Rachel Laudan

It’s cookbook award time. And the number of stunning cookbooks that are out there is overwhelming: beautifully written, well-tested recipes, and glorious photography.
Yet there are so many lovely books that are never entered, often books of the heart, books that had to be written, whether or not they were attuned to the latest fads and [...]

Some random thoughts stimulated by William’s post.
1.  I remain fascinated by firing the monster oven or more precisely by the collecting of real logs not just faggots.  It’s doubtless all in Maget’s book, but that’s a lot of large wood for peasants.  I look forward to reading about the land tenure scheme that gave them [...]

Here’s William Rubel, my companion in various grinding adventures and connoisseur of bread and bread history, on the bread ovens I posted a link to last week. Over to you, William.
Rachel
The most well known bread from the French Alps is that of Villar d’Arene. Villar d’Arene is on the Grenoble side of the valley that [...]