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English Bread and Yeast Cookery
First published in 1977, and winning its author the coveted Glenfiddich Writer of the Year Award, this universally acclaimed book is regarded by many as simply the best book ever written about the making of bread. It covers all aspects of flour-milling, yeast, bread ovens and the different types of bread and flour available. It contains an exhaustive collection of recipes, everything from plain brown wholemeal or saffron cake to drop scones and croissants; all described with her typical elegance and unrivaled knowledge. Even how to make your own yeast and keep it. But more than just a list of recipes, it is an insight into an interesting and informative home-baker.
Inquire within on any point connected with baking and Miss David has the answer. Nor does it omit the history of bread making from the Exodus onwards, the iniquities of sliced bread and uncovers the dubious practices of some flour millers and bread manufacturers in the UK and elsewhere with amusing anecdotes and personal observations throughout.
The writing style of this book has aged well and adds greatly to its charm. This is a book that should be included in every food lover’s collection, not just for those who love to cook, but those who enjoy reading about food and its history. It is also an absolute must for keen bakers.
Inquire within on any point connected with baking and Miss David has the answer. Nor does it omit the history of bread making from the Exodus onwards, the iniquities of sliced bread and uncovers the dubious practices of some flour millers and bread manufacturers in the UK and elsewhere with amusing anecdotes and personal observations throughout.
The writing style of this book has aged well and adds greatly to its charm. This is a book that should be included in every food lover’s collection, not just for those who love to cook, but those who enjoy reading about food and its history. It is also an absolute must for keen bakers.
624 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1977
10 people are currently reading
391 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth David
113 books103 followersBorn Elizabeth Gwynne, she was of mixed English and Irish ancestry, and came from a rather grand background, growing up in the 17th-century Sussex manor house, Wootton Manor. Her parents were Rupert Gwynne, Conservative MP for Eastbourne, and the Hon. Stella Ridley, who came from a distinguished Northumberland family. They had three other daughters.
She studied Literature and History at the Sorbonne, living with a French family for two years, which led to her love of France and of food. At the age of 19, she was given her first cookery book, The Gentle Art of Cookery by Hilda Leyel, who wrote of her love with the food of the East. "If I had been given a standard Mrs Beeton instead of Mrs Leyel's wonderful recipes," she said, "I would probably never have learned to cook."
Gwynne had an adventurous early life, leaving home to become an actress. She left England in 1939, when she was twenty-five, and bought a boat with her married lover Charles Gibson-Cowan intending to travel around the Mediterranean. The onset of World War II interrupted this plan, and they had to flee the German occupation of France. They left Antibes for Corsica and then on to Italy where the boat was impounded; they arrived on the day Italy declared war on Britain. Eventually deported to Greece, living on the Greek island of Syros for a period, Gwynne learnt about Greek food and spent time with high bohemians such as the writer Lawrence Durrell. When the Germans invaded Greece they fled to Crete where they were rescued by the British and evacuated to Egypt, where she lived firstly in Alexandria and later in Cairo. There Gwynne started work for the Ministry of Information, split from Gibson-Cowan, and eventually took on a marriage of convenience, more or less as her aunt, Violet Gordon-Woodhouse, had done. This gave her a measure of respectability but Lieutenant-Colonel Tony David was a man whom she did not ultimately respect, and their relationship ended soon after an eight month posting in India. She had many lovers in ensuing years.
On her return to London in 1946, David began to write articles on cooking, and in 1949 the publisher John Lehmann offered her a £100 advance for Book of Mediterranean Food, the start of a dazzling writing career. David spent eight months researching Italian food in Venice, Tuscany and Capri. This resulted in Italian Food in 1954, with illustrations by Renato Guttuso, which was famously described by Evelyn Waugh in The Sunday Times as one of the two books which had given him the most pleasure that year.
Many of the ingredients were unknown in England when the books were first published, as shortages and rationing continued for many years after the end of the war, and David had to suggest looking for olive oil in pharmacies where it was sold for treating earache. Within a decade, ingredients such as aubergines, saffron and pasta began to appear in shops, thanks in no small part to David's books. David gained fame, respect and high status and advised many chefs and companies. In November 1965, she opened her own shop devoted to cookery in Pimlico, London. She wrote articles for Vogue magazine, one of the first in the genre of food-travel.
In 1963, when she was 49, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, possibly related to her heavy drinking. Although she recovered, it affected her sense of taste and her libido.
She studied Literature and History at the Sorbonne, living with a French family for two years, which led to her love of France and of food. At the age of 19, she was given her first cookery book, The Gentle Art of Cookery by Hilda Leyel, who wrote of her love with the food of the East. "If I had been given a standard Mrs Beeton instead of Mrs Leyel's wonderful recipes," she said, "I would probably never have learned to cook."
Gwynne had an adventurous early life, leaving home to become an actress. She left England in 1939, when she was twenty-five, and bought a boat with her married lover Charles Gibson-Cowan intending to travel around the Mediterranean. The onset of World War II interrupted this plan, and they had to flee the German occupation of France. They left Antibes for Corsica and then on to Italy where the boat was impounded; they arrived on the day Italy declared war on Britain. Eventually deported to Greece, living on the Greek island of Syros for a period, Gwynne learnt about Greek food and spent time with high bohemians such as the writer Lawrence Durrell. When the Germans invaded Greece they fled to Crete where they were rescued by the British and evacuated to Egypt, where she lived firstly in Alexandria and later in Cairo. There Gwynne started work for the Ministry of Information, split from Gibson-Cowan, and eventually took on a marriage of convenience, more or less as her aunt, Violet Gordon-Woodhouse, had done. This gave her a measure of respectability but Lieutenant-Colonel Tony David was a man whom she did not ultimately respect, and their relationship ended soon after an eight month posting in India. She had many lovers in ensuing years.
On her return to London in 1946, David began to write articles on cooking, and in 1949 the publisher John Lehmann offered her a £100 advance for Book of Mediterranean Food, the start of a dazzling writing career. David spent eight months researching Italian food in Venice, Tuscany and Capri. This resulted in Italian Food in 1954, with illustrations by Renato Guttuso, which was famously described by Evelyn Waugh in The Sunday Times as one of the two books which had given him the most pleasure that year.
Many of the ingredients were unknown in England when the books were first published, as shortages and rationing continued for many years after the end of the war, and David had to suggest looking for olive oil in pharmacies where it was sold for treating earache. Within a decade, ingredients such as aubergines, saffron and pasta began to appear in shops, thanks in no small part to David's books. David gained fame, respect and high status and advised many chefs and companies. In November 1965, she opened her own shop devoted to cookery in Pimlico, London. She wrote articles for Vogue magazine, one of the first in the genre of food-travel.
In 1963, when she was 49, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, possibly related to her heavy drinking. Although she recovered, it affected her sense of taste and her libido.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
January 8, 2018
This book was given to me in 1980* and I can't count the times I've consulted it since .... most recently yesterday when I baked some edible but unsatisfactory bread. So what did I do wrong? Elizabeth (I feel like I'm on a first name basis with her) has the answer. Always. From the chemistry to the crumb.
The history is interesting, the explanations of how different fats and liquids affect a loaf invaluable, and the contempt for commercial bread as pertinent today as when it was written. Most of all, her advice and instructions on yeast are indispensable to making a really good bread.
I think even armchair cooks would enjoy much of this book. The recipes are entertaining in themselves, with notes about its history going back to the Middle Ages and references and quotes from old to ancient recipes - with notes to explain them. Certainly, Anglophiles would enjoy the chapter on "Yeast Buns and Small Tea Cakes" with its Yorkshire Cakes and "Burtergill Windemere Cakes ... relation to the seventeenth century Countess of Rutland's Banbury cake as well as the Scotch Christmas bun."
She is not, however, a snob. Throughout there is a very real appreciation of the hardships of ordinary families struggling with budgets and limited time and inadequate access to really good, nutritious food - and a fine contempt for the commercial operators taking advantage all those factors.
An indispensable book.
*the edition pictured is not mine - happily, I have a hardcover since a paperback would never have survived the hard use it's had in my kitchen. My edition is not pictured.
The history is interesting, the explanations of how different fats and liquids affect a loaf invaluable, and the contempt for commercial bread as pertinent today as when it was written. Most of all, her advice and instructions on yeast are indispensable to making a really good bread.
I think even armchair cooks would enjoy much of this book. The recipes are entertaining in themselves, with notes about its history going back to the Middle Ages and references and quotes from old to ancient recipes - with notes to explain them. Certainly, Anglophiles would enjoy the chapter on "Yeast Buns and Small Tea Cakes" with its Yorkshire Cakes and "Burtergill Windemere Cakes ... relation to the seventeenth century Countess of Rutland's Banbury cake as well as the Scotch Christmas bun."
She is not, however, a snob. Throughout there is a very real appreciation of the hardships of ordinary families struggling with budgets and limited time and inadequate access to really good, nutritious food - and a fine contempt for the commercial operators taking advantage all those factors.
An indispensable book.
*the edition pictured is not mine - happily, I have a hardcover since a paperback would never have survived the hard use it's had in my kitchen. My edition is not pictured.
May 10, 2021
At almost 500 pages, Elizabeth David‘s English Bread And Yeast Cookery is quite a read. It’s also quite mis-titled, but more of that later. But it is a cookbook, so why would one want to read it from cover to cover? Surely reference is its prime function? The answer simply is that this cookbook is written by Elizabeth David and the writing is exquisite, the erudition thoroughly impressive and the advice probably faultless. This last point has to be qualified with “probably”, since it is highly unlikely that anyone except Elizabeth David herself might put every one of these recipes to any sort of practical test. Even she did not do all of them, but when she has not already tried out a recipe, she actually tells the reader in her text and admits she is speculating.
This is a text littered with items grabbed from historical cookbooks where the writer has merely copied what went before, sometimes despite its advice being demonstrably nonsensical. It is also littered with gems of verbosity from the past, where writers might offer such advice as “agitate the receptacle aggressively” rather than “beat it”. And some of the older recipes seemed to have been designed for armies, so great are the quantities and might start with and instruction such as “take a bushel of flour”.
Written in the 1970s, this text was obviously already familiar with supermarkets, but not with fast food in quantities as it currently surrounds us. This allows a contemporary reader to reflect on just how much the average diet might have changed in the last fifty years. Elizabeth David is, for example, not fond of restaurant pizza, which she seems to judge as having the same qualities as hardboard panelling. Precisely what she would have made of O’Muffins or Macbuns or similar I have no idea, but I bet I could guess.
But pizza recipes in the book on English bread? Well, this is part of the problem with the book’s title because not only does it regularly visit Scotland, Wales or Ireland, it also gets on a ferry to France, Austria, Italy or even Russia or the United States and elsewhere. It seems that the 1970s was more willing than now to admit international influences and sharing, without ever once using vacuous and meaningless terms like “fusion” or “world food”. If it’s not from the world, where on earth is it from? And as for “fusion”, this particular reviewer regards much of it as a con, leading to confusion.
The author spends much time in space explaining the details, even the intricacies of flours, grains, milling, grinding and sifting. There is a superb historical section that dips into the techniques, technology and technicalities of breadmaking. And in doing so, Elizabeth David explodes many myths which have remained mythical until today. She points out that much of brown bread on sale is coloured with molasses, not whole wheat grain, and that many recipes that specify whole grains often extract the germ and pre-cook it before adding it back to the flour. She also describes how commercial bread was in her time often aerated or pumped with extra water or even chalk to add volume, bulk and profit. Here Elizabeth David looks in immense detail at conventional yeast risen bread, flat breads, sweet breads, (not one word!), muffins, pikelets, crumpets, fermented butter cakes, griddle breads, sourdough, soda bread and many other delectable concoctions of flour, water and rising agent.
In the process, she dispels many myths, such as the oft quoted need to throw away half of a sourdough starter, advice I have read many times, many times indeed. Personally, I have in the past tried to follow such recipes, but when it came to “divide it into two and throw half away”, I was always stumped into inaction, because I never knew which half should be discarded. If it’s the case that the sourdough starter’s volume would be too big otherwise, then “make less” ought to be the instruction. Isn’t it obvious?
But then there are a lot of myths, many of them sourced in religion about bread. Man may not live by bread alone, but maybe it is all right for women. Bread of heaven, but not from my oven… There are many more, some of which made it into these pages. But with breadmaking, there is room for myth, since the process is often wholly unpredictable, so quantity, so temperature, or so procedurally sensitive that it is impossible to predict the results which will be produced even by following exactly the same recipe, a point that Elizabeth David regularly makes throughout the text.
And, of course, that is precisely why the mass-produced loaf was baked on an industrial scale, in order to try to achieve the regularity and uniformity that the modern consumer sees to crave. But no two vegetables are exactly the same shape and the shape has nothing to with the taste. Elizabeth David’s English Bread And Yeast Cookery offers the perfect cure to this disease of expected uniformity. Mix it, wait, cook it and see. Do it again, and it will probably be different. Now isn’t that a recipe for an interesting life! It is most certainly an interesting book, but don’t try to eat it all at once.
This is a text littered with items grabbed from historical cookbooks where the writer has merely copied what went before, sometimes despite its advice being demonstrably nonsensical. It is also littered with gems of verbosity from the past, where writers might offer such advice as “agitate the receptacle aggressively” rather than “beat it”. And some of the older recipes seemed to have been designed for armies, so great are the quantities and might start with and instruction such as “take a bushel of flour”.
Written in the 1970s, this text was obviously already familiar with supermarkets, but not with fast food in quantities as it currently surrounds us. This allows a contemporary reader to reflect on just how much the average diet might have changed in the last fifty years. Elizabeth David is, for example, not fond of restaurant pizza, which she seems to judge as having the same qualities as hardboard panelling. Precisely what she would have made of O’Muffins or Macbuns or similar I have no idea, but I bet I could guess.
But pizza recipes in the book on English bread? Well, this is part of the problem with the book’s title because not only does it regularly visit Scotland, Wales or Ireland, it also gets on a ferry to France, Austria, Italy or even Russia or the United States and elsewhere. It seems that the 1970s was more willing than now to admit international influences and sharing, without ever once using vacuous and meaningless terms like “fusion” or “world food”. If it’s not from the world, where on earth is it from? And as for “fusion”, this particular reviewer regards much of it as a con, leading to confusion.
The author spends much time in space explaining the details, even the intricacies of flours, grains, milling, grinding and sifting. There is a superb historical section that dips into the techniques, technology and technicalities of breadmaking. And in doing so, Elizabeth David explodes many myths which have remained mythical until today. She points out that much of brown bread on sale is coloured with molasses, not whole wheat grain, and that many recipes that specify whole grains often extract the germ and pre-cook it before adding it back to the flour. She also describes how commercial bread was in her time often aerated or pumped with extra water or even chalk to add volume, bulk and profit. Here Elizabeth David looks in immense detail at conventional yeast risen bread, flat breads, sweet breads, (not one word!), muffins, pikelets, crumpets, fermented butter cakes, griddle breads, sourdough, soda bread and many other delectable concoctions of flour, water and rising agent.
In the process, she dispels many myths, such as the oft quoted need to throw away half of a sourdough starter, advice I have read many times, many times indeed. Personally, I have in the past tried to follow such recipes, but when it came to “divide it into two and throw half away”, I was always stumped into inaction, because I never knew which half should be discarded. If it’s the case that the sourdough starter’s volume would be too big otherwise, then “make less” ought to be the instruction. Isn’t it obvious?
But then there are a lot of myths, many of them sourced in religion about bread. Man may not live by bread alone, but maybe it is all right for women. Bread of heaven, but not from my oven… There are many more, some of which made it into these pages. But with breadmaking, there is room for myth, since the process is often wholly unpredictable, so quantity, so temperature, or so procedurally sensitive that it is impossible to predict the results which will be produced even by following exactly the same recipe, a point that Elizabeth David regularly makes throughout the text.
And, of course, that is precisely why the mass-produced loaf was baked on an industrial scale, in order to try to achieve the regularity and uniformity that the modern consumer sees to crave. But no two vegetables are exactly the same shape and the shape has nothing to with the taste. Elizabeth David’s English Bread And Yeast Cookery offers the perfect cure to this disease of expected uniformity. Mix it, wait, cook it and see. Do it again, and it will probably be different. Now isn’t that a recipe for an interesting life! It is most certainly an interesting book, but don’t try to eat it all at once.
August 5, 2020
Excellent. My favourite bread book. It’s part food history, part recipe book. I made her cottage loaf three times, each one a success, and I followed her surprising tip of baking it in an oven that had not been preheated.
June 12, 2020
For years, I've heard people raving about Elizabeth David's cookery books. Now I really know why. This is a must-have!
Particularly fascinating are the several historical recipes, reinforcing the fact that bread has been made for centuries in much the same way as now.
Particularly disheartening is what we are collectively allowing and condoning to change how bread is made, by adding time-saving additives (so-called "improvers") to the ingredients to produce lovely looking but taste-free loaves.
While Elizabeth David may have written her book in the 1970s, it shows just how reluctant we are to realize that the "improvements" are anything but (and how powerful the big bread companies are in holding us to our reluctance).
The introduction to the American edition, written by Karen Hess is almost enough reason to buy the book. Almost....
The book is absolutely full of zillions of bread recipes. Surprisingly, scones are NOT included in the soda bread chapter. Indeed, she wrote "I would have liked to include a few scone recipes in this chapter but once you start on scones, where do you stop?"
It's surprising that neither Eliza Acton or Elizabeth David suggest reserving the potato cooking water for the dough.
What a thoroughly enjoyable book! It's no wonder that the late wonderful Laurie Colwin said she read the book cover to cover as if it were a novel.
edit: One of the things that shows the age of the book is that all the measurements are in pounds and ounces, instead of grams. I also am not wild about the paragraph form for recipes, instead of having ingredients in a list before the method for construction of whatever bread or biscuit is being described. But these are very minor difficulties....
Particularly fascinating are the several historical recipes, reinforcing the fact that bread has been made for centuries in much the same way as now.
Particularly disheartening is what we are collectively allowing and condoning to change how bread is made, by adding time-saving additives (so-called "improvers") to the ingredients to produce lovely looking but taste-free loaves.
While Elizabeth David may have written her book in the 1970s, it shows just how reluctant we are to realize that the "improvements" are anything but (and how powerful the big bread companies are in holding us to our reluctance).
The introduction to the American edition, written by Karen Hess is almost enough reason to buy the book. Almost....
The book is absolutely full of zillions of bread recipes. Surprisingly, scones are NOT included in the soda bread chapter. Indeed, she wrote "I would have liked to include a few scone recipes in this chapter but once you start on scones, where do you stop?"
Dr A. Hunter, writing in a book called Receipts in Modern Cookery; with a Medical Commentary, first published in 1805, provided both a recipe, and in case it were needed yet more evidence of the English addiction to toast: 'Lovers of toast and butter will be much pleased with this kind of bread. The potato is not here added with a view to economy, but to increase the lightness of the bread, in which state it will imbibe the butter with more freedom . . .' Well, there you have one way of increasing the consumption of butter. Today's dieticians would probably be aghast...
[...]
To cook potatoes to add to bread dough, I find the best way is to boil them in their skins, watch them carefully and, immediately they are cooked but before they start to disintegrate, pour off the water, cover the potatoes with a clean thick cloth, put the lid on the saucepan and leave them for a few minutes.
[...]
In her English Bread Book (1857), so often quoted in these pages, Eliza Acton gives the proportions of potatoes to flour for a potato loaf as 7lb, weighed after\i> cooking and peeling, to a gallon of meal or flour. [...] Miss Acton, like Dr Hunter, considers the bread excellently flavoured and light, 'one of the best varieties of mixed or cheap bread when it is made with care'. Its moisture-retaining properties, Miss Acton found, were second only to those of rice bread. But. . . made with care. Her potatoes are dry and warm when added to the flour, she specifies more salt than usual for ordinary bread and a lower temperature for baking. And should the potatoes be watery, you are to wring them dry in a cloth. There are times when I feel that Miss Acton is too good to be true. An unworthy thought, for so obviously, so transparently, she was utterly thorough, totally sincere in her anxiety to instruct, to pass on the knowledge she herself had acquired through such painstaking experiment. Her patience in recording every detail was phenomenal, and although our ovens and our domestic conditions are so far removed from those of the 1850s, Miss Acton's notes are still extremely instructive.
5. One point not mentioned by Miss Acton is that the mashed potatoes are particularly propitious to yeast growth. For this reason they were often used as the basis of a preliminary leaven which encouraged fermentation. The bakers' name for the potatoes they added to bread dough was 'fruit'. [Potato bread, p288-290]
It's surprising that neither Eliza Acton or Elizabeth David suggest reserving the potato cooking water for the dough.
What a thoroughly enjoyable book! It's no wonder that the late wonderful Laurie Colwin said she read the book cover to cover as if it were a novel.
edit: One of the things that shows the age of the book is that all the measurements are in pounds and ounces, instead of grams. I also am not wild about the paragraph form for recipes, instead of having ingredients in a list before the method for construction of whatever bread or biscuit is being described. But these are very minor difficulties....
June 15, 2023
A wonderfully geeky 'everything you wanted to know about bread' book. I found it very enlightening, and especially the chapters on grains and the plants they come from. I have always struggled to understand what spelt is, and what is the relationship between flours and things like semolinas, and what Duram wheat should be used for, and why stone grinding is different to rolling etc. And now all is clear.
The book is wonderful. The only parts which date terribly, as those around food attitudes in England at the time of her writing. You wish they were not there, as the rest of the book has not dated. Her statement that Neapolitan pizza is just like what you can get in 1950s London, and her recipe for dough for her pizza's just are horrifying (cheddar on pizza anyone?). But the 'historical' and 'factual' parts of the book are great, and read perfectly well today.
A great book.
The book is wonderful. The only parts which date terribly, as those around food attitudes in England at the time of her writing. You wish they were not there, as the rest of the book has not dated. Her statement that Neapolitan pizza is just like what you can get in 1950s London, and her recipe for dough for her pizza's just are horrifying (cheddar on pizza anyone?). But the 'historical' and 'factual' parts of the book are great, and read perfectly well today.
A great book.
August 28, 2025
I wanted to confirm some historical facts about yeast, and expand my understanding of a subtopic. And, in what is surely an example of a bigger lesson, reading this historically important book by a highly respected and influential author turned out to be substantially less useful than watching about three videos by historical re-enactors on Youtube. And also less accurate! the most notable example coming when David at one point calls yeast a ‘fungus-like plant’, which is one of those mistakes that just doesn’t make sense. I could understand thinking yeast was a plant in the 1970s, the distinction between fungi and plants is relatively new; but how could you know what a fungus was, enough to know that yeasts are ‘fungus-like’, and yet still think they’re plants?
October 22, 2018
An overwhelmingly impressive book. Not so much a cookbook, as a historical survey of most types of European bread since always. Yes, it has recipes (many dating from the 16th or 17th century) but more than that it's a detailed description of ovens, flours, techniques, etc. A tour de force that I really had to add to my bookshelf.
January 17, 2018
This is easily the best book on bread I have ever read. Not so much how to make, but fabulous on the history.
May 16, 2020
It is history, and it is baking.
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January 1, 2021the section on ovens? she did the math!
February 4, 2015
The title describes this book perfectly. Between the covers the reader will find anything and everything they could possibly want to know on the subject; and once the reader begins baking real, yeast risen bread .. and hot cross buns … and pizza, …and … well, after that there really is no looking back. Mrs David insists that the reader is given a background in understanding the source, properties and milling of different flours; such knowledge is incredibly useful when the home cook begins to informatively experiment in their own kitchen.
To my mind the very best cookery books are those which are both very good to read, and are very good to cook from. I routinely use the recipe for pizza dough on pg 391 (Ligurian); though I found that I needed to make a few tweaks regarding the quantity of yeast (I use dried) and flour – but that doesn’t strike me as unusual because I know from experience how flour from different harvests can make a difference, let alone yeasts processed and packaged by different methods. By reading different recipes I was able to develop a sense of what physical properties to look for in my dough, and therefore how to tailor any necessary adjustments to the recipe.
This is absolutely not just a book about making bread and other yeast raised products. It describes an ethos, a way of life defined by certain technologies (others to be cast aside). It’s also a history book. The scope of this book actually extends beyond English cookery, for example (but not limited to) into Irish soda breads, Welsh Bara Brith, American sourdough breads, and French and Austrian yeast risen cakes. Clearly Mrs David was enjoying herself! And it IS fun. Bread making is a fantastic way to occupy a small child on a wet day. I still remember an inedible bread tortoise I made under my mother's supervision when I was about seven years old. It didn’t matter to me that it was both a tooth-cracker & badly off-colour; what was important was that I had made it.
To my mind the very best cookery books are those which are both very good to read, and are very good to cook from. I routinely use the recipe for pizza dough on pg 391 (Ligurian); though I found that I needed to make a few tweaks regarding the quantity of yeast (I use dried) and flour – but that doesn’t strike me as unusual because I know from experience how flour from different harvests can make a difference, let alone yeasts processed and packaged by different methods. By reading different recipes I was able to develop a sense of what physical properties to look for in my dough, and therefore how to tailor any necessary adjustments to the recipe.
This is absolutely not just a book about making bread and other yeast raised products. It describes an ethos, a way of life defined by certain technologies (others to be cast aside). It’s also a history book. The scope of this book actually extends beyond English cookery, for example (but not limited to) into Irish soda breads, Welsh Bara Brith, American sourdough breads, and French and Austrian yeast risen cakes. Clearly Mrs David was enjoying herself! And it IS fun. Bread making is a fantastic way to occupy a small child on a wet day. I still remember an inedible bread tortoise I made under my mother's supervision when I was about seven years old. It didn’t matter to me that it was both a tooth-cracker & badly off-colour; what was important was that I had made it.
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February 24, 2022The American publication of David's book dates from about 1980. That's probably when I bought and read it. Not sure if I read it cover to cover then, but I am now. It's fascinating even if tinged with that 70's scorn for technology and commerce. Ingredients that were not easily obtained then are more usual now. Looking forward to the recipes...
Post-read: Great book. Fascinating reading for a bread baker. Most recipes are historical. Those that are meant for contemporary use are interesting in their own right, simply because while bread itself is eternal, our tastes and methods have changed drastically even in the years (ca 1970 to present) that I've been baking. A good book from an author who knows her stuff and loves the subject--with the exception of "Big Baking". She soundly trashes the commercial baking industry in Britain in the early 70's when the book was published.
Post-read: Great book. Fascinating reading for a bread baker. Most recipes are historical. Those that are meant for contemporary use are interesting in their own right, simply because while bread itself is eternal, our tastes and methods have changed drastically even in the years (ca 1970 to present) that I've been baking. A good book from an author who knows her stuff and loves the subject--with the exception of "Big Baking". She soundly trashes the commercial baking industry in Britain in the early 70's when the book was published.
November 9, 2012
The book's first half is a long (255 pages) discussion of how bread is made: the flours, the yeasts, the waters, the fats coupled with a diatribe on the state of "factory bread". I think she is missing her audience. Those who would pick up this book are ones who already agree with the paucity of current store-bought bread from the groceries of the 1960's and early 1970's. Once past that, the recipes look pretty interesting. I won't be trying the ones that start with "With a quarter of flour (256 pounds)..."
December 9, 2014
When I first looked into bread-baking in the pre-modern era, this book, and Six Thousand Years of Bread were the ones that were recommended to me. I feel more knowledgeable about bread and bread history for having read it, and I enjoyed reading it.
That said, pre-1650 breadmaking is touched on only lightly here, & in a less-than-satisfactorily researched way. A good search through google scholar on medieval bread would dig up more recent research.
That said, pre-1650 breadmaking is touched on only lightly here, & in a less-than-satisfactorily researched way. A good search through google scholar on medieval bread would dig up more recent research.
September 5, 2017
Oh come on! Who doesn't want to bake a flowerpot loaf! Just remember to use a new pot and make sure it isn't plastic...
This book is a wonderful survey of the history of bread and yeast cookery, with recipes from historical sources like Eliza Acton and Mrs Rundell. These often don't have reliable quantities, or use huge quantities that modern home cooks would find impractical. Still fascinating though.
This book is a wonderful survey of the history of bread and yeast cookery, with recipes from historical sources like Eliza Acton and Mrs Rundell. These often don't have reliable quantities, or use huge quantities that modern home cooks would find impractical. Still fascinating though.
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August 16, 2024Elizabeth David is my kitchen idol. If I could spend my life learning to cook like one person, it would be her. I owe her, and this book, so much. The history, the depth of knowledge, and the passion for local recipies all come together to make this the best and only bread book anyone could ever want or need.
November 8, 2009
A keeper. Love the indepth look at the historical aspect of bread/yeast. I have read lots of books on bread and yeast in history but none that grabbed and exhausted the topic like this. A book you read and NEVER give to Friends of the The Library...
January 23, 2013
Forget the current deluge of books by wannabe celebrity bakers. This is a deeply personal exploration of baking by one of the all-time great cookery writers much-imitated by the many lesser writers who have followed in her footsteps.
Most important of all, the recipes have never failed me.
Most important of all, the recipes have never failed me.
September 29, 2007
It's all about the stories.
August 15, 2010
Still one of the best books on baking bread and worth the hunt to find out what is really going on with all that yeast.
October 31, 2011
I love this little book of Bread making.
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July 1, 2012This is the chef d'oeuvre. Also the masterpiece if researching bread. But also practical because the recipes are also for today.
June 17, 2015
Interesting book. Anyone interested in the history of bread, flour, yeast, or any kind of baking should have this book on hand.
July 30, 2016
Excellent book. Any serious cook or cookbook collector would love to have this as part of their collection.
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