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A review by zamreads
White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf by Aaron Bobrow-Strain
4.0
Admittedly, I was bound to have a bit of a soft spot for Aaron Bobrow-Strain's White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf. The author begins with an anecdote from his time living in Tucson when he tried to make twenty loaves of bread at once and I lived in Tucson for about a decade. He teaches at Whitman and I graduated from and now work at Whitman. His book is about bread and I absolutely love bread. In fact I'm eating a slice right now, which after reading this book feels like a very complex and political activity. (What difference would it make in your impression of who I am and what my politics might be if I told you it was a slice of Dave's Killer Bread?) But more than about bread this book is about the human cultures built around bread and the power dynamics that shape the production and consumption of as well as discourse about this ever-popular food source.
The book is organized by the social dreams of "good" bread (and fear of "bad" bread) in several different historical periods in the States: dreams of purity/fear of contagion, control & abundance, health & discipline, strength & defense, peace & security, and counterculture resistance & status. Bobrow-Strain points out the ways in which cultural expectations and dreams build on one another and how recent bread trends interestingly mirror and turn back in past bread trends and philosophies in some paradoxical ways. Take, for example, the current trend toward homemade bread: "The countercultural dream of good bread challenged authority and expertise, stood against capitalist agribusiness, and sought to remake relations among people and between nature and society. Yet it also rested on rather orthodox myths of American individualism and independence." (171) Or the new gluten-free trend? Not so new.
As you can probably tell from the quote above, it's not just a matter of bread and dreaming-- bread dreams are wrapped up in a complex narrative that ties in racial and economic inequalities, gender expectations, protest culture, industrial capitalism and it's malcontents, hybrids of artisan values and industrial methods, and more. For example, is bread making anti-feminist in that there is a history of women kept to the kitchen, working and reworking bread dough to unpredictable effects and industrial white bread made home-keeping less slavish? Or has bread making been reclaimed in contemporarily nostalgic fashion, along with home-canned preserves, as something women can approach out of choice and, in so doing, claim as a sign of hard won freedoms?
This book trailer made by a group of student film makers might offer a more visual of some of key themes Bobrow-Strain's text touches on in bread's social history.
Now, I'm not a historian, but the historical information in this book was still accessible and almost always interesting. The history, tempered with the occasional personal anecdote from the author, kept me engaged, and in the end White Bread helped me think more critically about my bread choices and about my assumptions about breads and bread eaters (or non eaters). It also makes me want to better examine the social histories of several other foods I frequent. Perhaps Kurlansky's Salt is next, or a book on olive oil...
But to the point. For a carboloader like me or a carbophobe, a foodie or a sociologist, an industrialist or a communist or a feminist or a capitalist or any intersection thereof, or really anyone living in these bread-obsessed times, this is a worthwhile and smooth read. It probably won't radically change your life, but it'll almost definitely make you think a little more complexly about a little thing it's easy to take for granted.
The book is organized by the social dreams of "good" bread (and fear of "bad" bread) in several different historical periods in the States: dreams of purity/fear of contagion, control & abundance, health & discipline, strength & defense, peace & security, and counterculture resistance & status. Bobrow-Strain points out the ways in which cultural expectations and dreams build on one another and how recent bread trends interestingly mirror and turn back in past bread trends and philosophies in some paradoxical ways. Take, for example, the current trend toward homemade bread: "The countercultural dream of good bread challenged authority and expertise, stood against capitalist agribusiness, and sought to remake relations among people and between nature and society. Yet it also rested on rather orthodox myths of American individualism and independence." (171) Or the new gluten-free trend? Not so new.
As you can probably tell from the quote above, it's not just a matter of bread and dreaming-- bread dreams are wrapped up in a complex narrative that ties in racial and economic inequalities, gender expectations, protest culture, industrial capitalism and it's malcontents, hybrids of artisan values and industrial methods, and more. For example, is bread making anti-feminist in that there is a history of women kept to the kitchen, working and reworking bread dough to unpredictable effects and industrial white bread made home-keeping less slavish? Or has bread making been reclaimed in contemporarily nostalgic fashion, along with home-canned preserves, as something women can approach out of choice and, in so doing, claim as a sign of hard won freedoms?
This book trailer made by a group of student film makers might offer a more visual of some of key themes Bobrow-Strain's text touches on in bread's social history.
Now, I'm not a historian, but the historical information in this book was still accessible and almost always interesting. The history, tempered with the occasional personal anecdote from the author, kept me engaged, and in the end White Bread helped me think more critically about my bread choices and about my assumptions about breads and bread eaters (or non eaters). It also makes me want to better examine the social histories of several other foods I frequent. Perhaps Kurlansky's Salt is next, or a book on olive oil...
But to the point. For a carboloader like me or a carbophobe, a foodie or a sociologist, an industrialist or a communist or a feminist or a capitalist or any intersection thereof, or really anyone living in these bread-obsessed times, this is a worthwhile and smooth read. It probably won't radically change your life, but it'll almost definitely make you think a little more complexly about a little thing it's easy to take for granted.