sidecar - hitch along for food: Bread with a Side of Art

Last December I read a review in the Washington Post of Warm Bread and Honey Cake, Home Baking from Around the World by Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra. The review was very positive and I ordered a copy. It's a standout for me in that it has recipes for both sweet and savory baking that I haven't seen in other cookbooks. Not surprisingly, since the author lives in Holland, there is a particular strength in traditional Dutch breads.

A recipe for a bread called Duivekater was one of the first things to catch my eye; weird name, interesting story and accompanied by this Rijksmuseum Jan Steen painting. See that big long bread against the brick wall? That is the Duivekater, or shinbone bread. Here is the one I made. Not exactly shinbone-esque, but then, it was my first attempt.

The rough translation of Duivekater is apparently 'Devil's Tomcat', and it is believed to have descended from pagan sacrificial practices of offering animals or bones to the Gods. Like many pagan practices, it ultimately was adapted to Christian festivals as a winter or holiday bread with a bone-like shape.

The author has written another book on Dutch baking called Windmills in my Oven, a more expanded historical treatment of Dutch traditions. Interestingly, she points out that a fifteenth century decree actually forbade the making of large and expensive white loaves except during winter and at Easter. As a nutmeg and cardamom spiced bread, I imagine this would have been very expensive to make (these aren't exactly cheap spices today). And these traditional breads are not limited to the Duivekater. There is also the related Kerstwiggen (another shinbone shaped bread with a fruited dough), the Kersttimpen (long and snipped at both ends), and the Kruidbroodjes which according to the author is reddish tinged bread, perhaps originally symbolizing blood. Who knew these bakers were so bloodthirsty?

The Duivekater sounds to be something of a dying tradition, but Pagrach-Chandra may have succeeded in reviving it. In the many months that I have been sitting on this post, I noticed that several other bloggers also picked up the thread and started baking. No doubt they were also intrigued by the history and appearance of the bread, which is scored into interesting linear or circular patterns. Here is a comprehensive post from breadbasketcase and beautiful sample from needtoknead. Breadbasketcase already did the hard work of writing out the recipe, so no need to repeat it here.

Maybe most fun to me was the Jan Steen painting that accompanied the recipe in the book. Any cookbook author who can serve up a side of art with a bread recipe is one I am going to like. Undoubtedly my own bias, since these Dutch genre paintings of the mid-17th century are a favorite of mine (see this terrific post on symbolism in still life painting that my friend Heidi did in her blog Two Kitties).

Inspired by the book, I dragged my (ever patient) family along to search the Dutch painting galleries of the National Gallery in Washington, DC to see if we could spot a Duivekater ourselves. This is perhaps the closest we came (and with apologies to this long dead painter, I lost the slip of paper on which I wrote down the painter and title of the painting). At least I think that is bread in the front, and like mine, it runs on the plump side for a shinbone.

A few weeks ago I was in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, just before closing. I pretty much had these galleries to myself at almost 9 p.m. on a Friday night and I felt compelled to make a quick run through looking for Duivekater. No luck though.