Laura Fair

Laura Fair’s book project takes as its starting point a striking puzzle: the Swahili have nearly two dozen quite distinct breads — sweet and savoury, flat and leavened, baked, grilled, and fried — yet the Swahili grow no wheat, and well into the twentieth century no wheat was grown anywhere in East Africa. How did Swahili women, the region’s principal cooks, come to master this foreign ingredient and imbue their creations with such imaginative creativity? How and when did indigenous breads — crafted from millet flour and baked in something akin to a tandoor oven — come to be supplanted by breads of wheat and rice? And what moved bread from an occasional indulgence to a central component of contemporary Swahili diets?

These questions set the tone for a broader exploration of how the consumption of fruits, vegetables, animal and non-animal proteins, and a variety of grains, tubers, and musaceae has changed over time. Organised around popular Swahili dishes, the book examines the social, cultural, environmental, and health impacts of Swahili foodways, with a particular focus on dietary change over the past 150 years.