Going with the Grain: A Wandering Bread Lover Takes a Bite Out of Life

Review by Philip Blazdell

Seligson is clearly obsessed with bread and she undertakes a rather luxurious trip around the world to explore the complex way that bread has shaped our world and our thinking. As she travels from the Jordanian desert to Saratoga Springs, New York to Shanagarry, Ireland she samples many breads, describes wondrous recipes and, quite probably, piles on the pounds in her search for the perfect bread.

Seligson introduces us (in the most rewarding chapters) to the food engineer of the U.S. Army bread project working in the laboratory to create a palatable bread with a shelf life of three years, and the Alabama octogenarian for whose biscuits devotees happily drive an hour each way for breakfast. From the tents of Jordan's Wadz Musá to the schmurah matzo factories of Brooklyn, from the kitchens of New Delhi to the granaries of the lush Irish countryside, Seligson braids her adventures with historical detail and personal reflections about this most fundamental of foods. She embraces her project with gusto and this often comes over in the form of a lecture: 'Whether bread appears in its simplest form, a mixture of flour and water baked on a blazing hot surface, or as the product of modern scientific ingenuity, its importance is best expressed by the Arabic word aysh. It is also the word for "life."'

The book is a nice idea; it is a gentle mixture of soft-core travel and food history. Like a well baked loaf, it's light, moist and generally enjoyable. However, Seligson is sometimes a little too eager to point out that she is not another shutter-happy tourist. While she disdains fellow Americans who drop names at the slightest excuse, she refers to herself as a "self-respecting subscriber of the New York Review of Books," but she does try to understand the local culture and hang this on a framework which is both relevant and interesting to the reader.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It made me look at my daily bread in a new way and I have already been experimenting with some of the author's recipes. However, as indicated by the title, 'Going with the Grain,' this really isn't a challenging book. The author has some valid and interesting points to make, but she does not push the boundaries of either travel or food writing and it would, perhaps, have been nicer if she had moved a little away from her comfort zone and explored some more distant or remote cultures.

• Going with the Grain: A Wandering Bread Lover Takes a Bite Out of Life by Susan Seligson