the balls of dough. Another theory comes from the notion of pulling apart the sections of cake and playing with your food in monkey-like fashion."
---"Pull for perfection; Irresistible monkey bread is worth the extra fuss," Jim Frost, Chicago Sun-Times, July 16, 1997, (Pg. 2; NP)

Nancy Reagan's recipe circa 1980s:

"Monkey bread.
Dissolve 1 pkg. Dry yeast in 1/2 c. Milk. Add 2 eggs, beat, then mix in 3 T. Sugar, 1 T. Salt, 3 1/2 c. Flour, and 1 c. Milk, and blend thoroughly. Cut in 6 oz. Butter, knead well, and let rise to double. Knead again, let rise again for 40 min. Roll dough onto floured board, shape into a log, and cut into 28 pieces. Shape each piece of dough into ball and roll in 1/2 lb. Melted butter. Butter and flour two 9-in. Ring molds, place 7 balls of dough in each mold, place remaining balls of dough on top, and let rise again. Brush tops with 1 beaten egg, bake for 15 min. At 375 degrees F."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 208)

Compare with the roll making instructions published in the Boston Cooking School Cook Book/Mrs. D.A. Lincoln, circa 1880s

About French sourdough

""For nearly all English people who have ever set foot in France, the words 'French Bread' evoke a golden-brown baguette...English bakers, and indeed many of the older French ones, still call this type of bread 'Vienna' bread, the true French bread being the old round or cylindrical and-shaped pain de campagne or pain de menage, plumb and crossed with cuts so that when baked the crust if of many different shades, gradations and textures and the crumb rather open and coarse. It is this bread which is now enjoying something of a revival in France, perhaps because the Vienna types has not taken very kindly to the short-time dough maturing and the rapid mechanical kneading and moulding techniques of the 1970s, partly because a well-made pain de campagne keeps much better than baguette loaves, which is to say that it will stay moist for as long as two days, even three, whereas the long, crusty, thin loaf is, as we know, stale within an hour of emerging from the oven, and for the French three days is a long time to keep a loaf of bread..."
---English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David [Penguin:Middlesex] 1977 (p. 362-364)

""I have myself also found, in spite of the delicious qualities of the baguette loaf at its best, that pain de campagne, nowadays made with wheat flour, and often on the leaven system, can be much better. In small town and village bakeries in the Nivernais, in the Auvergne, in the Ardeche and in the Jura, I have found big round loaves so good and whith a flavour and texture so unlike any others in their true savour and their incomparable scent that it is this bread that I would make, were it feasible, rather than any of the baguette type after wihch so many people hanker in vain."
---ibid (p. 279)

"The French pain de campagne made on the old leaven system has been mentioned more than once in these notes. The following passage from one of William Jago's fine works on professional breadmaking explains how the dough was fermented: 'In France and other parts of the continent bread is made from leaven which consists of a portion of dough held over from the previous baking. The following descriptin is given on the authority of Watt's Dictionary of Chemistry. 'A lump of dough from the preceding batch of bread is preserved; this weighs about 12 lbs, made up of 8 lbs of four to 4 lbs of water, and is the fresh leaven (levain de chef). This fresh leaven after reamining for 15 hours, is kneaded in with an equal quantity of fresh flour and water, and this produces the levain de premiere; again this is allowed to stand for some hours 9about eight) and is kneaded in with more flour and water. After another interval of 3 hours, 100 lbs of flour, 52 of water, and about 1/3 lb lf beer yeast are added; this produced the finished leaven (levain de tout point)...In the more important towns this mode of bread-making is now largely supplanted by the use of distillers' yeast, and seems now to have largely given place to methods more nearly allied to Viennese and Englsih processes. Leaven fermentation is due to the presence in the leaven of certain species of yeast, which grow and multiply in that medium. These induce alcoholic fermentation of the sugar of the flour.'---William Jago and William C. Jago, The Technology of Bread Making, 1921).'"
---ibid (p. 381-382)

"Sourdough breads fell out of favor in French cities after the turn of the [20th] century,w hen commercial yeast became available. Recently, however, sourdoughs are back in vogue and, once again, prevail in the smaller bakeries of France."
---World Sourdoughs from Antiquity, Ed Wood [Ten Speed Press:Berkely CA] 1996 (p. 52)
[NOTE: This source includes a recipe for "French Bread," concocted with home-made sourdough culture.] Recipe here

Our survey of food history sources suggests modern panko has been used by Japanese cooks for a century or so. This exotic item caught the attention of American chefs in the early 1980s. Today, Panko can be found in most mainstream supermarkets. Leave it to Progresso to create Italian-style Panko. Only in America!

"A JAPANESE product called panko sounds as if it might be the next toy craze. But a kitchen craze is more like it. Panko is Japanese for bread crumbs, and chefs and home cooks are discovering that this light, airy variety is worlds away from the acrid, herb-flecked, additive-laden bread crumbs in the supermarket, the more upscale crumbs from a bakery like Ecce Panis or even homemade bread crumbs from leftover loaves. Panko has a texture more like crushed cornflakes or potato chips, but with a neutral flavor, only a trifle sweet. Some panko is made with honey, some with sugar, but all contains a sweetener and some kind of fat, which makes the crumbs brown easier. Panko is what gives tonkatsu, the fried pork cutlet served in Japanese restaurants, its coarse-grained, crunchy crumb coating. Some caterers in New York and California have also started using panko to give deep-fried cocktail party shrimp a textural boost and keep sogginess at bay. ''The texture of the crumbs is very important in the way it performs,'' said Wayne Nish, the chef and an owner of March restaurant, who was among the first to use panko to bread chicken, fish and even rack of lamb in non-Japanese recipes. ''The structure creates little air pockets to help keep it crispy.'' In a way, panko is coming full circle around the globe these days. It actually reached Japan via Western cuisines. In 1543, bread was introduced to Japan by Portuguese traders, the first Europeans to land there. The Portuguese word for bread, pao, became pan. Around 100 years ago, the Japanese interest in Western food grew, said Elizabeth Andoh, a cookbook author and teacher, who is based in Tokyo. ''In particular, there was a fascination with German and Prussian food, a result of the Japanese envy of German military prowess,'' she said. ''They thought the diet was an important factor in German might, so the Japanese imitated Wiener schnitzel with pork, calling it katsudetsu, which became tonkatsu. They used ground dried bread, or panko, as a coating. And they first began serving it in the military academies.'' Japan won its war with Russia in 1905, and that did it, Ms. Andoh said. Guns, tonkatsu and panko were there to stay. Japanese bread is essentially a dense, white squared-off sandwich bread, what might be called a Pullman loaf. But it has a striated texture, and when it dries and is pulverized, it breaks into spiky little shards, instead of fine, sandlike crumbs. Masayuki Shimura, the manager of Inagiku restaurant in the Waldorf-Astoria, said that most Japanese panko makers no longer bake bread and pulverize it, but have machines that spray unbaked bread dough directly onto heated iron sheets and bake it into shards. Panko in Japan is sold in rough, medium and fine textures, Mr. Shimura said. He said panko is not for fancy food; at his restaurant it is used only for dishes served to employees, not on the regular menu. In takeout shops in Japan, Ms. Andoh said, panko is used to coat croquettes, which are eaten at room temperature or reheated. Yet the Fauchon store in Tokyo makes its own panko from white bread like the kind the Japanese delight in slicing thick and toasting for breakfast. Panko not only provides a crispy coating, but it also makes a lighter stuffing for anything from mushrooms to trout, especially when the crumbs are toasted first. And it's even good to sweeten and use to layer phyllo or in a pie shell. Barry Wine, the restaurant consultant, who often travels to Japan, said he has used panko as a topping for macaroni and cheese, and to add extra texture to French toast. Whenever a crunchy coating is desired, and especially if the breaded food will be in contact with moisture, panko delivers abiding crunch."
---"From Japan, the Secret of Crunchy Coating," Florence Fabricant, New York Times, December 30, 1998 (p. F3)

"ASK THE COOKS This week's answer is by Peter J. Kelly, a chef- instructor at Johnson & Wales University. What is the difference between panko (Japanese bread crumbs) and regular bread crumbs? Why does panko absorb less oil?...By regular bread crumbs, you most likely mean those bought in a can or made at home using stale or fresh bread. Most people are familiar with ground bread crumbs that yield a smooth, fine coating for frying or are used as a binder in something like meatballs. These crumbs are distant relatives of Japanese panko. Once difficult to find outside of Asian groceries, panko is now sold at a growing number of supermarkets in their international-foods sections. Panko is manufactured using a process invented in Japan in the 1970s. While the secret to panko is closely guarded, we do know that yeast-leavened bread is baked to extract as much moisture as possible. This dry cooking method, along with a special flaking technique, yields a fluffy, dry crumb that absorbs very little oil. This quality comes in handy when frying at home, where it is often difficult to regulate the temperature of cooking fat. When frying, it is recommended that the oil be around 350 degrees. At lower temperatures, foods tend to absorb fat; at higher temperatures, foods will brown without cooking to the center. Panko can help soften the blow of a culinary error."
---"Comparing crumbs," Peter J. Kelly, Boston Globe, January 16, 2005 (p.43)

The oldest Parker House Roll recipe we find in an American coo book comes from The Boston Cooking School Cook Book, Mrs. D. A. Lincoln [1884]. Recipe here. Related recipe (Milk Bread sponge) here. NOTE: This cookbook offers a separate recipe for pocketbook rolls (at the very bottom of the page), indicating these two items were not exactly the same.

The Parker House still exists. It is now an Omni Hotel.

Sample pretzel history: Catholic Educators Resource

When the Romans conquered Europe they brought with them recipes, ingredients and cooking techniques. The bread made in Southern France/Northern Italy around 610AD (the date often cited for the "invention" of the pretzel) would likely have been similar in both technique and ingredients to loaves produced by Ancient Roman bakers. Many different kinds of breads were made at that time, of various flavors and grains. The crispness of the finished product is a function of oven temperature and baking time.

Why is it called a pretzel?
There are two theories:

"The German word [bretzel,pretzel] comes ultimately from tha hypothetical medieval Latin *brachiatellum, a diminutive form of brachitum, bracelet'; it hence means etymologically ring-shaped biscuit'.
---An A to Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxfod] 2002 (p. 269)

"Pretzel...The word is from the German, and some believe it refers to the Latin word pretium, "reward," as in a little gift to a child. Others trace the roots to the Latin brachium, arm..."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 255)

Where are the ancient recipes?
Sorry, there is no "original" pretzel recipe circa 7th century Europe. Cookbooks in these years do not contain recipes for bread. What we know about bread making at this time is culled primarily from period literature/art and modern archaelogical research. Sample here:

"Picenum was a region to the northeast of Rome, corresponding in part fo modern-day Marches. The bread of Picenum was a type of sweet, dry flatbread consisting of flour kneaded with grape juice, which was soaked in milk before it was eaten (cf. Pliny, Naturalis historia 18, 106, and Marital 13, 47)."
---A Taste of Ancient Rome, Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa, translated by Anna Herklotz, foreword by Mary Taylor Simeti [University of Chicago:Chicago] 1992 (p. 58)

"Just when a baker knotted ther first pretzel is unknown...Flemish painters, imagining pretzels to be as old as the Bible, often used them as props in scenes of the Last Supper. Because the dough contains no shortening, eggs, or milk, pretzels keep extremely well, and their saltiness has made them a favorite accompaniment to alcoholic drinks throughout northern Europe. Two basic varieties are made from the same dough: the thin, hard type are baked; the thicker, bagel-like pretzels below...are boiled before baking and are often eaten, split and buttered, as a midmorning snack."
---Horizon Cookbook and Illustrated History of Eating and Drinking though the Ages, William Harlan Hale [American Heritage Publishing Company:New York] 1968 (p. 644)
[NOTE: This source contains a recipe for soft pretzels. You librarian will be happy to help you obtain a copy.]

Pretzels in America
Pretzels were introduced to America by Nothern European settlers. They are historically connected German immigrants (Pennsylvania Dutch) in the greater Philadelphia area.

"The Dutch probably brought the pretzel to America, and there is a story that in 1652 a settler named Jochem Wessel was arrested for using good flour to make pretzels to sell to the Indians at a time when his white neighbors were eating bran flour. The first mention of the word "pretzel" in American print was about 1824, and the first commercial pretzel bakery in the United States was set up in 1861 by Julius Sturgis and Ambrose Rauch in Lititz, Pennsylvania. Most pretzels are twisted by machine, introduced in 1933."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 255-6)
[NOTE: Sturgis Pretzel is still in business.

"The soft pretzel, a Philadelphia street tradition, is nothing more than a fresh version of the hard pretzel. Daniel Christopher Kleiss was selling soft pretzels on the city's streets as early as the 1820's. Topping them with mustard is a Philadelphia first, but the origins of this practice are unknown."
---The Larder Invaded: Reflections on Three Centuries of Philadelphia Food and Drink, Mary Anne Hines, Gordon Marshall, William Woys Weaver [Library Company of Philadelphia and Historical Society of Pennsylvania:Philadephia] 1987 (p. 52)

[1840]
"Sally Lunn," Directions for Cookery/Eliza Leslie

[1845]
"A Solimemne.
A rich French breakfast cake, or Sally Lunn.
From three-quarters of a pound of flour take three ounces for the leaven, and make it into a lithe paste with half an ounce of solid, well-washed yeast..., mixed with two or three tablespoonsful of just warm cream, or new milk; throw a cloth over and leave it near the fire to rise for about half an hour, or until it is twice the original size. In the interim make a hollow in the centre of the remainder of the flour, and put into it a quarter of an ounce of fine salt, once ounce of pounded sugar, the yolks of four fresh eggs, four ounces of lukewarm butter, and a couple of tablespoonsful of cream, also warm. Mix the whole gently and carefully into a perfectly smooth paste, flatten it with the hand upon the dresser, spread the leaven over it, and blend them thoroughly with light kneading, as directed for brioche paste...The whole should be of the same colour throughout. Next, put it into a small, well-butttered copper stewpan or plain cake-mould, and let it remain in a moderately warm place until it has risen, like the leaven, to double its original size; then with a paste-brush or feather wash the top with beaten egg, and without disturbing it, set it into a tolerably quick oven, and bake it nearly or quite an hour; but do not allow it to be too deeply coloured. Turn it from the mould, cut it once or twice asunder, and pour over the slices plenty of good butter, just dissolved in a small saucepan; put the cake together again, and serve it immediately. It may be converted into an excellent entrements by spreading currant, or other fine jelly, or preserve, quickly upon it when it is cut, and sifting sugar thickly on the top after it is restored to its proper form: it its then called a Dresden cake. We think that when left until cold and toasted, the solimemne is even better than when served hot. It will be many hours rising; sometimes as many as six or eight. If wanted for breakfast it should be made over night.
Flour 3/4 lb; yeast, 1/2 oz; little cream; salt, 1/4 oz.; sugar, 1 oz; yolks of eggs, 4; butter, 4 oz.: to rise from 6 to 8 hours. Baked one hour."
---Modern Cookery for Private Families, Eliza Acton [reprint 1845 edition], with an Introduction by Elizabeth Ray [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1993 (p. 454)

[1877]
"Sally Lunn," Buckeye Cookery Book/Wilcox

[1909]
"Southern Sally Lunn," Good Housekeeping Woman's Home Cookbook/Curtis

[1930]
"Sally Lunn (1)
1 pound flour
2 eggs
2 ounces butter and lard mixed
1 teaspoonful salt
3/4 cake yeast
1 cup of milk
Beat eggs, put yeast cake in cold water with two teaspoonfuls of sugar and let stand. Pour to eggs. Melt butter and lard and pour to eggs, then add salt, flour and cup of milk. Three hours first rising, two hours second rising. Bake twenty-five minutes."
---Old Southern Receipts, Mary D. Pretlow [Robert M. McBRide:New York] 1930 (p. 102)

"Sally Lunn (2)
Easy...As made in Staunton, Virginia
Cream together three tablespoonfuls butter and one-half cup sugar, add two well-beaten eggs. Into two cups of sifted flour put three teaspoonfuls baking-powder and one teaspoonful salt--sift again and add this to the above alternately with one cup of sweet milk. Add dates or currants if desired. Pour into oiled dishes and bake in moderate oven about twenty minutes."
---ibid (p. 102)

"Sally Lunn (3)
Not so easy, Mrs. W.M. Cooke, Norfolk
One quart flour, four eggs, two tablespoonfuls sugar, one cup milk one teaspoonful salt, three ounces butter, three-quarter yeast cake dissolved in one-half cup water (in summer use a little less yeast). Beat eggs and sugar well together, add butter, then add alternately flour, into which you have put salt, and milk--then add yeast. Beat all well. Put to rise over night--(or an equal number of hours if you are going to use for supper) and the next morning beat slightly and put in pan with steeple lined with paper. Have batter stiff, and bake as you would a cake, slowly at first and then quicker. This is an old and valued recipe."
---ibid (p. 102)

[1990]
"Sally Lunn
Sally Lunn is among the aristocrats of Southern breads, a rich egg bread resembling brioche in its delicacy. This loaf found its original fame in England, most say at a spa of Bath, taking on the name of a tea-shop proprietress. There's little or no evidence for this nice story, but it's prettier than seeing the name as a corruption of solimeme, a simliar Alsatian bread. Corruption does occur with time, though, and what has happened to the elegant Sally Lunn in the past century is shameful. A fast little cupcake all puffed up with baking powder and sweetened beyond good taste masquerades under the grande dame's name. The recipes here should restore the original's deserved respectability. The proportion of ingredients for Sally Lunn is close to that of Pain de Babeurre, with the addition of 4 eggs. The extra liquid makes a softer dough that will almost pour.
9-inch diameter tube pan, greased.
1 cup milk
1/2 c. butter
1/3 c. sugar
1 pkg dry yeast
2 Tb. warm water
4 eggs, well beaten
4 1/2 c. flour
1 Tb. salt
Heat the milk and butter in a saucepan with the sugar, stirring to dissolve. Remove from the heat and cool to lukewarm. Add the yeast softened in the water. Set aside until frothy. Turn itno a bowl, add the beaten eggs, flour, and salt. Beat well, if by hand count 400-500 strokes. If you use an appliance, the dough should be smooth, shiny, and, though very soft, not too sticky. Cover and let rise until doubled, about an hour. Beat down again an turn into a greased tube pan. Let rise again for about an hour or until doubled. Bake in a 375 degrees F. preheated oven for about 40 minutes or until golden. Let rest a few minutes out of the oven, then invert and remove from the pan to complete cooling. 1 large loaf, about 15 thick slices."
---Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie, Bill Neal [Alfred A. Knopf:New York] 1996(p. 90)

The French connection?

Food historians confirm French sourdoughs enjoy a special place at the table. This tradition flourised in the New World.

"Because good sourdough French bread was the usual run of many bakeries in San Francisco it is difficult to detail the rise of its myth and legend prior to the advent of newspaper columnists. In general, this holds that the dough must be leavened with a closely guarded sponge, starter, or mother brought from Europe, preferably France, over a hundred years ago and passed from decade in the same bakeshop; that the loaves must be baked in brick ovens of a pattern long since disused and beyond the skillos of modern masons to recreate; that such ovens must be below sidewalk level at a precise by indefininate depth; that they must be fired to a certain temperature by certain woods; and that the resultant baking must be cooled at a certain rate in air moistened by San Francisco fog. Only when such complex elements are conjoined does the traditional sourdough French bread of San Fransico take its place beside the Sacher torte of Vienna, the jambalaya of New Orleans, the onion soup of Paris. Bread baking...is an ancient human art...The Oxford English Dictionary...records twelfth-century usage of sourdough (Sauerteig), the common denomination in Germanic languages, levain being French usage. Fro centuries the art of bread-making has been carried to its highest level in Paris, leaven (or its synonyms, sponge, starter, and mother) and time being the basic ingredients of its bread. The use of yeast appears to have died out in France, but was revived toward the end of the seventeenth century... Since, yeast has been used by Parisian bkers for fancy bread and pastry only...During the Colonisal Period French bakers emigrated to Mexico, no doubt carrying the implements and ingredients of their trade...Through these years the leaven of Paris was perpetuating itself, eventually to enliven the celebrated sourdough biscuit of the early-day ranches on the plains of Texas and New Mexico.

"Having lived in Texas and having fought in the Mexican War, George W. Keller arrivd in California in 1848. In 1948 his daughter...related stories of the early days of California told by her father. Tuolumne County records attest he bought the French Hotel in Sonora on 12 October 1849. As che recalls his words...'Baking was done in Dutch Ovens and often the bread or flapjacks were baked in frying pans, the same as the miner did in his camps.'...Among the bakeries listed in the San Fransico City Directory fro 1856 are the French Bakery, Beraud Freres, Deu's, Mme. Lantheaume, and Leagay & Co. Grocers of the first decades of this century recall French bread and milk bread as equally best sellers...

"In France bread is not called French bread, this being a naming for varied types in other places, as to San Fransicso the referent being to the traditional length of the French loaf...Old-timers wonder at newspaper stories of French bread being taken across country in batches, or being shipped afar, as a gourmet delight."
---"Sourdough and French Bread," Peter Tamony, Western Folklore, October 1973 (p. 266-269)

WHERE ARE THE AUTHENTIC SOURDOUGH RECIPES?
19th century American cookbooks sometimes contain instructions for sourdough starter and bread. They are hard to find because they listed under different names. Sourdough is revealed by examining method and mode. One of the differences between traditional *sourdough* and regular bread is not the type of leavening (in addition to traditional starters we find yeast-based recipes) but the fact that the leavening is saved and employed in perpetuity. Most leavened breads, then as today, are mixed quickly and baked as soon the sponge is ready. 18th and 19th century cookbooks warn cooks not to mix up too much leaven ahead of time because it sours. They also provide instructions regarding how to *fix* soured bread and preserve yeast longer by drying into cakes. One popular 19th century cookbook author decreed:

"All bread that is sour, heavy or ill-baked is not only unpalatable, but extremely unwholesome, and should never be eaten. These accidents so frequently happen when bread is made at home by careless, unpractised or incompetent persons...Strong fresh yeast from the brewery should always be used in preference to any others."
---Directions for Cookery in its Various Branches, Eliza Leslie [Henry Carey:Philadelphia] 1852 (p. 376)

"Published in 1866, Jennie June's American Cookery Book does not use the term "sourdough" although several of her recipes would be considered sourdough breads. Jennie includes five methods for making yeast cakes that are dried in the oven or in the sun. This demonstrates that in the years immediately after the California Gold Rush, manufactured yeast was not always available...California claims the honor of originating sourdough bread. The Boudin Bakery in San Francisco says that it has produced the "original" sourdough since Isidore Boudin grought his starter...from Mexico in 1849, and mated that lively starter with French baking technique...Over the course of its history, sourdough has been fermented with everything from a starter based on unflavored yogurt to a combination of hops and potato water."
---Gold Rush Grub (p. 139)

SAMPLE RECIPES

[1847]
"263. Leaven.
Is sometimes employed instead of yeast--leaven is stale or sour dough. Those who use it keep a pound or more from every baking, which is kept in a wooden bowl covered with flour; when it is to be used it is mixed with warm water, and put in a kneading-trough with an eighth part of the flour intended to be used; cover it up with a woolen cloth, and let it remain all night in a warm place. Next morning it will have risen and be fit to mix with the whole quantity of flour."

264. Bread made of Leaven.
Is more light and easy of digestion than that which is made of yeast, and many people prefer it for the food young children; but it is not so pleasant to the taste, and is not so commonly used."
---The Frugal Housekeeper's Kitchen Companion, or Guide to Economical Cookery, Mrs. Eliza Ann Wheeler [Ensign, Bridgeman & Fanning:New York] 1847 (p. 73-74)

[1857]
"Milk Yeast (or emptyings) is made by mixing half the quanity of milk you need for your biscuit, with a teaspoon full of salt and a little flour, and setting it in a warm place. When light, mix it with the rest of the milk, and use it directly for the biscuit. It takes a pint of this yeast for five or six loaves of bread. It is nice for biscuit, but is not generally liked for bread. Some person prefer to save a small quantity of dough from each baking, by drying it or otherwise, for the next baking."
---Practical American Cookery and Domestic Economy, Compiled by Elizabeth M. Hall [Miller, Orton & Co.: New York] 1857 (p. 301)

Modern cinnamon buns most likely descended from ancient galette and medieval fritters. Notes here:
About coffee cake & galette
About doughuts & fritters

"Dr. Ronald Wirtz [American Institute of Baking] has researched [sticky buns] in depth. He begins, believe it or not, with the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, then moves forward in time through Medieval Europe to present-day America. Wirtz follows the spice trade, specifically that of cinnamon...Wirtz believes that our cinnamon roll or sticky bun owes "some of its origins to British cooking and baking, perhaps with a degree of influence from the Dutch and Germans." He points, in particular, to the Chelsea Bun, which Elizabeth David (English Bread and Yeast Cookery, 1980) describes as "Sugary, spicy, sticky, square and coiled like a Swiss roll...a pretty hefty proposition." The originals, made at least as far back as the early eighteenth century, were apparently daintier...What I find particularly interesting in Wirtz's cinnamon-bun research is his mention of Mathew Malzbender's Practical Manual for Confectioners, Pastry-cooks, Bakers and Candy Makers, first published in Milwaukee in 1910 in both German and English...The manual's directions for making cinnamon buns, according to Wirtz, call for a sweet dough to be "sheeted out and sprinkled with sugar, cinnamon and currants, rolled up and slicked just as in current practice." Also as in the preparation of Schnecken, Wirtz does on to say in the Retail Bakers Reference Book (1928), Schnecken and "rolled up cinnamon buns" appear on the same page...Hilda Lee suggests that Schnecken became popular among bakers in Germantown, a Philadelphia suburb as early as the 1680s...No nineteenth- or early twentieth century cookbook I searched mentions them...The earliest recipe for them I could find cropped up in 1922 in Good Housekeeping's Book of Menus, Recipes and Household Discoveries...According to Dr. Wirtz..."recent history of the U.S. saw fad popularity of large-size caramelized cinnamon rolls, combining the size and make-up of the Chelsea bun with the fillings and coatings of the rich Schnecken type roll.""
---The American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century, Jean Anderson [Clarkson Potter:New York] 1997 (p. 316-7)
[NOTE: The book contains far more information than can be paraphrased here. Ask your librarian to help you find a copy.]

"Sticky bun. Also, "honey bun." A yeast pastry topped with melted brown sugar or honey, cinnamon, and raisins, so called because they have a very sticky texture when eaten with the fingers. Although they are popular throughout the United States, they are often associated with Philadelphia and sometimes called "Philadelphia sticky buns," although in Philadelphia itself, they are called "cinnamon buns.""
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 310)

"The cinnamon bun or "sticky bun" came to Philadelphia with 18th century English and German immigrants. They are made from a cinnamon and sugar flavored yeast dough, with raisins, nuts and carmelized topping. A coffee shop counter lined with sticky buns is still a common sight in the city."
---The Larder Invaded: Reflections on Three Centuries of Philadelphia Food and Drink, Mary Anne Hines, Gordon Marshall & William Woys Weaver [Historical Society of Philadelphia:Philadelphia] 1987 (p. 51)

Traditional recipes:

[1909]
"Schnecken (Snails).
Yeast dough like No. 8.
For the filling. 1/8 lb. of butter, 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of currants, 1/2 cup of blanched, ground almonds.
Preparation: The preparation is the same as given under No. 8., Coffee Cake. Stir in 1 cup of flour more than given in NO. 8, roll out the dough to 1 inch thickness, strew it with sugar, cinnamon, currants, almonds, sprinkle with melted butter, roll it up carefully and cut slices off to make the snails. Place these into a buttered tin and set to rise about 1/2 hour. Then bake them ina medium hot oven, brush them while hot with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar."
---The Art of German Cooking and Baking, Mrs. Lina Meier [Milwaukee:WI] 1909 (p. 336)

"No. 8. Coffee Cake.
3 1/2-4 cups flour, 1 pt. of milk, 1/4 lb of butter
1/2 grated lemon rind, 1/4 lb of sugar
3 eggs,
1 cent yeast
Preparation: The milk is made lukewarm and stirred into a smooth batter with 1 2/4 cups of flour, then the yeast dissolved in 1/4 cup of lukewarm milk is mixed in quickly and put in a warm place to rise. After the sponge has risen well, mix in the melted butter, sugar, grated lemon rind, the eggs and the rest of the flour, stir in the dough a while with a spoon. Butter 2 tins and put in the dough about 1 inch thick, then set to rise, after this strew on sugar, cinnamon and some chopped almonds. Bake in a medium hot oven to a nice color."
---ibid (p. 335)

[1914]
Schnenken/Neighborhood Cook Book

[1919]
Cinnamon Rolls or Schnenken/The Jewish Cookbook

History of spices
About cinnamon

More on Cinnamon:

• Dangerous Tastes, Andrew Dalby [Routledge:London] 2000 (p. 36-44)
• History of Food, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat [Barnes & Noble:New York] 1992 (p. 487-490)
• Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 186-7)

Related food? Monkey bread.

The practice of serving bite-sized snacks (tea cakes, tea sandwiches) at tea came about gradually. The menu grew with the Victorian era. Many different cakes were served at tea, including crumpets & scones, "English" muffins and Victoria sandwich cakes. Tea cakes are a distinct recipe with several variations.

"Teacake. The day of the teacake, a large flat round sweet yeast-raised bun, often containing currants, is passing. In the 1960s it was still quite a common teatime treat, typically toasted and spread with butter, but since then it has rather faded from the scene...The term dates from the early nineteenth century (the earliest known reference to it is in an American cookery book, L.M. Child's American Frugal Housewife, 1832), and Dickens mentions it in Martin Chusslewit (1844): Tea and coffee arrived (with sweet preserves and cunning tea-cakes in its train).'"
---An A to Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 340)

"Tea breads and tea cakes, collective terms of which the first is the more general. It applies to all the yeast-leavened baked goods considered suitable for afternoon tea or high tea in Britain, including many spiced, fruited, and enriched breads and buns. The latter term is applied especially to flat buns...often fruited, and lightly enriched with butter and egg; these are usually split, toasted and spread with butter."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 787)

A sampler of 19th century tea cake recipes:

[1820s:England]
Jane Austen era recipes

[1830:Boston]
American Frugal Housewife, Lydia Maria Child

[1861:London]
Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management
---recipe is no. 1786

[1884:Boston]
Mrs. D. A. Lincoln's Boston Cooking School Cook Book

Recommended reading: English Bread and Yeast Cookery by Elizabeth David. About Russian tea cakes

About these notes: Food history can be a complicated topic. These notes are not meant to be a comprehensive treatment of the subject, but a summary of salient points supported with culinary evidence. If you need more information we suggest you start by asking your librarian to help you find the books and articles cited in these notes. Article databases are good for locating current recipes, consumer trends, and new products.
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