An anti-miserabilist approach to historical cooking

Tag: Bread (page 1 of 1)

Puff Paste Loaves aka Buttered Loaves

Following on in the series of recipes from Margaret Baker’s recipe books, I chose one from Sloane MS 2485. This book has the most culinary recipes, although there are still some medical and household recipes too. The front page is dated “The 27th of December 1672” when Margaret Baker must have been in her 60s or maybe even 70s. I wonder if this book was supposed to be a clean copy of recipes she had collected over her lifetime, a compendium of her skills and knowledge.

image of several buttered loaves on a wooden board, one with the top off to show the filling

The recipe is titled ‘To make puff past loues” which is interesting because puff paste implies pastry, but loues (or loaves) implies a recipe for bread. In fact, the recipe is similar to those found in many sixteenth and seventeenth-century recipes under variations of the name ‘buttered loaf’.

To make puff past loues;
Take :3: pintes of fine flower & putt into it :6: yolkes of eggs & noe whites a sawcer full of good yeast; cloues mace & salt yn mould it into past with could creame this being bake yn beinge open in ye topp & putt therinto melted butter and suger;

The recipes for buttered loaves are descended from the medieval ‘rastons’ which were rolls made of bread dough enriched with butter and eggs. Once the rastons were baked, the tops were cut open and melted butter (and sometimes sugar) could be poured in, or mixed with the crumb.

Rastons.—Take fayre Flowre, & þe whyte of Eyroun, & þe ȝolke, a lytel; þan take Warme Berme, & putte al þes to-gederys, & bete hem to-gederys with þin hond tyl it be schort & þikke y-now, & caste Sugre y-now þer-to, & þenne lat reste a whyle; þan kaste in a fayre place in þe oven, & late bake y-now; & þen with a knyf cutte yt round a-boue in maner of a crowne, & kepe þe cruste þat þou kyttyst; & þan pyke al þe cromys withynne to-gederys, an pike hem smal with þin knyf, & saue þe sydys & al þePage 53 cruste hole with-owte; & þan caste þer-in clarifiyd Boter, & Mille þe cromeȝ & þe botere to-gedereȝ, & keuere it a-ȝen with þe cruste, þat þou kyttest a-way; þan putte it in þe ovyn aȝen a lytil tyme; & þan take it out, & serue it fortℏ.

There are several good recreated recipes for rastons floating around, including Maeve L’Estrange’s recipe ‘How to Make Buttery Twice-Baked Raston’ or if you prefer a video Max Miller has a Youtube episode called ‘How to Bake Medieval Rastons’.

By the 17th century, the recipes called for the dough to be spiced as it is here with cloves and mace. A variation is made with fresh cheese, as in the very next recipe from Margaret Baker:

An other Loffe;
Take a quart of new milke putt rennett to it; & wn it is turned whey it & hange ye curd up a dreaninge an hower or two; take :10: eggs leaue out :3: of their whites a little ginger a pitne of eale yeast; as much flower as will make it up in to a loafe; when it is well baked cutt it up & butter it with butter & suger your butter must be melted first with ye suger in it;

This version is almost identical to one called ‘[To] Make a Butterd Loafe’ in Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery, suggesting they may share a published source. To try a version of this recipe, Peter Brears suggests using cottage cheese as shown in this example by Brigitte Webster (Brears 215, 136) .

image of four rolls on a wooden board, each with the tops cut off and replaced on top of a mixture of melted butter and sugar. One has the top laying on the side so the filling can be seen.

 

Margaret Baker’s Puff Paste Loaves

480g flour (stone-milled would be great but strong white flour will do fine)
4 cloves, ground (preferably freshly ground)
1 large piece mace, ground (preferably freshly ground)
3/4 tsp salt
3 egg yolks
1 tsp yeast in 1/2 cup lukewarm milk, ale or water and allowed to become bubbly
1 cup cream plus enough extra cream or milk to make quite a sticky dough
100g butter
100g sugar

1. In a large bowl mix the flour with the spices and salt. Mix in the egg yolks, yeast and cream. Stir, then add enough extra cream or milk to make quite a sticky dough.
2. Turn the dough out onto a surface and knead until it becomes smooth and pliable. Shape into a ball and place in an oiled bowl, cover and leave to rise in a warm place for about 45 minutes.
3. Knock down the dough and cut it into 12 equally sized pieces. Shape each into a smooth ball with good surface tension. Place on lined baking trays and allow to rise for another 30-45 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200C.
4. After the rolls have risen, bake them for 15-20 minutes or until they sound hollow when knocked and not too golden. Allow to cool enough to handle.
5. In a small saucepan melt the butter and sugar together over low heat. It’s OK if the sugar remains a bit grainy.
6. Using a sharp knife, cut the top of each roll off and pour 1-2 tbsp of the melted butter mixture onto the larger part of the roll. Put the top back on and serve while still warm.

The Verdict

A little on the dry side but beautifully spiced and the melted butter and sugar is a master-stroke. Since the dough is not sweetened, it adds just the right amount of richness.

 

References

Brears, Peter. Cooking & Dining in Tudor & Early Stuart England. Prospect Books, 2015.

Fruit Damper for the Great Rare Books Bake Off

It’s time for the annual Penn State vs. Monash University Great Rare Books Bake Off where readers and cooks can support a side by making a recipe from the universities’ special collections. This year there are twelve recipes to choose from, from Wet Shoo Fly Pie to Lamington Cake. I figured I’d better go with an Australian recipe, as a matter of national pride and all. When I realised I’d never made damper for the blog, the choice of recipe was an easy one!

 

Damper is an Australian quickbread, traditionally unleavened and cooked in the ashes of the campfire. The earliest references come from the mid-1820s and damper is most commonly associated with people who are traveling or who are living and working in basic conditions in the bush.

“… we have no doubt that it [the harvest] will give the working family a rasher of good bacon, an excellent damper, and a copious draft of new milk…” [1]

 

The cook making damper, by Alice Peacock, date unknown. Courtesy of Library and Archives Northern Territory. Used under CC BY 4.0.

As settlements developed, people in towns could buy leavened bread from bakeries or could bake their own if they had an oven. Swagmen (itinerant labourers who carried a bedroll called a swag filled with their belongings), drovers (stockmen who moved cattle or sheep over long distances) and other people on the move didn’t have access to ovens or fresh yeast so they made damper instead. A lot of descriptions of making damper show how people made-do with hardly any equipment by mixing the dough on a sheet of bark, a sheepskin or the upturned lid of some luggage.

 

“At first we had rather a horror of eating damper, imagining it to be somewhat like an uncooked crumpet. Experience, however, showed it to be really very good. Its construction is simple, and is as follows. Plain flour and water is mixed on a sheet of bark, and then kneaded into a disc some two or three inches thick to about one or two feet in diameter, great care to avoid cracks being taken in the kneading. This is placed in a hole scraped to its size in the hot ashes, covered over, and there left till small cracks caused by the steam appear on the surface of its covering.”[2]

Over time, the making of damper has changed a lot. As late as 1929, it was still possible to argue that real damper couldn’t have baking soda added to it but in reality chemical raising agents like bicarbonate of soda, cream or tartar and baking powder made damper lighter and were certainly being used by the 1850s.[4]

“A stiff dough is made of flour, water, and salt, and kneaded into a large flat cake, two or three inches thick, and from twelve to eighteen broad. The wood-ashes are then partially raked from the hot hearth, and the cake being laid on it, is heaped over with the remaining hot ashes, and thus bakes. When cut into it, it exceeds in closeness and hard heaviness the worst bread or pudding I ever tasted, and the outside looks dirty, if it is not so: still, I have heard many persons, conversant with every comfort and luxury, praise the “damper,” so I can only consider my dislike a matter of taste. In “the bush,” where brewer’s yeast cannot be procured, and people are too idle or ignorant to manufacture a substitute for it (which is easily done), this indurated dough is the only kind of bread used and those who eat it constantly must have an ostrich’s digestion to combat its injurious effects.”[3]

It is also rare now to see damper cooked directly in the ashes, where it inevitably becomes dirty and ashy. At home, people use the oven but when camping damper is often cooked in the coals in greased aluminium foil or in a camp oven. Also called a Dutch oven, camp ovens are cast iron pots with a lid that can be used to cook food on an open fire. The fire is allowed to cook down to coals, the dough is placed in the camp oven (preferably on a trivet or some foil) and the lid placed on top. Coals are raked around the oven and a scoop of coals put on the top so that the heat is even around the oven.

watercolour painting of men between a tent and a fire with a camp oven for making damper

This watercolour sketch shows a camp from 1851 with a tent in the background. In the centre, one man kneels to knead the dough for damper, while a camp oven sits beside the fire ready for use. From ‘A collection of drawings in watercolour, ink and pencil: illustrative of the life, character & scenery of Melbourne 1850-1862. First series’, by William Strutt, courtesy of the State Library of NSW.

Damper also has an important history for First Nations people in Australia. New evidence from Madjedbebe, a rock shelter in northern Australia, shows that Indigenous people in Australia have been grinding seeds for about 60,000 years.[5] Grinding stones, microbotanical residues like starches, ethnographic accounts and oral histories all point to the important role that seeds and plant-processing played in First Nations foodways.[6] This is especially true in the arid desert areas of central Australia where seeds became a staple food, probably during the late Holocene.[7]

 

After collection, winnowing and grinding seeds with water, the seed-paste can be eaten raw or the paste could be cooked in the ashes of the fire to make seed cakes also called bush bread or, sometimes, damper. The technique of cooking seed cakes directly in the fire may have been something that European settlers learned from Indigenous people.

 

The arrival of settlers, who cut First Nations people off from some of their traditional food resources, and the development of the ration and mission systems which depended heavily on wheat flour meant that by the 1970s most communities no longer regularly collected and ground seeds for food.[8] Instead, damper made from wheat flour and raised with baking powder became common in Aboriginal communities.

 

You can see the two different damper baking techniques that I described above in two videos. The first shows Gurindji woman Violet Wadrill Nanaku making damper in the ashes of the fire where they puff up kind of like naan bread. The second shows Auntie Junie Pederson and Roy Wilson baking damper in a camp oven on a station in the Kimberley.

Image shows an open book with recipe for fruit damper on the left page and a two-color relief print in blue and red on the right page.

This recipe, taken from the Kimberley Cook Book: “some old recipes and some new ones” in the Monash University Special Collections, is from the same region in north-west Australia. I couldn’t find out much about the book, but the recipes were collected during the 1990s in remote communities. The book was edited by Marianne Yambo and is illustrated with linocuts by artist Jan Palethorpe.

 

The recipe itself is a pretty basic damper recipe, with no added butter or milk to enrich the dough, but in this case it is flavoured with some spices and plenty of dried fruit. I cooked it in a camp oven inside my oven, a technique often used for homemade sourdough to give more even heat distribution and to get a nice crust, but also a nod to the campfire origins of the recipe. It makes a very dense but flavourful bread that is best eaten slathered with butter while still warm, or toasted the next day if you have any left.

Fruit Damper

 

2 cups flour

4 tsp baking powder

Salt

1/2 cup chopped dried fruit (e.g. cranberries, raisins, currants, apples, apricots)*

1/4 tsp cinnamon (add some other spices if you want, cloves are nice or some nutmeg)

Approx 1 cup water

 

  1. Preheat oven and camp oven to 200°C.
  2. Put all dry ingredients in a large bowl and stir to combine. Gradually add enough water to bring together into a supple dough. Turn out onto counter and knead for a couple of minutes until smooth.
  3. Make the dough into a smooth ball and flatten slightly. Slash the top of the bread, if desired.
  4. Carefully take the hot camp oven out of the oven, sprinkle a little flour on the bottom and quickly put the bread in the camp oven. Put the lid on and bake for approx. 40 mins or until the crust is slightly golden and the damper sounds hollow when you knock on it.

 

 

*use whatever dried fruit you have on hand, but I would say that some apricots are essential

 

[1] “Hobart Town.,” Hobart Town Gazette and Van Diemen’s Land Advertiser, January 28, 1825.

[2] C. H. Eden 1872 in Edward E. Morris, Austral English: A Dictionary of Australasian Words, Phrases and Usages (London: Macmillan, 1898).

[3] Louisa Meredith, Notes and Sketches of New South Wales During a Residence in the Colony from 1839 to 1844, ed. Ure Smith (1844; repr., Sydney, NSW: National Trust of Australia, NSW, 1973), 67.

[4] “Making Damper,” Western Mail, February 21, 1929; Barbara Santich, Bold Palates: Australia’s Gastronomic Heritage (South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2012), 220.

[5] Chris Clarkson et al., “Human Occupation of Northern Australia by 65,000 Years Ago,” Nature 547, no. 7663 (July 2017): 306–10, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature22968; S. Anna Florin et al., “The First Australian Plant Foods at Madjedbebe, 65,000–53,000 Years Ago,” Nature Communications 11, no. 1 (February 17, 2020): 924, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14723-0.

[6] Wendy Beck, “Aboriginal Preparation of Cycas Seeds in Australia,” Economic Botany 46, no. 2 (1992): 133–47; Richard Fullagar and Judith Field, “Pleistocene Seed-Grinding Implements from the Australian Arid Zone,” Antiquity, 1997; John Mildwaters, “Seed-Grinding Stones: A Review from a Mainly Australian Perspective,” The Artefact: The Journal of the Archaeological and Anthropological Society of Victoria 39 (2016): 30–41, https://doi.org/10.3316/ielapa.242662889512125; John Mildwaters and Chris Clarkson, “The Efficiency of Australian Grindstones for Processing Seed: A Quantitative Experiment Using Reproduction Implements and Controlling for Morphometric Variation and Grinding Techniques,” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 17 (February 1, 2018): 7–18, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.10.036; John Mildwaters and Chris Clarkson, “An Experimental Assessment of the Grinding Characteristics of Some Native Seeds Used by Aboriginal Australians,” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 30 (April 1, 2020): 102127, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.102127; Josephine Nangala et al., “Ethnobotany of Warrilyu (Eucalyptus Pachyphylla F.Muell. [Myrtaceae]): Aboriginal Seed Food of the Gibson Desert, Western Australia,” Economic Botany 73, no. 3 (September 1, 2019): 416–22, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-019-09471-2.

[7] Scott Cane, “Australian Aboriginal Subsistence in the Western Desert,” Human Ecology 15, no. 4 (1987): 391–434; Mike Smith, The Archaeology of Australia’s Deserts (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 197 especially; David W. Zeanah et al., “Diesel and Damper: Changes in Seed Use and Mobility Patterns Following Contact amongst the Martu of Western Australia,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 39 (September 1, 2015): 51–62, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2015.02.002.

[8] Zeanah et al., “Diesel and Damper.”

 

 

 

 

17th Century Polish Cuisine with Compendium Ferculorum

Pear.JPG

It has been such a long time since I have posted on here! But, my thesis is now complete and I actually have some time to cook and write. As a side note, I’ve been writing about some of the results of my research over at the Cook and the Curator blog. The first installment, about recreating the 19th century bread is up now, and the soup/meat recipes will be coming soon.

 

The recipe I made this week is also tangentially related to my studies. One of my lecturers heard about the blog and lent me a book that she had picked up in Poland. It’s a copy of Compendium Ferculorum by the chef Stanislav Czerniecki and originally published in 1682.[1]

 

In some ways the recipes are reminiscent of European medieval cuisines, with an emphasis on spices and sweet/savoury combinations. Pottages, sippets, blancmange and meat jellies feature heavily. There is also evidence for a complex network of international recipe exchange; the book includes dishes from Spain, France, England, Italy, Austria and Russia.

Pear Cake for Lent, Recipe from 1862

The Recipe

With more than 300 meat, fish and dairy recipes it was difficult to choose just one to start with. I’m suffering from an overabundance of pears at the moment though, so this seemed like a good excuse to make use of them. That led me to the recipe for Pear Cake for Lent. It’s an adaptation of the previous recipe, Apple Cake for Lent:

 

“Apple Cake for Lent: Prepare your dough as described above, cut peeled apples in three, coat them in your dough and fry in hot olive oil or oil. Being fried, serve forth sprinkled with sugar.

You will fry Lenten pear cake in a likewise fashion.”[2]

 

It’s not entirely clear which recipe for dough is being referred to here, but the previous recipe for Fig Cake says “Having kneaded the flour with water and yeast in a likewise fashion”,[3] and the Raisin Cakes for Lent before that says “Mix wheat flour with water and yeast and when it looks well risen, add saffron …”.[4]

 

Now, when recreating this there are two ways that I think you could interpret it. Some people online have claimed that modern Polish racuchy or racuszki are related to this recipe. Racuchy are a kind of apple fritter, with slices or chopped apple coated in a wet batter and fried.

 

However, the recipe seems to me to be a bit different (assuming of course that the translation is good). Firstly, the recipe clearly says to knead the dough, which is not something that you would do with a batter. Secondly, the instruction is to cut the apples or pears in three which would make very large fritters.

 

Instead, the recipe to me seems closer to Russian piroshki or pirojki which are a kind of doughnuts made with yeasted dough around a sweet or savoury filling. To that end I adapted a dough recipe from Natasha’s Kitchen, but used only flour, water and yeast as in the recipe. Salt is not mentioned in the recipe, but it really is required to stop your doughnuts tasting very bland. You could also add a pinch of saffron, dissolved in a little of the warm water, which would add a nice flavour and colour.

[1] Czerniecki, Compendium Ferculorum or Collection of Dishes.

[2] Ibid., 157.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 156.

hand.JPG

The Redaction

 

Pear Cake for Lent

 

4 1/2 cups flour

1 3/4 cups warm water

1 tbsp dried yeast

1 tsp Salt

4 pears

Oil, to fry

Sugar, to serve

 

  1. Make the dough by mixing half a cup of warm water with the yeast and leave for 15 minutes until frothy. In a large bowl, place the flour and salt.
  2. Make a well in the middle and add the yeast mixture. Add the remaining water and mix together. You may need to add a little extra water to make the dough come together.
  3. Once the dough has come together, knead for 5-10 minutes until smooth and pliable. Place in a greased bowl, cover with a clean tea towel and allow to rise for 25 minutes. Knock down the dough, form it into a nice ball and return to the bowl. Cover with a tea towel and allow to rise for another 30 minutes.
  4. Place about 1/2 an inch of oil in a frying pan and heat over a medium temperature. Peel the pears then cut each vertically into thirds and remove the cores.
  5. Take a small handful of dough and make it into a ball. Stretch and flatten the ball evenly until it is a bit larger than the palm of your hand. Place a third of a pear in the middle and ease the dough around it. Pinch the dough together to seal the pear inside, then flatten the seam. Repeat until all the dough is used.
  6. Carefully drop a little piece of dough into the oil. If the oil sizzles and bubbles around it then it is hot enough. Use a slotted spoon to carefully place the cakes in the hot oil in batches. The oil should come about halfway up the sides of the cakes.
  7. After about a minute, turn the cakes over (this prevents them from rising unevenly on one side) and allow to cook until golden. Then turn them over again and cook until the other side is golden.
  8. Remove the cakes using a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen towel. Serve hot, sprinkled with sugar.

With pear.JPG

The Round-Up

The Recipe: Pear Cake For Lent

The Date: 1682

How did you make it? See above.

Time to complete?: 1.5 hrs.

How successful was it?:  Tasty, and I was really glad that the dough was cooked all the way through. The pear was lovely and sweet without any added sugar, but the dough needed some salt. They would be particularly nice with a little spice in the dough, and if I was doing it again I would add the saffron.

How accurate?: I still think that this thicker, bread-like dough is the way to go, rather than a batter. The original recipe doesn’t include any salt and I did make it that way but it really needs it. Presumably it’s just assumed that you will add it. The other big question that I had was what type of oil to use. Normally I wouldn’t use olive oil for frying, but I gave it a go since that’s what the recipe said (again, assuming that the translation is accurate). The flavour of the oil wasn’t a problem on the day that they were made, but two days later there was a definite gasoline flavour coming through. Since they really should be eaten straight away it’s less of an issue, but it might be worth using a flavourless oil, particularly if you are planning on keeping them for a bit.

 

References

Czerniecki, Stanislaw. Compendium Ferculorum or Collection of Dishes. Edited by Jaroslaw Dumanowski. Translated by Angieszka Czuchra and Maciej Czuchra. Monumenta Poloniae Culinaria. Warszawa: Wilanow Palace Museum, 2010.

 

Puftaloons

Puftaloons, recipe from 1904

This fortnight for the Historical Food Fortnightly it’s Make Do or Do Without. Nowadays most ingredients are available year round, and even the more obscure ones are available online, but for historical cooks the options were much more limited. If tomatoes were out of season, too bad. If you lived in Australia and couldn’t get goose, well then you would use parrot instead. And what if you didn’t have the equipment or ingredients to make bread? Then you get inventive.

Whilst not a problem limited to countries of the New World, see for example my post on soda bread, settlers in colonial countries were particularly vulnerable to this problem. The lack of ovens, problems keeping yeast viable in hot weather and the transient lifestyles of stockmen, trappers etc meant that they had to come up with some creative solutions to meet their cravings for bread.

View of a Bush Kitchen, c. 1896. Image courtesy of the State Library of NSW.

View of a Bush Kitchen, c. 1896. Image courtesy of the State Library of NSW. As you can see, conditions were basic, but this kitchen is actually a step up from the temporary bush camps. Under the window you can see the Dutch ovens used for, among other things, baking damper. 

In Australia the quintessential answer was damper, a basic bread made from flour, baking powder, salt and water which is then shaped into a round and baked in the ashes, on a hot stone or in a Dutch oven. Francis Lancelott, a mineralogical surveyor, visited Australia in the mid 1800s and described the weekly menu of a shepherd:

You may talk of the dishes of Paris renown,

Or for plenty through London may range,

If variety’s pleasing, oh, leave either town,

And come to the bush for a change.

On Monday we’ve mutton, with damper and tea;

On Tuesday, tea, damper and mutton,

Such dishes I’m certain all men must agree

Are fit for peer, peasant, or glutton.

On Wednesday we’ve damper, with mutton and tea;

On Thursday tea, mutton and damper,

On Friday we’ve mutton, tea, damper while we

With our flocks over hill and dale scamper.

Our Saturday feast may seem rather strange,

‘Tis of damper with tea and fine mutton;

Now surely I’ve shown you that plenty of change

In the bush, is the friendly board put on.

But no, rest assured that another fine treat

Is ready for all men on one day,

For every bushman is sure that he’ll meet

With the whole of the dishes on Sunday.[1]

But although damper is the best known of the quickbreads that Australian settlers made and ate, it is not the only one. One of the downsides of the damper was that, at nearly a foot in diameter and several inches thick, it took up to an hour to cook. For hungry shepherds, that was a long time to wait and so a series of faster options developed. Johnny cakes, small rounds of dough fried in a dry pan, were based on the American corn breads of the same name, whilst puftaloons were a kind of scone cooked in fat. Other variations included fat cakes, normally containing fat but sometimes cooked in fat, and leather-jackets which seem to be nearly identical to the wheat based Johnny cakes.[2]

Tea and Damper, 1883, J.D; Troedel & Co. Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria.

Tea and Damper, 1883, J.D; Troedel & Co. Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria.

I have to admit I was quite intrigued by what I read about puftaloons, also known as puftalooners and puftaloonies. They seemed to be a favourite amongst children and stockmen alike but I’d never heard of them before doing this research. Still, the thought of a scone fried in lard was a bit off-putting.

Would they be soggy, greasy or, even worse, meaty? In fact they were delicious. Soft and scone-like inside but with a harder crust than your average scone. They were perfect for breakfast with some jam but would make an equally nice addition to bacon, eggs and some grilled tomatoes for a lazy brunch or with honey for an afternoon snack. Not only were they very tasty, but they were amazingly fast to make, the whole process took less than 20 minutes. I’m definitely a convert!

Puftaloons, recipe from 1904

The Recipe

The recipe for this comes from a 1904 edition of the Liverpool Herald, an Australian newspaper, but there are dozens of all but identical recipes. A variation for Pineapple Puftaloons is available here (apparently to shred pineapple you use the tines of a fork on a very ripe pineapple, but if anyone has actually done this please let me know if it works!).

“PUFTALOONS.” Liverpool Herald. October 15, 1904.

“PUFTALOONS.” Liverpool Herald. October 15, 1904, 12.

The Redaction

1 3/4 cups self-raising flour (I use Australian/UK cup sizes which are slightly different from US sizes)

1 1/2 cups of milk

A pinch of salt

Lard for frying (about 40g)

  1. Mix the flour and the salt together in a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the middle and pour in the milk. Mix the two together to form a slightly sticky dough.
  2. Lightly flour a flat surface and turn the dough out onto it. Knead it just until all the ingredients are incorporated. Use a rolling pin to roll it out half an inch thick. Cut out circles using a cutter or the floured mouth of a glass.
  3. Heat the lard in a frying pan over moderate heat until it’s melted and warm. Add the puftaloons and fry until golden, then turn them over to cook the other side. Keep the heat moderate because the dough needs time to cook all the way through. When golden on both sides drain them on kitchen towel and serve hot with your favourite spreads.

Puftaloons, recipe from 1904

The Round Up

The Recipe: From the Liverpool Herald (available here)

The Date: 1904

How did you make it? See above.

Time to complete?: 20 mins.

How successful was it?:  Soft and light inside, with a nice crust. They went well with both sweet and savoury toppings and were still good when reheated.

How accurate?: Pretty good I think, although they were done in a kitchen rather than at a bush camp which would make it significantly more difficult.

[1] Lancelott in Barbara Santich, Bold Palates (Kent Town: Wakefield Press, 2012), 156.

[2] Ibid., 215–220.

 Bibliography

“PUFTALOONS.” Liverpool Herald. October 15, 1904.

Santich, Barbara. Bold Palates. Kent Town: Wakefield Press, 2012.

Raising a Revolution

Soda Bread, recipe from 1836

Like Betsy from the Historical Food Fortnightly I decided to focus on a raising agent for the Revolutionary Food challenge, but where her recipe called for potassium bicarbonate (aka pearl ash) I used sodium bicarbonate. Sodium carbonate or soda ash had been in use as a leavening agent since its discovery in 1791 and continued in use into the mid-1800s, see for example the recipe for Buckwheat Cakes below, but sometime around the 1840s it began to be replaced by sodium bicarbonate and eventually baking powder.

 

Michigan Farmer, and Western Horticulturalist. 17th ed. Vol. 2. (Jackson, Michigan: D.D.T. Moore, 1844) 135.

Recipe for Buckwheat Cakes using carbonate of soda. From the Michigan Farmer, and Western Horticulturalist. 17th ed. Vol. 2. (Jackson, Michigan: D.D.T. Moore, 1844) 135.

As far as I can find out, sodium bicarbonate was discovered by Valentin Rose in 1801 but wasn’t used on a large scale until commercialisation in the 1840s. Nonetheless, I found a reference as early as 1808 to “digestive bread” made with bicarbonate of soda[1], and indeed many of the later recipes stress the health benefits of bread leavened with bicarbonate of soda rather than yeast.

 

I can’t say whether bicarbonate of soda really made bread that was healthier for you, but it certainly offered a number of advantages to the home baker. Firstly, it could be used with soft wheat flours, that is flour that doesn’t contain enough gluten to have the strength to make good bread with yeast. Secondly it was much faster, in fact as soon as the soda and the acid (often yoghurt or buttermilk) come together you have a very limited time to get it into the oven. Thirdly it was a lot less work, contrary to normal bread soda bread should not be kneaded. Fourthly, it was suitable for cakes and biscuits too, giving a lighter, fluffier result than those made with yeast. Finally, it was also cheap, didn’t go off in the summer months, and required much less attention than a sourdough starter or ale-barm. For all of these reasons, the introduction of chemical leavening agents was revolutionary for bakers of all types.

 

By Boston Public Library [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Brothers-in-law John Dwight and Austin Church were some of the first commercial suppliers of sodium bicarbonate in the USA, first selling their product in 1846. The two separated to set up their own companies, but these were re-united in 1896.  By Boston Public Library [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Although many countries have their traditions of quick breads leavened with chemical agents (damper, pancakes, griddle cakes, farls, bannocks, scones, biscuits) I’ve always had a strong attachment to the quick breads of Northern Ireland. Visiting my grandparents there meant fried pancakes, potato breads toasted and dripping with butter, soda farls with an Ulster Fry and best of all, thick slices of wheaten bread, slathered in butter and ready to be dipped into Granny’s vegetable soup.

 

Ireland’s relationship with quick breads is linked to several key factors. The Irish climate has always been better suited to soft wheats, and soft wheats are not suited to being made into yeast breads. These quick breads are also more suited to being cooked over a fire, an important factor given that until the 20th century many houses lacked an oven. The introduction of bicarbonate of soda also seems to have coincided with The Great Famine of 1845-1852, and the woefully inadequate imports of wheat and cornmeal which were to relieve the hunger. Nonetheless, the demand for bicarbonate of soda greatly increased during the famine years so much that it placed pressure on suppliers to find new ways to produce it[2].

 

The Recipe

 

Unfortunately few Irish recipe books exist from this period so I have had to make do with an early English recipe from The Farmers Magazine although a nearly identical recipe is available in the 1847 Manual of Domestic Economy[3]. It is quite simple to do, although it does make a very large loaf so it may be worth halving the recipe.

The Farmer’s Magazine July to December 1836. Vol. 5. (London: Printed by Joseph Rogerson, 1836) 328.

Recipe for Soda Bread from The Farmer’s Magazine: July to December 1836. Vol. 5. (London: Printed by Joseph Rogerson, 1836) 328.

 

The Redaction

Soda Bread

680g whole wheat flour

2 tsp salt

1 heaped tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/3 cup of water

Approx. 600ml buttermilk

 

  1. Heat the oven to 190˚C and heat a large baking tray in the oven for 15 minutes.
  2. Mix the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl. Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda into the water then stir it into the flour. Rub it together until it is evenly distributed.
  3. Stir in the buttermilk, as much as possible to make a soft dough that is still able to be handled. Turn it out onto a floured surface and shape into a large circle about 1 inch thick. Do not knead the dough and act as quickly as possible.
  4. Carefully remove the hot tray from the oven and place the dough onto it. Place in the oven and bake for 40-50 minutes or until the bread is golden and sounds hollow when knocked on the bottom. Serve hot or cold with butter.

Soda Bread, recipe from 1836

 

The Recipe: Soda Bread from The Farmer’s Magazine (available here)

The Date: 1836

How did you make it? See above.

Time to complete?: Very quick to mix, maybe 1 hr all up.

How successful was it?: Not as good as real Irish soda bread, the odd shape made it too crusty, and it had a slight aftertaste of soda.

How accurate?: The way of cooking it was very different, but that was unavoidable in the circumstances. I’m not sure if the quantity of soda was off, but it had an odd aftertaste which I can’t imagine it should have had.

 

 

[1] Andrew Ure, A Dictionary of Art, Manufactures, and Mines, vol. 2 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1808), 248.

[2] Thomas Richardson and Henry Watts, Acids, Alkalies and Salts: Their Manufacture and Applications, vol. 1 (London: H. Baillière, 219, Regent Street, 1863), 312.

[3] John Timbs, Manual of Domestic Economy: By the Editor of “The Year-Book of Facts.,” 1847, 97.

 

Bibliography

Michigan Farmer, and Western Horticulturalist. 17th ed. Vol. 2. D.D.T. Moore, 1844.

Richardson, Thomas, and Henry Watts. Acids, Alkalies and Salts: Their Manufacture and Applications. Vol. 1. London: H. Baillière, 219, Regent Street, 1863.

The Farmer’s Magazine July to December 1836. Vol. 5. London: Printed by Joseph Rogerson, 1836.

Timbs, John. Manual of Domestic Economy: By the Editor of “The Year-Book of Facts.” London: David Bogue, 86, Fleet Stree, 1847.

Ure, Andrew. A Dictionary of Art, Manufactures, and Mines. Vol. 2. 2 vols. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1808.

 

 

 

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