The National Bread Museum of Grain-Baking-Bread Culture
The National Bread Museum (NBM)
~ a museum complex of multiple programs ~
Foremost it's a Celebration to Home Baking & a Tribute to all our Ancestors
who've helped make that happen
by Preserving our Heritage of Ag/Grain - Milling - Flour - Bread/Baking
through the Preservation of Historical Artifacts (mostly late 1800s through the 1900s),
and by Providing Education and Enrichment through the
National Bread Museum (of Bread Culture Artifacts) & Study Center,
the Library & the Bread~Baking/Cookbook Culture Archive,
the Tins of Taste Museum & Art-on-Tin Study Center,
the Cultural Heritage & Immigration Museum - What is your neighbor baking?
~ Our Tribute & Honor Archive for our Ancestral, Home-Baking Grandmothers ~
Grandma's life of heart & home was her legacy. She's woven in our past.
Giving Thanks for God's Great Grains & Gratitude for Grandma's Goodness.
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The above are online components of the NBM, an online complex of museums at this time, which is a legacy to all the people of the United States of America (USA) as beneficiaries of our country's grain . . . rising up from the Omaha, Nebraska, area . . . which is central to the Breadbasket of North American, in the Heart of the Midwest Grain Belt, & is at the central crossroads of the country and Great Plains region.
Currently, there is no physical museum to visit on the land, but when that is established, it will be possible for the following components to be created as additional fascinating & beneficial interactive opportunities:
The Baking Mill - hands in the dough
Stone Oven Bakery; Harvest Table Eatery
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The NBM is a nonprofit corporation in the State of Nebraska, USA (United States of America).
Tools of the Trade of hands & hearts . . .
Your Grandmother baked. ~ ~ Grains have always been a significant part of life.
We owe a debt of gratitude to remember & preserve the home baking history of our family and others before them, & the "art of design" of many of the tools which are cultural curiosities to today's young! A good number of the NBM's artifacts might be "the only one" that anyone might ever see in real life today.
We support the mission that no one goes hungry in this country. Does your neighbor have a loaf of bread or bag of flour each day?
WHY DO WE NEED THIS?
Museums expand our knowledge & are proof
of history.
Keeping artifacts validates, tells, witnesses, & teaches how significant Grandmas' lives were. Even a recipe represents a memory of a place & time, a way of life with ingredients, appliances, & creativity. But it takes money to preserve this real-life history & provide programs, & we're hoping for a multiple of American people to financially build an on-the-land facility in gratitude of their ancestral grandmothers' legacies, for all of our future generations.
Since the beginning, people in the USA have mainly lived on grain & game.
It is well documented that this country & its people "grew up" on grain.
By 1870, there were some 22,000 flour mills in this country¹.
Home baking gave rise to the success of multitudes of businesses, companies, industries, & related professions & grain associations through the centuries.
We don't want to lose the MEMORIES of each GRAND woMAn who was vital in creating from the bounty of this land, because today by her recipes you can still eat from her hand.🙏
¹Our Daily Bread by Stella Standard, © MCMLXX; p. xii.
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* NOTE: The continual, on-going process of building the National Bread Museum of Grain-Baking-Bread Culture (NBM) & its programs on this website is to present the vision & goals to you of the future on-land, museum complex, while also providing the value of historical & educational information for your benefit, sooner than later. All of the content has been written by me, Donna Kozak, the Founder, in regard to all first-person references.
You can read more of the plan for the museum complex in the MENU item: NBM Program in Action.
Europe's Bread Museums - Where it all began - 1955
Today there are at least 90+ Bread-Culture-Related "Bread Museums" world-wide, but we have none in the USA to span our Bread Culture scope as those around the world do. This website is the preview of the plan for an "on the land" museum to fill that gap!
The springboard for establishing The National Bread Museum for American Bread Culture is Europe's Bread Museums. It's the perfect model for our country's historic preservation, education, and ancestral tribute of our Ag/Grain-Milling-Flour-Bread/Baking culture.
See the National Bread Museum on Facebook for an album of 49-photos of some of the Bread Museums in Europe. (Scroll down to the 10-16-2019 post.)
The European resource for these museums is ATLAS - Bread Museums in Europe & Beyond - a resource guide book. See below.
As the NBM Founder, the "bread museum" knowledge began with the book, The Book of Bread by Jerome Assire, 1996, with an index of bread museums for my 2000 trip to Germany & The Netherlands to see 3-4. Then in 2010, I used the museum database on breadculture.net (copy & paste) by Dimitrije Vujadinovic to visit 7 more in France, Belgium, & others in The Netherlands.
Even though the National Bread Museum of Grain-Baking-Bread Culture (NBM) is an "on line" museum as of now, it is available worldwide, and has gained international recognition! It is listed in the ATLAS - Bread Museums in Europe & Beyond to represent the USA, out of 90+ bread-related museums in other countries world wide! The book is a free download (or to view) at breadculture.net (copy & paste or type the address into a search bar as a "link" doesn't work to get you there). Click on Bread Publications in the website's left menu. In the ATLAS, the NBM's listing is on page 92.
The National Bread Museum is the only of its kind in this country*. Its foundation is for the recognition of all women in their role and contribution to home baking, specifically the Civil War to 1999 era. We request your help with a $25 donation (or more in gratitude) as financial backing from a million Americans who will each be "one in a million" to help us preserve Memories of Grandma, her Artifacts, her Recipes, and more for those who will come after us. Soon the "tomorrow" will come for most of us who can help now/today, or else all this history will be lost. Let us not let our Grandmas' lives fade away by saying we don't care. We're hoping at least a million Americans DO care🙏👍🤗❣
You can give a dough-nation by clicking here.
Thank You! --- Donna Kozak, Founder
*Two other known, subject-related museums in the U. S., open to the public, with a focus on their commercial business, are Pillsbury Flour Mills in Minneapolis, MN, & Boudin's Family/Sourdough Bakery Museum in San Francisco, CA - on Fisherman's Wharf. Bundy Baking Museum in Ohio (preserving commercial baking companies' artifacts) is only open to "the trade," but there is a short video online.
The Mission
From Tiller to Table * Field to Flour * Baker to Bread * Touching Every Soul
1) Preserving our heritage of Ag/Grain, Milling, Flour, Bread/Baking so we do not forget who grew the grain, tilled & milled, and baked our bread. The mill grew the community . . . then the state. Do you know that in the late 1800s there had been up to 300+ flour mills in Nebraska alone? What's the history of flour mills in your state? (one resource is: spoom.org/ Society for the Preservation of Old Mills)
2) Be concerned stewards of Bread Culture history by the preservation of historical artifacts, ephemera, related thematic bygones-of-yesteryear, & associated knowledge of our grandmother's way of life (we're primarily documenting 1850-1999), so we never forget her legacy. How many generations of your grandmothers will you be able to archive to give each a tribute?
3) Provide programs & baking training for the educational benefit, enrichment, fulfillment, and healthy welfare of all people. While we can, let's glean home baking history & recipes from "Grandma's" baking generation (especially prior to the 1970s, and from original immigrants & refugees), & preserve & share the best they gave us. This project is our tribute & thanks to our ancestral grandmothers.
4) Find, preserve, and repurpose an old building in (1st choice) the Omaha, Nebraska, area to house the National Bread Museum for the United States, as our Bread Culture affects everyone's family history. Omaha is on the main, central crossroads of the country, in the Midwest Grain Belt, & central to the Breadbasket of North America. The Sower is even on the top of Nebraska's State Capitol.
The vision for the National Bread Museum's
9 significant, thematic components ~
(1) National Bread Museum (Bread Culture Artifacts) & Study Center
An insight into the historical grain-related artifacts which hold the life stories of our fathers "working the land" as sowers and tillers, reapers and millers. We have become . . . . .
(2) The Baking Mill where everyone can get their hands in the dough
(3) The Stone Oven Bakery and Harvest Table Eatery
The "Hole-in-the-Wall" oven is a tradition to behold! It's a "Step Back in Time of Living History," usually associated with what's considered "The Old World." What an experience!
(5) Tins of Taste Museum & Art-on-Tin Study Center
. . . collecting art - advertising & graphics - history - German Lebkuchen tins - British biscuit tins (how it all began in the 1800s) - "tins" for cookies, crackers, candy, tea, cakes, coffee, oatmeal, hot chocolate, and more . . .
(6) Cultural Heritage Center and Immigration Museum
Everyone in this country has ROOTS from another land -- another part of the world. Most of us aren't OF other lands, but we can TRACE our lineage IF our family before us kept logging . . .
(7) A Glimpse into the Past ~ Why it's Incumbent upon Us to Give Tribute & Honor with a Thankful Heart & Soul
LIFE SHOULD BE LIVED AS A TIDE OF THANKSGIVING
Can you trace your family roots back to your first ancestral immigrants? Every person should know of the "ties that bind." The schools no longer teach cursive, nor include a Family Tree in the . . .
