Elena Molokhovets, the Mrs Beeton of Czarist Russia, wrote of making bread on a country estate: of keeping sourdough cultures alive from one baking to the next by the simple procedure of not washing out the wooden troughs in which the dough was mixed; of drying flours in front of the fire before they could be used to make bread; of putting white loaves to prove in a tub of cold water - whe
