I went down into the Culinary Cellar this morning and pulled out my “Easter” file from my large filing cabinet that is filled with recipe clippings from decades of collecting. The one that caught my eye right away was an old Fleischmann’s Yeast ad for Hot Cross Buns, along with a real bread basket for serving the buns. The reason why it caught my eye was because I had just received an email yesterday from one of my readers named Mark. Mark had read one of my blogs from a few weeks ago about English Muffin Loaves I made from an old Fleischmann’s Yeast ad, just like the one I was looking at for Hot Cross Buns. They must have had a big campaign back in the ’80’s because I have many breads from these same sort of ads using their yeast. Mark said the English Muffin Loaves happened to be the first bread he had ever made and he continued to make them often for his grandmother. Mark, if you are reading this, did you ever see this ad for the Hot Cross Buns?
I will be making these this coming week. Now I am wondering what I will be finding next in my files from Fleischmann’s!
I love old ads! I have some also that I have collected over the years.
“The Fleishmann Treasury of Yeast Baking” was a 1962 booklet of 51 pages. I would collect the Fleishmann 3-pack strips and send in my few dollars so I could get one of their other booklets. Seems one was about 80 pages. It was so much fun to go to the mailbox and see what treasures would be sent. Perhaps some of these were in the 1970s.
It was a craft to make different bread baskets then varnish them so that they would last. Does anyone remember differently?
The Michigan State University has a collection of cooking booklets. These are available to access on-line thanks to an endowment, pdf files.
Martha, that’s exactly what I used to do, collect those strips then send in money for the booklets. I still have them. I definitely remember making the varnished bread baskets. I had one for a long time before it started to crumble. I loved all the booklets that the food companies used to offer, and I still have drawers of them.