I always feel like I’ve hit the motherload when I discover a vintage illustrated cookbook.
And it happened again this weekend when I found this awesome antique cookbook published back in 1917.
Now in the public domain, this cookbook is packed with vintage baking recipes you can whip at home and a few colored illustrations of rolls, bread loaves, cakes, biscuits, and more yummy baked goods pictured below.
Project Ideas For Vintage Baked Goods Illustrations
Need some creative inspiration? I was brainstorming different projects you could do with these illustrations and came up with the following ideas:
- DIY ABC Flashcards: These make great images for the letters “B” (Bread or biscuits), “C” (cake), and “R” (rolls).
- DIY Coloring Book: Create coloring books for homeschooling, summer learning, classrooms, and after school programs.
- Printed Kitchen Fabric: Use these images to create printed towels, placemats, calendars, and more kitchen decor.
- Books & Activities: Use these antique illustrations to create hidden picture books, matching games, and phonics exercises.
- Mixed-Media Painting: Incorporate vintage images of bread and cakes into your culinary inspired paintings.
Fun Facts About The History of Bread
Cultures the world over have contributed their own unique recipes and methods for making bread. Here are some fascinating facts about the history of bread that you can use in your trivia games, lessons, flashcards, and more:
- According to historians, people may have started baking bread more than 3,000 years ago!
- Before bread, people would make “gruel”, which was simply water mixed with grains.
- Eventually, people began cooking gruel and grain paste on hot rocks.
- Yeast is what makes bread light and fluffy. Archaeologists have found that yeast has been used in breadmaking as far back as 300 B.C. when the Ancient Egyptians used it in their commercial bread market.
- The first mechanical bread slicer was invented in 1917. Two years later, more than 90% of bread sold in markets and grocery stores were mechanically sliced in factories.