“William Rubel has made me rethink bread.” Abi Stokes reviewing my book Bread in Newcity Lit.

Thank you for visiting my website. I write about traditional foodways. I have written two books, The Magic of Fire (2002) and more recently Bread, a global history. I am interested in how life, culture, cooking and taste all work together. My current focus of research is the history of bread, although I regularly cook meals on my fireplace and am never far from hearth cooking.

This web site is my Web 2.0. I started a web site in the early 1990s but recently concluded that it was time start over. Perhaps rashly, I took the old site down and am now starting over.

My purpose in this revised site is to begin sharing research with you that isn’t going to fit neatly into books and articles. As will be evident as the site begins to bulk out again I have many interests, but I will let them speak for themselves as they reemerge onto the site. Comments and emails are always welcome. An initial focus of the new site are ethnographic videos of bread baking such as this one showing an Armenian woman baking in front of a simple oven. If you will be traveling soon to countries where there is still lost of baking in wood fired ovens, please write to me. Perhaps you’d be interested in documenting what you see in videos that we could then post.

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This is one of the earliest bread recipes known to be written in English and this is its first publication.

The  recipe is found in a manuscript book mostly written by Sir Hugh Plat but as Malcom Thick points out in his book, Sir Hugh Plat: The Search for Useful Knowledge in Early Modern London, many of the food recipes, including this one, were written by an unknown author with the initials TT. Malcolm Thick believes that this recipe probably dates to the 1550s or 1560s. I am preparing these early manuscript bread recipes for publication. If you would like to be notified when this book will be available for publication please sign up for my mailing list.

Here is a first look at the first recipe in this important collection. The handwriting is  difficult to read. The transcription is by Malcom Thick who, through years of work with the manuscripts of Sir Hugh Plat, has acquired an enviable ability to read what to the rest of us largely looks like scribbles.

The paragraphs are numbered. This is paragraph 1.

1 Take 3 quart of a pound of fine searced flowr: 2 spoonefulls of new barme worke this together wth hotte licore and cover yt close and let it stand and rest one houre & yt wilbe risen enough, then worke yt & breake yt well make small loaves & sett into the hotte oven the space of halfe an hour or lesse

The colon following “flowr” in the first line means “in a ratio of.” In other words, for each 3/4 pounds of flour use so much barm, etc. A clearer transcription.

1 Take [for each] 3 quart of a pound of fine searced flowr: [use] 2 spoonefulls of new barme worke this together wth hotte licore and cover yt close and let it stand and rest one houre & yt wilbe risen enough, then worke yt & breake yt well make small loaves & sett into the hotte oven the space of halfe an hour or lesse

This is a recipe for rolls with a soft white interior, a close crumb, a neutral taste and a crispy crust. I emphasize that these are white rolls — white flour both being assumed for rolls and also implied by the instruction to refine what would have been freshly ground meal to the finest level possible by first sifting out the larger impurities with sieves and then when the flour was already reasonably refined, to sift it through a searce which was the class of sifters that included the finest screens, like those used to sift medicines and gunpowder for fireworks. While cheap flour refined to a whiteness that can be likened to the whiteness of snow was not available to bakers until the 19th century, this is an elite bread made in small quantities and could have been made with very white flour. It is a style of bread that is now out of favor but I think you will find that it is refreshing.

This core recipe makes “small loaves.” It was intended to be scaled up from the 1 pound of dough (4 4-ounce rolls) as needed. The amount of water is not specified but there was a general assumption that bread was made with roughly 50% water (including the yeast) by weight of flour. Thus, in this recipe, 12 ounces of flour is mixed with 6 ounces water, including the 2 spoonfuls of barm. In my most recent batch I needed to use 6 oz of water plus a tablespoon as the 6 oz didn’t quite let me incorporate all the flour.

What does TT mean by “small loaves?” There is reference in a later recipe to choosing between pieces of dough sized 5 ounces or 4 ounces. Thus,  I think that dividing the dough into thirds or quarters is the most likely interpretation for small loaves.

Conceptually, this should be understood as a master recipe. The baker is told how many people are coming to dinner, decides on a roll size, and scales the recipe to fit. I do think, though, that the very small size of this core recipe (1 pound of dough) suggests that it was often used for very small parties. As many of the early bread recipes — meaning recipes published well into the 18th century — call for pecks and even bushels of flour this early very small household-scale recipe offers a healthy reminder that people have always sat down to family-sized meals, or eaten as couples, and been served (if they could afford it)  freshly baked rolls prepared by their staff.

The weight of the spoonful of barm (the yeasty foam that rises to the surface in ale brewing) is given as 12 pennyweight in recipe number 2. There are 1.5 grams in each pennyweight which lets us calculate how much yeast is in the recipe. No mention is made of scoring the rolls before baking but scoring is probably assumed. The warm dough, lack of salt, and plentiful yeast produces a soft sweet tasting bread. Given the date for this recipe, assume that the barm is the yeasty sediment from unhopped ale barm.

This recipe produces a terrific roll. Period diners may have let the rolls sit a day before eating them (they let bread sit) and they may  have chipped off the crispy crust (they to-us insanely thought that bread crust was hard for the stomachs of refined people to eat). This said, this bread has a distinctive character and I hope yo make it.

As these are working papers what I am offering here is a bit of my working out how to present old recipes. For myself, I hate reading redactions that don’t explain where they come from. What I am playing with here is the idea of offering the same recipe with increasingly modern-style revisions — always true to the underlying text — but with increasing levels of the type of recipe detail that we have come to expect.

Here is the recipe offered again but this time written with standard spellings and minor changes in language

For each 3/4 pound of finely sifted flour: 2 spoonfulls or 24 pennyweight of new barm, work this together with hot water and cover it close and let it stand and rest one hour and it will be risen enough, then work it and break it well, make small loaves and set into a hot oven the space of half an hour or less.

Here is a version that sticks close to the original, but is written in a more modern language and includes information that TT assumed his readers knew but is still close enough to the original that it might make more sense to someone familiar with historic practice than to a modern baker.

For  four 4-ounce rolls, place 3/4 pound (12 oz) of unbleached all purpose white flour in a bowl, work together with 38g of new barm together with enough water that is 90F to 110F to a stiff but supple dough with a temperature of around 78F, cover and let stand for one hour, which is enough time for it to rise, and then knead it by hand and further work the dough under a brake or with your feet until it is very smooth and elastic, make into rolls and immediately without proofing set into a hot oven to bake for at most thirty minutes.

And again, but with yet more detail for the modern baker.

Put 12 ounces of freshly ground wheat sifted and bolted to produce white flour into a bowl or use 12 ounces unbleached white flour, preferably purchased in bulk.  Add 2 spoonfuls (38g or a little over 1oz) fresh unhopped ale barm or 7g dried ale yeast (or 7g bread yeast if you can’t buy ale yeast) mixed with 1oz water and 5 oz warm (90F) to hot (100F) water to produce a supple yet stiff dough with a dough temperature of around 78F. Mix, adding small amounts of water if needed. Cover, let stand one hour, which is enough time for it to rise. Work well by hand and then use a brake or a rolling pin to work the dough until it is supple, elastic, and even a little whitened by the working. Let rest for a few minutes and then form into rolls. No mention is made of how to score the rolls so score as you like, or match to a period print or painting, if you know of one. Immediately, without giving the bread time to proof,  put into a hot oven (425 to 500F) and bake for no more than 30 minutes.

Here is the original recipe in baker’s math:

Freshly ground and sifted white flour: 100%
Fresh unhopped ale barm: 10%
Water 90F to 110F: 40%

Here is the recipe with modern ingredients:

Unbleached white flour: 100%
Dried ale yeast: 2%
110F water to hydrate yeast: 20%
Water 90F to 110F: 30%

Angelica candied.

Gather your Angelica in April, cut in lengths, and boil it in water till it becomes tender. Having put it on a sieve to drain, peel it, and dry it in a clean cloth, and to every pound of stalks take a pound of double-refined sugar finely pounded Put your stalks into an earthen pan, and strew the sugar over them. Cover them close, and let them stand two days. Then put it into a preserving-pan, and boil it till it is clear. Then put it into a cullender to drain, strew it pretty thick over with fine powder sugar, lay it on plates, and dry it in a cool oven, or before the fire. The accomplished housekeeper, and universal cook by T Williams, printed for J. Scatcherd, London 1717

Angelica candied.

TAKE it in April, cut it in lengths, and boil it in water till it is tender, then put it on a sieve to drain, then peel it and dry it in a clean cloth, and to every pound of stalks take a pound of doublerefined sugar finely pounded, put your stalks into an earthen pan, and strew the sugar over them; cover them close, and let them stand for two days ; then put it into a preserving-pan, and boil it till it is clear ; then put it into a cullender to drain, strew it pretty thick over with fine powder sugar, lay it on plates, and dry it in a cool oven. The English art of cookery, according to the present practice: being a complete guide to all housekeepers, on a plan entirely new; consisting of thirty-eight chapters, by Richard Briggs. Printed for G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1788

This photograph, taken by Reaktion Books publisher Michael Leaman in Tiblisi, Georgia, very clearly shows that the top of the oven is angled so that breads stuck to its side will receive direct radiant heat from the embers or fire at the bottom of the oven. If you build a tandoor oven I would use this photograph as a model.

The Peruvian potato oven is constructed in situ with sod or weedy soil. If your soil has a high clay content then using clumps of soil that are already bound with roots is more or less equivalent to building a cob or adobe oven. I don’t know how big a dome one can build out of sod but if one doesn’t have a weedy field to dig up I imagine the following experiment: seed a prepared bed of clayey soil large enough to construct the dome of an oven that is three feet (1 meter) in diameter with grass and when the grass is well established shovel clumps to build an oven as illustrated below.

These videos are posted by the Standford University Clay Technologies Lab associated with the Department of Archeology.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HNo41Tu6do

The following video illustrates the loading of the watia oven with potatoes. The text that accompanies the video reads, “Ricardo, Lucho, Luis, and Genaro adding potatoes to the preheated earth ovens. First, they throw the potatoes through the door and onto the hot coals. Then, they open a hole in the top of the dome, collapsing some of the hot dirt clods onto the potatoes below, before adding the rest of the potatoes through the hole. Finally, they collapse the entire structure onto the layers of potatoes, break up the dirt clods and cover the mass with loose dirt. It takes 30-45 minutes to bake the potatoes. Footage by Melissa Chatfield (Clay Technology Lab) (July 2008)”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aABwjRnfIps

httpv://www.youtube.com/user/ClayTechnologyLab

http://yemar.com/FieldJournals/cuzco.asp

This story was told me by Donald “Babu” Zakayo, of Wamba, Kenya in the mid to late 1990s along with several other stories, a few of which I offer here. The edited transcription is mine.

OMAR WAS NOT crazy before. When he was eighteen he was a little bit crazy, but the Muslim took care of him and he was normal again.

This man was selling. This man was a business man. He had to sell his brother’s shop. For so many years he had been selling shop without coming out of the shop.

When he was around thirty years the brother said, “It’s too difficult to stay with this old man without a wife. Lets marry him a wife.”

He was asking, “Do you want a woman?”

“Yes! Why not?”

Well, the Muslim contributed money and he went to Marsabit and got a lady.

The brother returned. “Now, this one, your wife!”

Omar said, “Yes, I like it! Good! beautiful!”

The day of marriage came and they married one another. According to Muslims you don’t sleep with the lady before you marry. They were taken to the home to spend the night. Omar didn’t want to have to sleep with that woman. So he sit down throughout the night until it’s morning.

The next night, he came with a mattress. Instead of going up the bed he laid down his mattress and slept there.

Tomorrow, the woman went the old people. “Oh, this man has never done me anything! What’s wrong with him?”

So, Omar was called, told, “Why don’t you sleep with that woman? Love her?”

He said, “Ya, I love her, she is my wife!”

It was then he was told, “Since she is your wife you should spend the night with her.”

He said, “Yes! Today! I wasn’t feeling well.”

The night came. Omar went the bed. When the woman came he dropped from the bed. He went under the bed!

“Oh!,” the woman said, “what’s wrong with him now?”

She want to call people, “Come and see! Now he is under the bed, not on top of bed! Under the bed! What’s wrong with him?”

The old man come and said, “Omar, come out. Come out! Why are you hiding yourself?”

“No, no, no! I’m not hiding!”

Omar went and put on his suit. He left. He came down here and he climbed that tree you see there. He climbed on top. People went looking for Omar. All the night. Was not around. All the day. Was not around. He migrated from this tree. He went to that one. He climbed up.

For three days.

The fourth day people saw him on top of that tree and they saw him because he was saying, “Hello! Police control from Miali? Control! Can GO AHEAD!”

Allah what wrong?

So they went and told the old man, “The person you are looking for is on top of a tree!”

The old man came. He told Omar, “Climb down!” Omar didn’t even know how to climb down. So he took a ladder and Omar came down slowly slowly at the ground. He was taken home and told, “Your wife is here.”

“NO! I don’t want this one! This one not mine! I don’t want!”

The woman went.

From that day he started being crazy. Crazy. Even still.

This story was told me by Donald “Babu” Zakayo, of Wamba, Kenya in the late 1990s along with several other stories, a few of which I offer here. The edited transcription is mine.

THE OLD MAN was very very old. He had two sons. Only. He was not rich. He was poor.
Yes, he was very poor.

That old man told his two sons, “Now I am about to die. What do you think I owe you now?”

One boy said, “Me, I don’t want you to owe me anything. I don’t want you to owe me anything now, but when I am about fifty, sixty, I want you to bless me to get a lot of wealth.”

The other boy said, “Me, I won’t wait. I want them right now.”

The father ask, “What’s that you want right now?”

He said, “Wealthy.”

Then the father say to that boy, “When I die, when you go to bury me, my finger look upward.”

And the other one was told, “I bless you. When you be old you’ll get money.”

Now, when the old man died they went and buried him. They did that. After a few days they went to see their father’s grave. They saw a lot of tall trees! Oh, it was wonderful!

The boy who said I want wealth right now said, “These are my wealth that father tell me, ‘When I die you bury me my finger look upward.’”

So, he took the trees. He started cutting, making some for the firewood, some for timber. And he sold! The man became rich. The other one never became. He went poor and poor and poor.

The boy who said, “I want mine first, he was real rich, but he could not keep the money he was given because he was too young. He started drinking beer, making loving with ladies, misusing the money. Oh! When he was fifty the wealth is finished! He has spent everything!

Now, the first brother, his wealth is started. But before this wealth is started he tried selling firewood. Nobody would buy from him. He tried to sell the stone. Nobody wanted anything. Everything he tried in his life was impossible, so, one day he went to rest, like right now, where we are resting. It was, I think, two o’clock when he came to rest. When he was asleep he heard some queer voices coming up the tree.

He said, “Oh! What’s that?” When he look up he saw an eagle with a chicken, a small chicken. The eagle wanted to pick the chicken’s head. The eagle dropped down the chicken. When it was almost to take it again the old man went and fetched the little chicken.

The eagle was really angry.

He said, “What can I do with this chicken? This little chicken? Should I kill it?”

He said, “No! I’ll take it home.”

In this world he was left with one little chicken.

He took the little chicken home. He gave it posho to eat. He stayed with the chicken. The chicken became bigger, bigger! When it was ready it went around eating the small worms, and one day, when the old man came in his house, he found an egg.

“Chicken’s egg!” he said, “Oh, wonderful! What is this egg for? Oh, it is from my chicken!”

Tomorrow he came again, and he found two eggs! After one month there were thirty eggs!

When he came out next there were thirty chickens, plus the one he had. There were thirty-one! Oh! The old man was happy!

“Oh! Oh! Oh! I’m really lucky! Why did I get this wealth from?”

The old man kept on looking after his chickens. Now he was very much wealth.

Now all those chickens laid eggs. There were about sixty! Oh! After that they came many many, but it was impossible to look after them. The old man try and sell them but it was impossible because there were too many.

He said, “These chickens are too much. They are even disturbing my house! I don’t have room to sleep because everywhere there are chickens!”

Now, what he did, he went to exchange every ten chickens, one goat. Every ten chickens one goat. He exchanged, but the chickens were still more and more! He came home with goats and still chicks. He looked after the goats, because he had five. And then when they give birth, every one gives two so there were about, how many? There were five, now there were fifteen! Next time there were over forty! The old man was very rich. It was wonderful! But how is this old man getting money from these goats? Cow! Lets take cow!

He exchange with man. Says the man, “You just give us two goats and we give you a cow.”

The cow was weak. Too weak.

The old man thinks, thinks, said, “Yes, yes, I like!” He give two, he add one cow. He give two, he add one cow. “Have more lucky goats! Give me the cows!”

Too many! He couldn’t look after them! So he had to look for a wife. He got one wife. One wife was not enough. Who would take care of the goats? Who would take care of the chickens?

So, he say, “I must have a second wife!”

The brother came to the brother and said, “What’s wrong? Now I am poor and you are rich?”

“Why, you see, when our dad died he asked us, “What do you want?” and you said, ‘I want my money before,” but I said, “Later, when I grow up, let me be wealthy.’”

So, now, the old man came many many rich. Even he couldn’t know his children! He had sixty children and he divided the wealthy, but there was still a lot a lot a lot; even what he wanted.

Babu’s stories center on the life in the Samburu district of Northern Kenya. They are about the villagers of Wamba, and about the Samburu who live in the countryside with their cattle — their goats, cows, sheep, and camels. I first recorded stories by Babu, the owner along with his mother, Rose, of the now defunct Quick Service Hotel in Wamba, Kenya, in 1995. I asked Babu to tell me about a few of the characters I had seen wandering around town. We sat under a tree on the edge of town and he told me the stories of “Omar,” “Goat Woman,” and “Two Sons.” Over the years I have recorded over sixty stories by Babu, a few of which are included here.

Several people have asked me whether they can meet Babu. The answer is, yes, if you go to Wamba you can meet him. Unfortunately, however, Babu ‘s health has been seriously impaired by the local distilled beverage, changaa, and this has negatively affected his previously brilliant ability as a storyteller.

During the height of his powers Babu was famous all around Wamba and even deep into the mountains on the path to Maralal. I used to joke with him that he must be the most popular person around and could easily win an election as MP. I always hope that my friend will regain his narrative skills, but he will first have to wrestle with the devil changaa and win; as so many people who have poisoned themselves with alcohol have learned, it is not so easy to become whole.

The stories that I include here are selected from approximately 60 stories that were mostly recorded over a period of three weeks in the late 1990s. I would like to acknowledge the brilliant transcription of the stories made for me by Sashi Gajendran. I recorded the stories in the field which means wherever we were at the time, whether indoors, sitting on his veranda, or on a walk. Babu was  rarely  situated to optimize the quality of the recording and his English, though fluent, has its eccentricities. Sashi negotiated the technical defects in the recordings and was not phased by Babu’s English.

Inevitably, some of the stories are told more fluently than others and thus the degree of my own editing varies. Babu performed in an improvisational theater group when he was in college. In reading, some of his English makes us associate his prose with the language of young children, such as, “the piece of the hand falled down.” This is the prejudice we bring to the text and it can get in the way of finding the power in his stories. Aspects of his prose require dramatic presentation. “The man felt very very very very pain” reads poorly, but when Babu performs it he uses the repetition to wind you up for the explosive pain that hits the reader with the shock of it probably about the same time it hit the poor thief as there was likely a delay in his comprehending what had just happened to him.

Okay.. the man put his hand inside.  The one inside took the panga, panga is a sword.  He chopped the hand, he chopped his hand, he cut down and the piece of the hand falled down.  The man felt very very very pain.  He put out his hand and he ran away, but he never wanted anybody to know that he is the one.  Because you know, the oozing bra… blood coming out of his hand, the oozing.  Now, we have the dots, so he did’nt want anybody to know where… where about he is going to, so he went to the toilet.  He took out his shirt, he tied the place which was cut, he went into the toilet and he put the half .. the half hand inside the toilet so that the blood will do what…will go into the toilet.  Instead of going to the hospital, he was crazy.  He went to the toilet and slept there, letting the blood ooze inside the toilet so that nobody will know why he is about.  Now, the blood oozed, all the blood he had went into the toilet.

I keep changing my mind regarding how to best represent his stories. I had hoped to have Babu’s help with this but when I returned with the transcribed stories his mental health had deteriorated to such an extent that he couldn’t help and unfortunately, on more recent visits, his mental health has only deteriorated further. When it was possible to let Babu’s exact words speak for themselves, I have let them. When, for the sake of translating an oral tale to writing its been necessary to edit his words I have done that. Where I go back and forth is with the stories that need heavy editing as they offer multiple options for the editor. I’ve tried to  remain true to what I perceive to be Babu’s vision. I include the raw transcription when there is one  so that  you can make up you own mind  and in any case, so you can superimpose his words over mine.

It often happens that people writing about foreign places end up revealing as much or even more about themselves and their own culture than they do about the people they are ostensibly writing about. This piece unquestionably does offer insights into late 19th-century Italian bread culture and in particular it is very strong on the role of bakeries, communal ovens, and the practice amongst the poor of turning bread into soup by crumbling it into virtually anything liquid, including their morning coffee. But the article is also insightful regarding American culture. She opens by explaining that that in America the cook (the wife) is judged on her bread. This is a leitmotif in many American 19th century cookbooks and suggests the depth of the American home baking tradition. However, I also think that Olive May Eager’s reference to the importance of home baked bread in the American home as  a reflection on the baker points to an interesting cultural shift as many home bakers today are men rather than women and I think that we are judged differently on our bread than the women were, and perhaps even than women are. I discuss this a bit in my book, Bread, a global history, and am interested in any thoughts you might have on the new culture of the male home baker especially if you feel that it is different from that of the female home baker.

Olive May Eager reference American home baking as way of anchoring her narrative. Where is most revealing about American cultural attitudes is the emphasis she places on the unhygienic handling of loaves by the baker and by everyone else who handles the loaf between the baker and the table. The cultural underpinning for bagged and plastic wrapped loaves is clearly reflected in this text. Eager gets uncharacteristically judgmental in her description of the various ways that bread is mishandled. She describes a housemaid’s placing bread on a hallway chair as “dumping” and considers the maid resuming her sweeping as unhygienic. In the 20th century this concern for bread in the open air and for bread being touched by third parties led to the draconian health rules we have today — ones that at least one portion of our modern bread culture pushes against as an appreciation for hearth-baked loaves all brown and crackly linked up, or piled, on a shelf or farmers market table replaces the plastic wrapped grocery bread as a bread of choice.

By Olive May Eager.

ON COMING to live in Rome, I failed to assign the public baker his proper position in household economy, because my only life had been passed in the Old Dominion, where a housekeeper’s reputation depends upon the quality and variety of bread which she places before her guests, and where a cook is valued according to her skill in baking.

Naturally I was dismayed at the first sight of an Italian kitchen with no provision for baking, and with only two or three square gratings filled with charcoal for cooking purposes. Twelve years of experience have taught me that an astonishing number of dishes can be prepared about these round holes, and that fowls can be roasted beautifully on the spit that turns by clockwork and is found in all kitchens. Small ovens for pastries can also be bought, but only fine cooks know or care about using them, since most delicious pastries of every known variety lie temptingly in wait at the corner shop. As for the rest, one soon learns to run to the nearest baker with the beef and potatoes, or with a favorite cake which he will bake for two sous—far less than the cost of extra fuel at home, to say nothing of the labor saved. True, the boy who brings home the roast often disposes of the brownest potatoes, and the cake is occasionally burned black on the edges, but then, housekeeping has its drawbacks everywhere.

In isolated country houses, bread is both made and baked at home, and in the hamlets inhabited by peasants who own tiny grain plats—I cannot magnify them into fields—the woman of the house makes bread once a fortnight, and either carries it on a board to the village oven, or else to a private oven built by several families in partnership. With these exceptions the mass of the people, both in towns and cities, order bread from the public baker, who is, in consequence, an important factor in the general weal. The bread, whether in loaves or rolls, is baked in an old-fashioned brick oven which is heated by a blazing fire of twigs kindled within. When these twigs have settled into red-hot coals, they are shoveled out and put aside to be sold for use in braziers.

The oven is then carefully swept clean of ashes, and the bread is put in on long boards, the largest loaves being pushed further to the back, as they require greater heat. The smoke aperture and the door are then closed until the bread is done, by which time the heat has moderated sufficiently to permit easy handling of the fresh loaves. Except for special orders, the bread is made without any salt, and is generally well baked, there being small chance for either under or over baking. The depth of the ovens varies from two feet to two yards, the .smaller ones being reserved for cakes, pastries and buns, which are baked in the daytime.

Cakes are invariably of the sponge-cake family, but pastries are fit for a king, while there are buns to suit every taste. A plain ring-shaped bun is called clambella, and there are others flavored with almonds and aniseed and which are in much demand with those who prefer quantity to quality. The maritozzo is a Lenten specialty of Rome, and is made with olive oil. The name means literally “a piece of Mary,” and the mere mention of maritozzo will make an old Roman’s mouth water when he is far from home, for strange to say this toothsome bun is not to be found in other Italian cities.

Some large bakeries make a practice of turning out ”hot cross buns” every afternoon about 4 o’clock, and these are distributed by hundreds among small dealers, besides being sent in baskets to the public squares and street corners to catch the pennies of scores of school children, who return home about that hour. Many, however, are retailed hot from the oven for “one a penny, two a penny,” and good customers may venture to inspect the open and fast cooling ovens, or peep into the huge flour bins. The head baker is generally on exhibition, powdery and picturesque in rather scanty attire of white linen. After dark, one may bask in the red glow from the night oven and catch glimpses of shadowy white figures sadly lacking in drapery; but out of regard for to-morrow’s breakfast, it is best to penetrate no further into such mysteries, for popular voice will have it that those ghosts knead without hands, and are adepts in the treadmill business.

The qualities of bread are numerous, and the prices vary from 5 to 10 cents a kilogram—36 ounces—according to the quality desired. Much of the wheat used in Italy is imported, and there is a heavy duty upon it, as also upon sugar and other necessaries of life. The military bread is hardest and blackest of all, and one often sees it carried through the streets piled high in nets of rope and looking like so many rocks. It is made in the barracks by the soldiers themselves, but that they can make better bread I can testify from a fair trial of it some years ago. The Roman bakers went on a strike, and almost before their customers knew of the threatened d earth, the municipal authorities had overhauled the large garrison and put a hundred professional bakers to work. They did the city baking for a week, and at the end of that time the regular bakers found it to their interest to resume operations while the soldiers as quietly returned to military life.

Bread shops are as plentiful as the barber shops which Mark Twain says adorn every street corner in Italy, and are as liberally patronized by all classes. Although of course, as in other countries, the rich consume less in proportion, Italy may be called truly a nation of bread eaters, and the working classes have a peculiar fancy for sopping bread in a liquid. If not already stale, the bread is toasted and crumbled into coffee, soup, oil, wine—anything liquid.

The beggars go from place to place, stuffing their pockets with the hardest crusts, which they carry home to inzuppare in whatever they can afford—hot water seasoned with pepper and oil not being disdained. Servants will submit to limits in other food, but insist upon plenty of bread. Most of them care nothing for fruits or sweets, and are content with meat once a day, but it would seem exaggeration to state how many pounds of bread a female cook requires to crumble into her morning coffee, her noonday broth and her supper salad made sloppy with vinegar and olive oil.

One source of wonder is the indifference of Italians to the careless handling of their bread as it runs the gauntlet from forno to table. A well-appointed Roman kitchen is an attractive sight with its rows of shining copper and cooking vessels, and the kitchen tables have marble tops that are kept scrupulously clean, but bread boards and bread boxes are not considered essential articles of kitchen furnishing. At the forno the bread is thrown loosely into a covered hand-cart, which is pushed from place to place by a boy whose business it is to leave the proper quantity at each house in his round. At the street door he tucks the loaves affectionately under his arm, and running up the steps rings the bell. If the housemaid be sweeping the hall, she dumps the bread on the nearest chair and calmly continues to raise further dust on her mistress’ breakfast rolls. If, however, she fails to answer his ring promptly, the boy leaves the loaves to ornament the doorstep, and hurries off to finish his morning duties. One often sees a youth carrying a basket under the arm so that his wet or dirty coat sleeve rests on the upper rolls, and a woman’s favorite way of slicing bread for the family meal is to hold the loaf firmly against the chest and cut toward her. It is not uncommon to see children carrying some bread for the next meal, and dropping it anywhere in order to inquire into the whys and wherefores of a street fight, or to indulge in a wayside game of castelline, the Italian boy’s substitute for marbles.—Kale Field’s Washington.

This next mention of bolting cloth follows. I include it only as a curiosity. It seems that precision cloth was imported.

Imports of bolting cloth for the month ending March 31, 1894, were valued at $20,363, against $20,966 for March, 1893; and for the nine months ending March 31, 1894, at $147,810, against $214,899 for the corresponding period of 1892-3.

For the second oven a very simple hearth — a “pit” dug 6 – 12 inches deep is all this specified. I’d think that that pit was probably filled with clay to form the oven floor, but I am only speculating.

495. —To bake bread, when none of the portable ovens of the Commissary Department are carried, improvised ovens must be constructed. The simplest method is to take a barrel with one head out (one with iron hoops best), lay it on its side in a hollow in the ground and then plaster over with wet clay 6 to 8 in. thick, then with a layer of dry earth equally thick, leaving an opening of 3 or 4 in. at the top of the closed end for a flue. The staves are then burned out by a hot fire, which also bakes the clay covering, forming an arched oven. To bake, after beating, the front and flues are closed. Or a pit may be dug from 6 to 12 in. deep and 4 by 5 ft. for the hearth, over this form an arch with a hurdle or any other material available (Fig. 7). with a chimney at one end and a door at the other. Then plaster and cover the arch as in the barrel oven and bake the clay covering.

496. —An oven may be excavated in a clay bank (Fig. 6) and used at once.

Manual of military field engineering for the use of officers and troops of the line
By William Dorrance Beach, Edwin Alvin Root, Thomas Horace Slavens, United States Infantry and Cavalry School. Dept. of Engineering, Kansas City, Mo. : Hudson-Kimberly Pub. Co. ; London [England] : W.H. Allen & Co. 1897.