Going with the Grain Travels for the love of bread By Susan Seligson

Review
Seligson's no loafer; her quest for bread from French baguettes to lab-crafted field rations courtesy of the U.S. military takes her around the world and across America, five countries and six U.S. cities in all as she explores cultural difference and identity through a common creation. As Seligson explains, "My lifelong love affair with bread has less to do with crust, crumb, and the vagaries of sourdough cultures and more to do with bread as a reflection of people's varied beliefs, daily lives, and blood memories." Serious stuff, but Seligson best known as a journalist and children's book author (Amos: The Story of an Old Dog and His Couch) leavens this offering with keen observations and a wicked sense of humor. She starts off in Morocco, where Fesi women rise at dawn to prepare the dough that will be baked as it has for centuries in huge communal hearths. Stops in the U.S. include Eunice's Country Kitchen in Huntsville, Ala., where the spitfire proprietress helps maintain the down-home feel of the former cotton-farming town turned NASA hub by serving up biscuits, ham and red-eye gravy, and the Wonder Bread plant in Biddeford, Maine, which emits no discernible smell. Seligson ends her tour in Paris, where, after a decade-long denigration of traditional technique, legislation was passed to protect and maintain the art of the boulanger. Seligson's debut essay collection is as smart and evocative as it often is laugh-out-loud funny.
- Publishers Weekly

This isn't just another travel book with a gimmick: as Seligson points out, bread is central to almost every culture in the world, so observing how people make their distinctive form of bread tells us a great deal about their approach to life in general. The author is curious, a good observer, and respectful of the people she visits; so not only are her stories fascinating, but she's able to take us into situations where tourists are rarely welcome. I was favorably impressed with her chapter on horno bread: when it turns out that the pueblos aren't eager to welcome yet one more travel writer, she respects their wishes and adopts a low-key approach rather than becoming invasive (or writing a whiny "my bad experiences with the Indians" piece, which seems to be a far too common practice!). (I should add that horno bread varies widely: the loaf she tried was uninteresting, but I recently got a loaf from San Felipe pueblo that's right up there with the boutique farm breads.) As a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, I was sorry that Seligson didn't explore sourdough in more depth, although, as she notes briefly, commercial starters have taken their toll (so it's not just cranky old age that makes me insist that "it doesn't taste as good as it used to"!). But that's just a quibble; in general, the book is fun to read and surprisingly informative, and I recommend it highly.
- P. Lozar, Amazon.com

Download:- Hotfile