English Bread and Yeast Cookery

London: Allen Lane, 1977. First Edition. 591 pages. 22 x 14.5 cm. This was Elizabeth David's own copy, heavily annotated, with more than fifteen pages of her handwritten notes laid in. The extensive notes written in David's hand were corrections used for the revised edition. It comes from the estate of her editor, Jill Norman, to whom the book is dedicated: "To Jill Norman, Affectionately" - David states in the Acknowledgements: "I have dedicated the book to her (Jill Norman) because she has nursed it along chapter by chapter and stage by stage, has supervised every aspect of its production, has certainly worked on it as hard and become almost as involved in its subject as I myself. Together we have visited mills and talked to millers, we have both tested many times all the bread flours and meals used for the recipes in this book; it has been a happy collaboration."

David's English Bread and Yeast Cookery is both a technical guide and a historical study of British bread - becoming one of the foundational texts of the late-20th-century "real bread" movement in Britain. Many commentators treat English Bread and Yeast Cookery as David's "masterpiece" of English food, marking a turn from her earlier Mediterranean escapism to a rigorous engagement with native British traditions. She mines a wide range of historical sources to reconstruct techniques and products that are often poorly documented. The book's extended discussions of flours, grains, grinding, sifting, and leavening are also notable for debunking popular myths about bread and explaining the sensory and nutritional differences between industrial and traditional methods. For food historians, it remains a key secondary source and point of entry into the historic study of baking, particularly for topics like legal regulation, milling practices, and named regional or historical breads.

The exhaustive notes and annotations in this copy show that David continued to revise a book that had already taken five years to write, carrying on her editing even after publication. David combs through every part of the book, correcting errors and adding revisions. While most of her notes are precise and historical, some are wryly entertaining, as when she reflects on Christmas: "Hugh Johnson once called the season of the Great Too Much. That means too much work as well as too much food and too much eating. Above all too much pressure. I only hope that nothing I have written here will add to anybody's work and anxiety at Christmas time. I hope indeed that something here and there will help to make the preparations easier, particularly for those who feel harried by advertising and the annual hysteria of the media into doing more than they can reasonably manage, and spending more than they can afford on things nobody really wants or needs." Also included are a few letters from readers querying specific recipes, along with correspondence correcting misattributed information. A pamphlet from a Cambridgeshire milling firm is laid in as well.