Best bread in the world – 1890

Bread was not always easy to find in the early hinterland. “However, South Africans soon learnt how to grind corn between stones, make their own yeast from veld plants and bake bread in pots, clay ovens or converted ant-heaps,” writes Leslie Faul in Bread. There is no doubt that this bread was good. In 1890, in Home Life on a Ostrich Farm, Anne Martin suggested all settlers should learn how to bake bread “in the Boer way” and not to rely on any old “fly-infested” offerings that came their way. She writes: “if there was a competition for bread-makers of all countries surely the Dutch woman of the Karoo would bear away all the prizes for their delicious whole-meal bread, leavened with sour dough and baked in large earthenware pots. There is nothing quite like it. It is delicious, beautifully sweet and light.”

© Rose’s ROUND-UP

Vol 2 No 39 – December 2006