Talk hosted by the Concordia Food Studies Working Group: Baking Boundaries: Bread, Ovens & Identities by Nicholas Tošaj

The lecture will provide a brief overview of the place of bread in modern France and its colonial empire before delving into a discussion of traditional clay bread ovens in Québec.

The lecture will veer beyond the historical into a discussion of the parallel processes inherent in the making of bread and the building of a traditional clay oven in the Québécois style.

The presentation will draw from Lise Boily and Jean-François Blanchette’s Les fours à pain au Québec and the presenter’s own attempts to build a historically inspired oven in order to discuss the place of bread and baking in shaping and defining identity.

About the speaker

Nicholas Tošaj is a college professor at John Abbott College in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue as well as a part-time professor at Concordia University where he teaches HIST 394 Food in History.

His SSHRC funded dissertation titled “Empire of Wheat: Bread, Wheat and Staple Carbohydrates in the French Colonial Empire 1887-1939” focused on the place of food in shaping identities and imperial systems in France, Cambodia, and Morocco.

Nick is a former affiliate of the Culinaria Research Centre at the University of Toronto and a member of the Oxford Food Symposium where he had the privilege of winning an award for “best student presenter” in 2019. Current research interests include the use of food as a pedagogical tool, Québec bread ovens as well as food and empire.