Le parfait boulanger, ou, Traité complet sur la fabrication & le commerce du pain

First edition - Parmentier, "contrary to popular legend...did not 'invent' the potato, which had been known and cultivated in France since the 16th century, but he was an enthusiastic propagator of it. While he was a prisoner-of-war in Westphalia during the Seven Years War (he was captured no less than five times), he discovered the nutritional value of this vegetable which was highly prized by the local population but considered by the French at that time as unwholesome and indigestible. In the few provinces where it was eaten, it was usually used in the form of flour, mixed with wheat and rye to make bread." - Larousse. Parmentier would go on to write his famous Examen chymique des pommes de terre, 1773, which brought him the support of Buffon, Condorcet, Voltaire and Louis XVI, and even to serve a menu comprised entirely of potato dishes to none other than Benjamin Franklin. "In eighteenth-century France, the gravest problem was not the lack of bread but its price. In fact, never before had the town bakeries - above all those in Paris - offered so many varied and high-quality loaves, but only the wealthy could afford to buy them. Several publications of the period attest to the great strides made in the baker's art, for example Le parfait boulanger (the perfect baker) by the agronomist Antoine Augustin Parmentier, published in 1778. Parmentier is best known in France for having introduced potato-farming. It is less commonly known that he intended the potato to be milled so as to replace flour during shortages. In 1780 Parmentier obtained the authorization to open a 'baking academy' in Paris designed to study the 'new combinations of farinaceous substances from which it might be possible to bake bread in time of famine.' The scientists then carried out a number of trials on various kinds of 'bread,' combining potato, oats, buckwheat, and corn. Ten years later, the revolutionary mob massed out side Parmentier's academy yelling: 'Why doesn't he eat his potatoes himself? We want bread! Le parfait boulanger described the process of making bread in practice at this period: hand-kneading the dough, fermenting with natural leavening, shaping the loaf, and baking in brick, wood-burning ovens. The book also refers to something new: adding salt to the dough, unusual until that time due to its high price. It was realized that salt improved the texture of the dough, allowing it to rise higher. Parmentier also referred to brewer's yeast, which a Parisian baker had first added to leaven in 1665 in the production of a loaf called pain mollet." - Assire, The Book of Bread, page 31. Vicaire 656; Oberlé 813; Bitting, page 357. D.S.B., vol. X, pages 325-326 - "Parmentier in his life and work personified the best sentiments and aspirations of the Enlightenment."