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Bread: A Global History
This work provides an approachable introduction to the history and the many forms that bread takes throughout the world. It provides an analysis of the different components of bread such as crust and crumb, to enable readers to better understand the breads.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published September 15, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
June 16, 2019
Every nation in every time in every place on earth eats some form of bread. I like this book, I can smell the bread baking, almost taste it spread thickly with butter or mopping up a curry and my hips increase sympathetically.
As soon as hunter gatherers began to settle down in the areas of the world where grain grew, they built granaries and baked bread. It has been found in pits 8,000 years old (no doubt very stale). The book details just about every single kind of bread and the culture, place and time it was associated with. At the end of every chapter is a recipe. I don't read recipes because I don't cook even though I have a vast collection of cookery books (I like the pretty pictures), but these recipes, being historical re-creations or ones of very unusual breads are interesting.
There's not a lot more to say about bread. It's either flat or risen, brown or white, made from wheat or some other grain, and everyone knows it tastes better fresh, and with butter.
As soon as hunter gatherers began to settle down in the areas of the world where grain grew, they built granaries and baked bread. It has been found in pits 8,000 years old (no doubt very stale). The book details just about every single kind of bread and the culture, place and time it was associated with. At the end of every chapter is a recipe. I don't read recipes because I don't cook even though I have a vast collection of cookery books (I like the pretty pictures), but these recipes, being historical re-creations or ones of very unusual breads are interesting.
There's not a lot more to say about bread. It's either flat or risen, brown or white, made from wheat or some other grain, and everyone knows it tastes better fresh, and with butter.
March 24, 2021
Book: Bread: A Global History
Author: William Rubel
Publisher: Reaktion Books; Illustrated edition (8 February 2012)
Language: English
File size: 2002 KB
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
Print length: 172 pages
Price: 1452/-
William Rubel’s Bread: A Global History (2015) is one of the most absorbing books on this subject that one can ever read.
An archaeological dig at a site named Ohalo II, in the Fertile Crescent near the Sea of Galilee, exposed starch from barley and einkorn on a stone tool used for grinding grains about 22,500 years ago. Now growing and grinding grain alone does not mean we can assume the existence of bread; however, a group of burned stones close by advocates that the grains were in reality baked (rather than fermented or cooked to make a porridge-like dish).
This is exhilarating for two main reasons:
1) Up until the discovery, it had been extensively assumed that the invention of bread coincided with the Neolithic Revolution (which was some 12,000 years later), when humans decided en masse it was more proficient to stay put and farm, rather than following a nomadic existence. However, the Fertile Crescent archaeological findings propose that humans were living in more enduring settlements much earlier than formerly thought, but that it then took longer for steady agricultural practices to become the norm – barely astonishing when your tools are made from stone, and your tools to make those tools are also made from stone, which are also made from.
2) The second reason relates to the kind of grains that were found. People had been eating grasses and some wild forms of grain before this time, but it is not clear how these would have been consumed. Whereas, with einkorn wheat, we know it must have been cultivated, and we also know it is one of the only antique grains that can be used to make leavened bread (for example, it is near-unfeasible to make leavened bread from barley alone, due to its low gluten content).
But as to whether leavened bread existed this early on, one can only conjecture. We do know that fermentation was practised, and there is now proof to suggest that baked food existed, so we can only hope those early farmers knew what was good for them and baked appetizing, leavened bread.
To us, 22,500 years of bread-making history sounded about right.
Fast forward to 4000 BCE and bread-making was a daily event in what is commonly considered to be the first city: Uruk, in Babylonia (now southern Iraq).
Other regions all through the Fertile Crescent, North Africa, Europe and Asia soon followed, adopting leavened bread as a dependable source of food to fuel their growing populations.
Fascinatingly, the Egyptian and Indo-Aryan words for barley are relatively similar – djot and djavas, respectively – despite there being no trade routes linking the two cultures.
Meanwhile, in South America, though early civilisations had also developed agricultural systems around 4000 BCE, the preferred crops were corn, quinoa, sweet potatoes and beans, which did not lend themselves effortlessly to flour and bread-making.
Looking still further ahead, it’s apparent that bread was also a staple during the Greek and Roman eras.
The first collection of recipes resembling a cookbook, Apicius (or Apici Caeli De Re Coquinaria), was compiled in the 1st century, and includes several mentions of bread made from wheat. Fashion dictated that white bread was a sign of classiness, and was reserved for the best households, whereas wholegrains, pulses, peas, fava beans, acorns and chestnuts were consumed by the underprivileged.
The Greek physician, Galen, recommended that white bread be the first choice, but that wholegrain bread might be eaten to pass a stool.
Even in Homer’s Odyssey, bread is used to differentiate between humans and gods. After Odysseus has thrown a discus very, very far, he turns to the crowds and says: ‘I far excel every one else in the whole world, of those who still eat bread upon the face of the earth.’
Subsequently, in addition to being a delicious, every day essential, it appears that the very use of bread was elementary to being human.
Throughout this book the author has moved back and forth between a broad-based reference to all breads as bread and a more slender focus on the loaf bread as being the one true bread. This uncertainty is in part captured in how the most dependable English-language dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), defines bread: A well-known article of food prepared by moistening, kneading and baking meal or flour, generally with the addition of yeast or leaven.
The OED is in actual fact saying that bread without adjectives is more the purview of the anthropologist than the lexicographer: cultural convention decides meaning, so to find the clear-cut connotation of bread, check with the culture you want to use as the reference point.
The author has divided his book into five chapters:
1. The Early History of Bread
2. Bread as a Social Marker
3. Parameters of Taste
4. World of Bread: An Eccentric Travelogue
5. Bread in the Twenty-first Century
This book is almoat a preamble to bread as a food and as an edifying object.
Each of us who lives within a bread culture is, in fact, an expert on bread. But we don’t all have the vocabulary to talk about it.
One of the purposes of this book is to call attention to manners of accepted wisdom about bread that show that every loaf has a multi-layered story to tell. Bread is so twined with culture that one can start from a loaf of bread and find oneself talking about some of the largest issues of history and society.
Sometimes bread can be like a mirror reflecting back one’s own image, one’s own dreams, even. Why did you choose that particular bread for serving at a dinner for company? Bread is such a delectably multifaceted object that the answer to that question could be the story of one’s life.
Bread is a notion. Bread is not harvested by farmers, it is manufactured by bakers. As an invention of culture the concept of bread can change.
However, in practice, while concepts of what makes a good bread good do change with time, the key European concept of what bread is has been amazingly unwavering for thousands of years.
Important edges to European culinary culture’s definition of bread are these: 1) kneaded or not kneaded, 2) lean or fatty, 3) salty or sweet,
4) dough or batter, 5) thick or thin, 6) leavened or unleavened, 7) big or small.
In some cases singly, in others in combination, these edges mark the borders of bread and cake, of bread and flatbread, of bread and pancake, of loaf and roll.
If one eradicates the superseding magnitude of the loaf shape, and thus recognizes both leavened and unleavened flatbreads into the pantheon of daily breads, then these edges moderately collectively define bread for every culture for which bread is of culinary importance, regional exceptions notwithstanding.
We Indians do have our own spherical bread, the ‘Roti’ too, you see
A fantastic journey of a book!
Author: William Rubel
Publisher: Reaktion Books; Illustrated edition (8 February 2012)
Language: English
File size: 2002 KB
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
Print length: 172 pages
Price: 1452/-
William Rubel’s Bread: A Global History (2015) is one of the most absorbing books on this subject that one can ever read.
An archaeological dig at a site named Ohalo II, in the Fertile Crescent near the Sea of Galilee, exposed starch from barley and einkorn on a stone tool used for grinding grains about 22,500 years ago. Now growing and grinding grain alone does not mean we can assume the existence of bread; however, a group of burned stones close by advocates that the grains were in reality baked (rather than fermented or cooked to make a porridge-like dish).
This is exhilarating for two main reasons:
1) Up until the discovery, it had been extensively assumed that the invention of bread coincided with the Neolithic Revolution (which was some 12,000 years later), when humans decided en masse it was more proficient to stay put and farm, rather than following a nomadic existence. However, the Fertile Crescent archaeological findings propose that humans were living in more enduring settlements much earlier than formerly thought, but that it then took longer for steady agricultural practices to become the norm – barely astonishing when your tools are made from stone, and your tools to make those tools are also made from stone, which are also made from.
2) The second reason relates to the kind of grains that were found. People had been eating grasses and some wild forms of grain before this time, but it is not clear how these would have been consumed. Whereas, with einkorn wheat, we know it must have been cultivated, and we also know it is one of the only antique grains that can be used to make leavened bread (for example, it is near-unfeasible to make leavened bread from barley alone, due to its low gluten content).
But as to whether leavened bread existed this early on, one can only conjecture. We do know that fermentation was practised, and there is now proof to suggest that baked food existed, so we can only hope those early farmers knew what was good for them and baked appetizing, leavened bread.
To us, 22,500 years of bread-making history sounded about right.
Fast forward to 4000 BCE and bread-making was a daily event in what is commonly considered to be the first city: Uruk, in Babylonia (now southern Iraq).
Other regions all through the Fertile Crescent, North Africa, Europe and Asia soon followed, adopting leavened bread as a dependable source of food to fuel their growing populations.
Fascinatingly, the Egyptian and Indo-Aryan words for barley are relatively similar – djot and djavas, respectively – despite there being no trade routes linking the two cultures.
Meanwhile, in South America, though early civilisations had also developed agricultural systems around 4000 BCE, the preferred crops were corn, quinoa, sweet potatoes and beans, which did not lend themselves effortlessly to flour and bread-making.
Looking still further ahead, it’s apparent that bread was also a staple during the Greek and Roman eras.
The first collection of recipes resembling a cookbook, Apicius (or Apici Caeli De Re Coquinaria), was compiled in the 1st century, and includes several mentions of bread made from wheat. Fashion dictated that white bread was a sign of classiness, and was reserved for the best households, whereas wholegrains, pulses, peas, fava beans, acorns and chestnuts were consumed by the underprivileged.
The Greek physician, Galen, recommended that white bread be the first choice, but that wholegrain bread might be eaten to pass a stool.
Even in Homer’s Odyssey, bread is used to differentiate between humans and gods. After Odysseus has thrown a discus very, very far, he turns to the crowds and says: ‘I far excel every one else in the whole world, of those who still eat bread upon the face of the earth.’
Subsequently, in addition to being a delicious, every day essential, it appears that the very use of bread was elementary to being human.
Throughout this book the author has moved back and forth between a broad-based reference to all breads as bread and a more slender focus on the loaf bread as being the one true bread. This uncertainty is in part captured in how the most dependable English-language dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), defines bread: A well-known article of food prepared by moistening, kneading and baking meal or flour, generally with the addition of yeast or leaven.
The OED is in actual fact saying that bread without adjectives is more the purview of the anthropologist than the lexicographer: cultural convention decides meaning, so to find the clear-cut connotation of bread, check with the culture you want to use as the reference point.
The author has divided his book into five chapters:
1. The Early History of Bread
2. Bread as a Social Marker
3. Parameters of Taste
4. World of Bread: An Eccentric Travelogue
5. Bread in the Twenty-first Century
This book is almoat a preamble to bread as a food and as an edifying object.
Each of us who lives within a bread culture is, in fact, an expert on bread. But we don’t all have the vocabulary to talk about it.
One of the purposes of this book is to call attention to manners of accepted wisdom about bread that show that every loaf has a multi-layered story to tell. Bread is so twined with culture that one can start from a loaf of bread and find oneself talking about some of the largest issues of history and society.
Sometimes bread can be like a mirror reflecting back one’s own image, one’s own dreams, even. Why did you choose that particular bread for serving at a dinner for company? Bread is such a delectably multifaceted object that the answer to that question could be the story of one’s life.
Bread is a notion. Bread is not harvested by farmers, it is manufactured by bakers. As an invention of culture the concept of bread can change.
However, in practice, while concepts of what makes a good bread good do change with time, the key European concept of what bread is has been amazingly unwavering for thousands of years.
Important edges to European culinary culture’s definition of bread are these: 1) kneaded or not kneaded, 2) lean or fatty, 3) salty or sweet,
4) dough or batter, 5) thick or thin, 6) leavened or unleavened, 7) big or small.
In some cases singly, in others in combination, these edges mark the borders of bread and cake, of bread and flatbread, of bread and pancake, of loaf and roll.
If one eradicates the superseding magnitude of the loaf shape, and thus recognizes both leavened and unleavened flatbreads into the pantheon of daily breads, then these edges moderately collectively define bread for every culture for which bread is of culinary importance, regional exceptions notwithstanding.
We Indians do have our own spherical bread, the ‘Roti’ too, you see
A fantastic journey of a book!
April 26, 2012
Writing the history of bread in 140 pages is an almost impossibly broad task. Rubel gives it a good shot, and ends up with a book that's fairly interesting. But the subject of bread, including flatbreads, is simply far too broad to do any kind of justice in such a short book.
April 22, 2016
This slim but very interesting volume providing, as promised, a global history of bread. The pictures are fascinating, and the author does a great job of illuminating not just the bread of the elites, which was often the most refined and enriched, but also the bread of the poor throughout history. He describes the social aspects of preparing and consuming bread and how tastes have shaped bread production as far as airy or dense crumb, types of flours and leaveners, and use of bread pans or free-standing loaves and any decorations or additions to the bread. He also explores the current trifecta of industrial bakers, commercial artisan bakeries, and home baking and what he considers the future of baking.
You can read more of my review here: https://thebreadmaiden.com/2016/04/11...
You can read more of my review here: https://thebreadmaiden.com/2016/04/11...
January 6, 2024
William Rubel loves bread, that much is clear, and he has written a short but strong account of bread from its earliest beginnings to (almost) now. A quick google search finds this about William Rubel: “a specialist in traditional cooking, travels the world studying food customs and gathering recipes. He lives in Santa Cruz, California, where he cooks most of his meals on his fireplace.” That’s cool, although I’m not going to do this. I’m also not going to even attempt to bake the bread for which there are recipes at the end of the book. “The recipes are written with the assumption that you already know how to bake bread.” That is very, very true. I can bake bread, barely. If you are reading this, and you baked one of these bread recipes and it turned out, I salute you!
December 31, 2016
What a wonderful little book. William Rubel examines bread and what it means deeply and has permanently changed the way I think of trends and fashions in bread. That the book is brief is not a problem, because the ideas in it are so large that they transcend the size of the book. Other books are perhaps more authoritative and more comprehensive, but none that I have read is quite so thought provoking.
June 18, 2012
Very interesting read for anyone interested in learning more about the historical and cultural aspects of bread, and trying ancient breads in his own kitchen.
June 15, 2025
The Biochemistry of bread and other starches.
The main provider of ATP (adenosine triphosphate: the energy molecule in biochemistry) is the intracellular organelle, the mitochondrion that converts ADP (Adenosine diphosphate) to ATP (Adenosine triphosphate) by adding the additional high energy monophosphate group to the ADP.
It is this high energy molecule that fuels life.
Homo Sapiens broke the survival barrier by domesticating plants and harvesting them. Wheat, rice, maize, potatoes, etcetera. Incidentally, so did many insects such as termites that harvest cellulose as in wood, then grow a fungus on it, and then, eat the fungus!
The main provider of ATP (adenosine triphosphate: the energy molecule in biochemistry) is the intracellular organelle, the mitochondrion that converts ADP (Adenosine diphosphate) to ATP (Adenosine triphosphate) by adding the additional high energy monophosphate group to the ADP.
It is this high energy molecule that fuels life.
Homo Sapiens broke the survival barrier by domesticating plants and harvesting them. Wheat, rice, maize, potatoes, etcetera. Incidentally, so did many insects such as termites that harvest cellulose as in wood, then grow a fungus on it, and then, eat the fungus!
November 3, 2022
As other reviewers pointed out, the topic is too broad to be covered in ~150 pages or so. But think of it this way, this book will tell you what types of bread that exist, a short history and how bread is made today. You will just have enough info to appreciate bread, and most importantly, a great stepping stone to do a deep dive in the future. Start here
November 27, 2025
I actually found this to be an extremely disappointing read. I've read some of the other books in this series, and this was by far my least favourite. William Rubel claims that this is a global history, but after rushing through a fraction of bread's ancient history, he ends up focusing most of his attention on European and Northern American bread traditions.
December 22, 2017
Not bad. It's difficult to cover all of bread history in about 110 small pages, with art, so this is a nice overview of the topic.
July 14, 2021
Reading this book was like eating a delicious slice of homemade sourdough. Loved it!
October 1, 2021
dnf and will never pick this book again hahaha
October 7, 2021
Not quite as detailed as i wanted it to be.
November 25, 2016
Le falto cernir y cocción.
Es un libro de historia muy básico, que ni siquiera incluye un apartado con detalladas descripciones y fotografías de algunos panes principales (al final hay un glosario que es un tibio intento pero sin fotos), no ofrece una catalogación más allá de pan con o sin levadura. Se echó de menos la historia de los gremios de panadero en Europa, importancia del pan en distintos aspectos socioculturales de la sociedad actual, como surgieron algunos panes, el desarrollo de distintas harinas y levaduras.
Es un libro de historia muy básico, que ni siquiera incluye un apartado con detalladas descripciones y fotografías de algunos panes principales (al final hay un glosario que es un tibio intento pero sin fotos), no ofrece una catalogación más allá de pan con o sin levadura. Se echó de menos la historia de los gremios de panadero en Europa, importancia del pan en distintos aspectos socioculturales de la sociedad actual, como surgieron algunos panes, el desarrollo de distintas harinas y levaduras.
October 14, 2014
Outstanding book. William Rubel reads the histories of colonialism and class through the history of bread. It was a brilliantly conceived book and well structured. The balance between narrative and analysis is excellent and the exploration of power, injustice and bread is well revealed.
Excellent example of food studies at its best. Rubel is a fine writer.
Excellent example of food studies at its best. Rubel is a fine writer.
May 8, 2015
This little book does many things: The history of bread, the peek at the chemistry that shapes the taste of bread, the cultural constructs surrounding bread and its flavor, and the industrialization of bread making over the last century or two. Sometimes Rubel got too technical in the specifics of shaping bread flavor and made parts of this book more difficult to read.
June 11, 2016
'More essential', 'more universal', one can't expect something good from a book written like that. So there is no surprise here.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews