Murdered bread, living bread: Doris Grant and the homemade, wholemeal loaf

Doris Grant (1905–2003), a middle-class, British housewife, published numerous books from the 1940s into the 1970s urging her fellow housewives to bake organic, wholemeal bread for their families. This article argues that Grant's arguments defy easy categorization as either ‘conservative’ or ‘progressive’. On the one hand, her targeted appeal to women reflected a traditional, conservative understanding of gender roles: women were, first and foremost, wives and mothers and therefore naturally responsible for family diet and health. On the other hand, Grant also pushed her readers to look beyond their homes and recognize a dangerous food supply system that was impinging on their daily lives. She demanded that her readers reject comfortable complicity in this system and preached the value of individual action in effecting substantive change.