About

Introduction 

Baking has been apart of the human since the first civilizations developed. In the modern context, baking is about decadent desserts for celebrations that bring together family and friends. Recipes are passed down from generation to generation and become a symbol of heritage and nostalgia of childhood memories. Techniques and recipes of baking are passed down become a part of the history of the human race. Ancient Egyptians used flour and water to create an environment suitable for yeast to generate, and when baked, the result was bread. Ever since then, people have been using baking to create not only food for sustenance but to represent culture. From religious culture to family values, to a representation of where people came from, baking is more than just the craft of making food, but attribution to how people have evolved over the centuries. 

The history of Baking is a pathfinder for those who are curious to know more about baking as a science, where baking began and discovering the importance that culture has on baking. Please note and be aware that this is not a resource for baking recipes, techniques of baking, or a source for what the modern trends of baking are. Instead, this website is to be used as a resource for research on baking throughout history, the science of how baking works, and why baking is so important to people of many various cultures around the world. In order to use this pathfinder, I have organized it by type of resource (i.e. database, article, video, print source) and have put each category of sources in order of time period that the source talks about. For more instructions on searching, please read on.

Search Terms:

Baking 

History of baking

Baking science

Baking culture

Culture of baking  

Evolution of baking

Search Instruction

The above search terms are what you can use on your own search or among the sources provide in this pathfinder. It will be helpful to note that when utilizing an internet search engine such as Google, to not truncated the words bake or baking, this will produce unusable and unwanted results. Use the words bake and baking spelled out entirely along with any terms related to your topic. 

The print resources given on this pathfinder can be found at a local library nearest the user, who is a participating member of the upper Hudson Library System (in case you do not have a library card, please find out how to get one, it’s free, here). I have also included links to the online versions of these books if they are available for free through Google Books. 

The Sifter is an online database that has 5,000 works related to cooking and baking. A lot of these resources are cookbooks, some of these go back hundred of years. To search the database find recommendations from the creators of the shifter, here. There are several categories in which to conduct searches. If there is a specific author that a user wants to research they can do so by going to the suggested tab. Additionally users can search by collection name, section, details, or items. There is also a section to browse the collection by author, title, details, items, etc., if a user is not looking for any specific work, but wants examples of recipes from a specific time period.