Why read White Bread?

Book cover of White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf

Book description

The story of how white bread became white trash, this social history shows how our relationship with the love-it-or-hate-it food staple reflects our country’s changing values

In the early twentieth century, the factory-baked loaf heralded a bright new future, a world away from the hot, dusty, “dirty” bakeries run by…

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Why read it?

1 author picked White Bread as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Julie Guthman

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Against the backdrop of today’s obsessions with homemade, artisanal bread, Bobrow-Strain uses the most prosaic of foods—the industrially produced loaf of white fluff—to ask hard questions about race, class, gender, war, and modernity itself.

With so many food books falling into food porn mode, I can really appreciate a book that reminds me that the technologies of stripping wheat of its bran and germ were founded on ideas of racial purification. There’s plenty to chew on in this book.

From Julie's list on The best super engaging scholarly books that will bend your mind about the role of technology in modern food production.