Apparently, one book about bread was not going to be enough.
The first Toasty Panetteria volume followed loaves around the world. This time I wanted to look further back. At the people preparing the grain, managing the fire, keeping a bakery working and deciding what counted as somebody’s portion.
The result is Forgotten Loaves: Breads and Bakers of the Ancient World and Beyond.
It is a history book about bread. I am very pleased that this is a sentence I get to write.
What did people need their bread to do?
That question holds the book together. A bread might make gathered plants easier to prepare and share. It might feed a household, supply a worker, fit a particular cooking vessel or remain useful a long way from the bakery. It might accompany an offering or end up being kept as a memory.
Follow those purposes and an ordinary loaf starts to become a much more interesting object. The grain matters, but so do the equipment, the work and the meal around it.
The journey begins with early prepared plant foods and Neolithic kitchens. There are Egyptian baskets and grain allowances, Greek bread names and Roman cheese loaves. The northern frontier brings grain stores and accounts into view. Millet, maize, cassava and Aboriginal Australian seed-food knowledge widen the table, while medieval markets and maritime provisions carry the story onwards.
One of the pleasures is how often a small detail changes the scene. Cato beginning a recipe with two pounds of cheese is an excellent example. A loaf can also become much more revealing when you ask who was expecting to receive it, or how the ingredient was prepared before it reached the bowl.
The recipes belong with the story
I wanted the history and the kitchen to keep each other company. When you reach the Roman cheese preparations, their modern recipes are there in the chapter. The same applies to the grain comparisons, the covered loaves and the serving ideas elsewhere in the book.
There are ten baking recipes and two serving ideas, all of which I have tested. They are modern companions to the history, with an origin note explaining each relationship and the adaptations involved. You can follow Cato into a flour-and-water round, try the ricotta-rich libum, or give a mixed-grain dough the support of a tin.
There is plenty to read without getting flour on anything too. The book has nineteen chapters, references, a glossary, an index and a recipe finder. An armchair and a cup of tea are perfectly good equipment for the journey.
Part of the same bread shelf
The design follows the toast-and-cream palette and typography of The Toasty Book of Bread, with a quieter historical interior, line drawings and recipe pages. Paperback uses black-and-white groundwood paper. Hardback uses black-and-white cream paper. The Kindle edition reflows for different screens and text sizes.
The two books can be read separately. Together they let a question move between the breads we recognise today and the earlier meals that make their variety more interesting.
There is also a companion excerpt, A Loaf under the Cover, bringing the two Cato chapters and their four tested recipes together. It has its own DOI, separate from the complete book’s print ISBNs.
Next: the Baker's Archive
I will be adding all ten baking recipes and both serving ideas to the Baker's Archive, one entry a day. Each will have the full ingredients, method, source notes and an illustration, ready to use without having the book open beside it.
The recipes from The Toasty Book of Bread will carry on arriving too. This is a second collection joining the table. Once all twelve Forgotten Loaves entries are up, I will post another update with the complete set.
Explore Forgotten Loaves, or visit the Baker’s Archive for more things to make.