Bread, a name that tastes ancient and "natural". But bread does not exist in nature. Since it was invented it has been a symbol of innovation and creativity. Bread is the perfect food, designed by humans for humans. After millennia, it continues to hold the secret of humanity.

Massimo Montanari, Professor of Medieval History, Bologna University, Italy

In a masterful and lively study, as rigorous as it is graceful, Scholliers insists on the essential : bread is at the core of public and private life, as much a political and social as a nutritional and gastronomical object, a powerful force of and for life, yet also a reminder of its fragility.

Steven Laurence Kaplan, Goldwin Smith Professor emeritus of European History, Cornell University, USA

Bread was, for centuries, the staple of most Europeans' diets. Here Peter Scholliers weaves together economic and medical histories, the daily lives of workers, the histories of technology and consumption, to demonstrate how a simple item like a loaf of bread can trace historical change in all its complexity.

Rachel Rich, Reader in Modern European History, Leeds Beckett University, UK

[Peter Scholliers'] comprehensive approach guides readers through bread's tumultuous history-wars, petitions, uprisings, artisanal bread, assizes, mechanization, regulations and bakers' wages. A History of Bread is a textbook, not a cookbook, but even so, it motivated me to dust off the banneton, feed my levain, and bake a loaf of scratch-made bread.

Culinary Historians of Canada