Bernard Clayton Jr.
Bernard Clayton Jr. was an American newspaper reporter, and foreign correspondent, author, and baker, who wrote cookbooks on bread, and pastries. Far less well known than his peer, James Beard, Clayton's books were equally regarded by those who baked, and by generations of home chefs who picked up the myriad revised editions of several of his books.
Life
Bernard Clayton Jr.’s life began in the Midwest. He became a photographer, foreign correspondent, then went on to traveling, learning, creating, and writing about baking, then other foods.Birth
Clayton was born on Dec. 25, 1916, in Rochester, Indiana.Early years
The newspaper business ran in Clayton's family: his father, Bernard Clayton Sr., was the owner and editor of The Zionsville Times, a weekly newspaper.Family
His wife, Marjorie, traveled with him extensively. His son, Jeffrey, after two years at Indiana University became a reporter for the Indianapolis News. He had a daughter, Susan Barnato. At the time of his passing, he had three grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.Career
As a young man, Clayton became a photographer for Life magazine, and then a photo editor. He was promoted to run the Time Life bureau in Chicago, then in San Francisco.In World War II, he became a military correspondent for Time magazine, as well as for Life. After the war, he moved to Honolulu, where he ran a magazine-distribution company, Pacific News. He then had a brief career in public relations. He left corporate writing in 1964.
In 1965, Clayton took a bicycle trip across Europe with his wife that would change the direction of his life. He, and his wife, launched a journey by car, bicycle, a canal boat and even a horse-drawn Gypsy wagon, traveling throughout the United States, and Europe.
In 1966, Indiana University's news bureau hired him to run a special project. The job was to last for six months but turned into a fourteen-year-long stint as both writer, and editor. He retired from that job in 1980.
Clayton used his reporting skills to travel, and interview, anyone who baked, with a recipe that impressed him. He then returned to his test kitchen, and tirelessly reproduced all of the breads, muffins, pastries, soups, and stews that he had gathered from the field. The result were cookbooks that provided exhaustive, comprehensive collections of breads, pastries, and soups, that became seminal culinary publications. One, in particular, Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Breads, was a landmark in baking, a compendium to the equally legendary “James Beard on Bread.”