The Home-Baking Revolution

Bread has always been the ultimate symbol of civilization. Its production represents cooperation, stability, and planning—that you will be alive to harvest your wheat, that you will be there tomorrow to bake the dough you’ve started the night before. It combines the ancient four elements: grain comes up from the earth and is crushed by stone; it is blended with water; yeast from the air brings more air into the dough; and it is hardened with fire. In his influential text The Cottage Economy, the early 19^th century British journalist William Cobbett wrote, “Without bread, all is misery. The Scripture truly calls it the staff of life: and it may be called, too, the pledge of peace and happiness in the labourer’s dwelling.”