Classic Baking [antikvár]

THE HISTORY OF BAKING ¦1 Cakes and pastries form an important part of our food culture, and have symbolised our desire for luxury since the early Middle Ages. Representations of the land of milk and honey tempted the tastebuds with images of streets paved with ginger biscuits and shutters made of fragrant gingerbread. Both rich and poor enjoyed sweet cakes and pastries on high days and holidays. Initially they were served when the pangs of hunger had already been assuaged. They were eaten purely for greed and enjoyment, not to quieten a rumbling stomach, and very little has changed today. Among the dearest wishes nowadays of those who have a sweet tooth but who have to count the calories is to be able, just once, to eat their fill of cakes and biscuits. Cakes and pastries should be a feast for the eyes and the palate and, when all is said and done, they should be a treat. Baking itself, stirring, kneading and shaping, is not a duty. Baking is a creative pleasure. Baking is an act of love! TRADITION m Baking is not a new skill. The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans baked with flour, fruit, honey and spices and wrote about their recipes. The women of ancient Germania sacrificed baked plaits to the gods instead of their own hair. Recipes for A biscuit mould devised in a monastery cell In the Middle Ages. gingerbread dating back to the darkest Middle Ages have been found and they had already been mentioned in stories of the saints by the year 1000. A document from as early as 1329 mentions Christmas stollen and we hear of the first Christmas stollen from Dresden in 1528. The traditional Italian Christmas cake, Panettone (recipe page 54) is supposed to have been discovered in the late 15th century by Toni, the owner of the Della Grazia bakery in Milan (thus Pane di Toni -Panettone). By the beginning of the l6th century monks were already preparing the first Baumkuchen (a cake which, when sliced, has a pattern similar to the annual rings of a tree) on the roasting spits of their monastery kitchens (our recipe for Baumkuchen, as a gateau baked in a spring form tin, is on page 46). In the middle of the l6th century Phillippine Welser, a woman from Augsburg in Germany, wrote, amongst other things, about pear tart and lardy cakes made with flour, sugar and rose-water in her hand-written cookery book. GREATER VARIETY ¦ The tradition of home baking as we know it first began in the 18th century. This was when millers discovered how to produce fine, white wheat flour without the coarse pieces of bran