A History of Baking: From Blood Bread to Bake-off

Clearly written by a practicing baker and avid food historian, the details gleaned from history are deliciously precise and immediately evocative of baking in years gone by. At the present time, while we’re all living restrictive lifes – simultaneously bound by additional Government rules and concerned about the burden our NHS has to bear – I found some of the points relating to war-time baking sobering reading. How, for instance, the Personal Comforts Depot of Sheffield ‘made a public appeal in 1915 for people to come forward with homemade cakes to help sustain the additional 400 wounded soldiers that arrived in the city over a period of just six days’; or moving on to the Second World War, how sugar topping was banned on cakes from 1942, how white bread was officially ‘out’, not returning to bakers’ shelves until the mid 1950s, and rather desperate sounding recipes – such as ‘Gingerbread: (No sugar, no eggs)’. Packed with history and with numerous period recipes for you to try at home, this is a fascinating read for lovers of baking and or history. • Published by Pen and Sword in hardback, RRP £25 www.pen-and-sword.co.uk ISBN: 1526757486 HT