Books

An engrossing and entertaining tour of the astonishing global effort required to bring home one loaf of bread, in the tradition of John McPhee. How many people does it take to make a loaf of bread? In Loaf, Pallant traces the path of a single loaf of bread, from the wheat fields of Pennsylvania to you and your sandwich. The journey stops in surprising places: agriculture scientists studying wheat varieties in a Sugar Cookie Test lab in Ohio; yeast strains meticulously selected and raised in France and flown to Iowa on dry ice; phosphate that travels from mines in the Western Sahara to the eastern Atlantic coast via the world’s longest conveyor belt.

Sourdough Culture presents the history and science of sourdough bread baking from its discovery more than six thousand years ago to its still-recent displacement by the innovation of dough-mixing machines and fast-acting yeast. Pallant traces the tradition of sourdough across continents, from its origins in the Middle East’s Fertile Crescent to Europe and then around the world. Pallant also explains how sourdough fed some of history’s most significant figures, such as Plato, Pliny the Elder, Louis Pasteur, Marie Antoinette, Martin Luther, and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, and introduces the lesser-known—but equally important—individuals who relied on sourdough bread for sustenance: ancient Roman bakers, medieval housewives, Gold Rush miners, and the many, many others who have produced daily sourdough bread in anonymity.