A formidable and scholarly work - one of Elizabeth David's (1913 - 1992) later outputs, first published in 1977. Great detail on the raw ingredients : grains, yeast, salt, liquids, fats, etc. and processes : milling, factories, moulds and tins, etc. make it mandatory reading for those who want depth of understanding. The recipe section leaves very few tradional, English stones unturned. As with her other books, the wide range of quotations and references make for a comprehensive coverage, rarely, if ever, matched in terms of history and background.

Just finished the introductory two fifths lead in of this wonderful book. What a wealth of knowledge and historical information she shares with us. When you stop and think about, grain has always been vital to man's survival from the very first days that he gave up hunting and gathering, settled and became farmers. So grain, its grinding and turning the flour into edible nourishing food has been important daily concern for all our forebears. No wonder the Lords of the Manor took away our rights to grind our own grain and why the miller and their abuses became such a concern to the ordinary villager.
She steps through all these important developments with a delightfully delicate tread, helping you to realise the importance of this our daily bread. Bye the way explaining the origins of our (previous) pence, shillings and pounds, all related to the number for grains! So it is again no wonder her contempt for the Chorleywood processed loaf we are dished out with at every 'bakery'. Our grain, our flour, our bread really does deserve much greater respect. She certainly helps us along the way, with her self-evident careful experimentation and recording of this method against that method.
So to anyone who wants to understand about bread. This is a must of a read. To anyone who wants to try making real bread making and re-discovering what bread flavour, texture, crust and smell are actually about. This is a fine place to start. A thorough grounding in the essentials and the sweeping away of myths. Always with those amusing, fascinating aside quotes from past bread makers to reassure that it is not science, just a skill within all of our reach.
So just maybe her bread recipes are not of the same order as those to be found in 'Bread Matters' but her book is the one I will turn to, to better understand when things go occasionally wrong. As they do. ( )

Authoritative seminal text on baking bread. Wendy Jones' line and stipple illustrations are a particular pleasure. ( )

If you can thing of something to make which either contains yeast, or is some form of bread it will be covered here. David goes through the history of bread making and the background of each form of bread etc is explained. The recipes are often short, and could confuse someone not familiar with the methods used. However they invariably work, and the collection is as near to definitive as its scoe allows. A wonderful book for anyone who loves bread. ( )

1st British ed. Endpaper drawings by Lady Llanover from Good Cookery 1867. ( )