Rustic Breads & Bakeoven Cakes

Bread is so basic to Pennsylvania German culture that it amazes me to see such little attention devoted to it in our popular cookery books. The only author to take a serious look at traditional Pennsylvania Dutch bread-baking was Edith Bertels Thomas in her Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes (Norristown, Penn., 1915). Thomas based her recipes on informal interviews with country cooks and bakers, which she combined with photography to create a semi-ethnographic look at the Pennsylvania Dutch and their foods. Her photographs of a potato pretzel —a large braided loaf shaped like a pretzel—and a sliced loaf of rye bread are invaluable records.