A collection of classic baking recipes from an early twentieth-century magazine serving American farm kitchens, updated for the contemporary home cook.
Long before the Internet and high-speed travel connected us all, The Farmers Wife magazine gave hard-working rural women a place to find and share advice about everything from raising chickens to running a farm kitchen. One of the magazines most popular offerings was advice on baking, providing farm family recipes for making everything from basic bread to much-loved holiday desserts. The elaborate cakes and company pies, the dainties and muffins for club luncheons, the rich breads for a warming breakfast or a lunch-bucket sandwich, the profusion of pies for threshing parties, the specialties like Cornish Pasties and Danish Kranse—all are here, inviting readers everywhere to recreate the fragrant kitchens and delectable tastes of farm days gone by. Adapted for the needs of the modern kitchen, these classic recipes preserve the flavor of a life dedicated to feeding not just the family, but the nation. They offer readers nostalgia and the chance to bake in a tradition unmatched since the 1930s.