Breaking Bread
In BREAKING BREAD, third generation baker, food writer and presenter David Wright examines the universal questions about bread and baking. About the people who make and shape the bread we buy and the difficulties that social and cultural change, food fads and health directives have had, and are having, on the baking industry. His family bakery sadly closed its doors after seventy-five years, he asks if the the closure of the bakery underlines the very idea that bread is a dying foodstuff. Is bread good or bad? And what does the future hold for bread?
Bread is an essential part of our story, our health, our very being. Every civilisation has a form of bread, and how we create, make and bake it, how we sell it and buy it, our food security, our access to it, impacts on everything: our physical and mental well-being, and the way make it, the ingredients, the seeds, the very earth we grow our grains in, the water we use and how we treat and sustain these natural resources, impact on the very health and future of our planet.
Reviews
(This) book is compelling, being both poignant and humorous in parts. It's informative, entertaining and enlightening.
(David) makes complex issues accessible through clear, creative prose.
The glimpses we're given into the unseen, nocturnal world of the professional baker are irresistible, rather like peeking into a miniature town: a whole team of people weighing, shaping, scoring, lifting, loading and unloading. There are gorgeous turns of phrase... His passion is infectious.
An important and wide-ranging book, an absorbing narrative that is part memoir, part political polemic, part meditation, part sociological survey and part reportage. It could be a lumpy mix, but the author’s credentials as a third-generation artisan baker, along with his descriptive flair, analytical mind and tone of wry amusement, save the text from being too stodgy… His brave and honest personal story as a “broken baker” is braided with that of an industry, indeed a planet, facing multiple challenges and crises.