“I am going to learn to make bread to-morrow. So you may imagine me with my sleeves rolled up, mixing flour, milk, salaratus, etc., with a great deal of grace. I advise you if you don’t know how to make the staff of life to learn with dispatch.”

– Emily Dickinson to Abiah Root, September 25, 1845 (L8)

Dickinson used baking to express her fondness for friends, often sending cakes and candies as gifts. When a young, not yet married, Susan was away teaching in Baltimore, Dickinson sent her treats: “You thank me for the Rice cake—you tell me Susie, you have just been tasting it—and how happy I am to send you anything you love,” she wrote (L56).... See more

The kitchen appears to be one of the rooms where Dickinson felt most comfortable, perhaps most at home, and her letters give frequent testimony to the pleasures of family conversation held there. The many drafts of poems written on kitchen papers tell us also that this was a space of creative ferment for her, and that the writing of poetry mixed in... See more