Mexican Bread.

In advance of Cinco de Mayo, I thought I would look at descriptions and opinions of Mexico - especially the food - from outsiders.

I give you an article from Putnam’s Monthly, Volume III, 1854, written by (or from the perspective of, it is not clear which) a visitor in 1846 - at the beginning of the war with the United States.


The writer notes that “Life has its varieties even in San Antonio. The fandango of last night is followed by the funeral of this morning;—thus sorrow treads on the heels of joy, and checkers with black and white, the universal picture of human life.” He then puts aside the metaphor of the fandango, and goes on to describe the actual event, and the making of “Mexican bread” – and the use of the latter as payment for the entertainment by American “visitors.” It is written in the tone usual for such conquerors and colonists – a tone which it minds us to remember is still used in modern times in such situations.

The selection includes our recipe for the day – tortillas from scratch.

“"Fandango " is the term given in the dictionaries for a "lively Spanish dance," but is here applied to nocturnal gatherings for dances, ''lively" enough, certainly, but possessing very few of the qualities of the "poetry of motion." The women who attend these assemblies are seen, with their rebozos drawn closely over the face, serving for bonnets, which they never wear, wending their way early in the evening, by tho light of their own cigarretas, and puffing most industriously, to the place of rendezvous. These are of a class not definable, as in Mexican female society here, there appeared to be little distinction between vice and virtue, and the chaste matron or maiden (if there be such), and the leprous prostitute, seemed to be on terms of social equality. The young girl not yet indoctrinated in the ways of vice, finds ready instructors at these gatherings, where she soon loses the modesty of feeling and purity of heart, innate in the sex, and by degrees falls at last into that pit from which there is no recovery. Fandangoes, as conducted here, are mere schools of corruption and immorality for the destruction of the younger attendants, soul and body; in which the alphabet of vice and the rudiments of prostitution are acquired with fatal facility. Yet there is positively nothing more attractive in them, than the discordant tones produced by the untutored hand of a village blacksmith, upon fibres of untanned catgut. The males were drawn entirely from the Americans; the few Mexicans who were prowling round the outside of the building, seemed to surrender without a struggle or a regret, their wives, sisters, and daughters to hopeless pollution and degradation. In the dance, the females are ranged in a right line on one side of the room, and the males opposite their respective partners; then to the sounds of unearthly music, they proceed to go through with the most laborious antics and gyrations; motions fore and aft and up and down, vulgar if not voluptuous; and having succeeded in working themselves up to the proper point of perspiration—thereby generating a species of perfumery less delicious than the "gales of Araby"—the dance ceases, and each man conducts his partner to a refreshment table, where he purchases a dime's worth of cake or tortillas, which she receives in her handkerchief or hands, and proceeds to deposit under a bench, or with a friend, for safe keeping, so that it may not encumber her performances in the next dance. This pile accumulates during the evening, if she is tolerable good-looking, to a mass large enough to feed a small family of Mexicans, until the next fandango. The dance is thus considered a business transaction, conducted on the cash system.

Tortillas constitute the ordinary Mexican bread. They are of corn, and as thin as pancakes, which in appearance (only) they resemble. The grain is first soaked in ley [lye], until it becomes soft and loses the outer covering; it is then thoroughly washed in water, and made ready for the mill. This consists of a flat stone, the upper surface slightly concave, and a cylindrical crusher of the same material. A woman places the corn thus prepared beside her, and with the stones before her, she crushes about a handful at a time, when it becomes pulpy and soft. It is then turned into a trough, and after a little additional manipulation, is ready for the oven. Apropos of this operation, one of our countrymen was in a sort of cake shop belonging to a native, where the woman was making pies. There being no chairs, he was about to make use of the bed as a substitute, when the woman, under an unaccountable excitement, earnestly begged him to desist. As her language was wholly unintelligible, she was compelled at last to reveal the cause of her uneasiness and opposition, by exhibiting a layer of pies which she had snugly stowed away between the sheets, preparatory to transferring them to the oven.”

Quotation for the Day.
A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
Thomas Jefferson.

Easter Bread.

A week of Easter food would not be complete without some comments about Easter bread, so that is what is on our blog menu today. There are many forms of Easter Bread, and many associated traditions. Nowadays Easter bread is usually soft, sweet bread – verging on cake – enriched with butter, eggs, and milk, and often containing currants or other dried fruit. Easter Sunday seems to be the traditional day for enjoying this special loaf, but I am giving you a recipe today, because I don’t post at weekends, and also it will give you time to stock up on the ingredients, if you are of a mind to make your own this year.

One English regional tradition is described in the chapter on ‘Ancient Payments” in An historical account of the origin of the Commission appointed to inquire concerning charities in England and Wales, and, an illustration of several old customs and words which occur in the reports,by Nicholas Carlisle (1828)

“At Swerford, in the County of Oxford, the Rector supplies a small loaf for every house in the parish, on Easter Sunday, which is given after Evening Service. It is understood, that this is given on account of a bushel of Wheat, which is payable out of a field, called “Mill Close,” part of the glebe. Each house, whether inhabited by rich or poor, receives a loaf.”

There are many of these traditional doles and ancient symbolic rents in Britain, although the origins of most of them are long forgotten. I doubt if the inhabitants of Swerford still claim their bread (which would most likely have been a plain bakers loaf), but if they do, I would be pleased to have the tradition confirmed.

Easter Bread.
One yeast cake, two cups each flour and water; mix and set to rise overnight; in the morning take six cups flour, two cups milk, one and one-half cups currants, one and one-half cups raisins, one-half cup sugar, butter the size of a large hen's egg rubbed in cold, one teaspoon salt; mix and let rise until light, then mold and put in pans until light, then wet top with melted, butter, and bake one hour.
The Original Buckeye Cook Book and practical housekeeping: a compilation of choice and carefully tested recipes (1905) by Estelle Woods Wilcox.

Today is of course, Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday according to the Christian calendar. We have had stories in previous years on some of the food-associated traditions of the day (here, and here.) In Germany the day is called Gründonnerstag, or Green Thursday. It is usually said that the name derives from the symbol of a green branch which represents the journey of repentance that is the purpose of Lent, or perhaps it is intended to be a reminder of Christ’s crown of thorns. There may be another explanation however. Easter in the northern hemisphere occurs of course in Spring, and as with so many days of celebration, what we call ‘traditions’ are a blend of many centuries-worth of both religious and seasonal symbols and references – so perhaps ‘green’ simply indicates Spring. On Green Thursday it is traditional to eat green leafy salads or green soup. We had some recipes for soup in Monday’s post, if you want a traditional and healthy option for today’s dinner.



Quotation for the Day.

Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbour is a spiritual one.
Nikolai Berdyaev.

Milk Cake & Biscuits.

Today I want to continue the milk theme and give you a small selection of bread and cake recipes.

Novice bread bakers are often advised to start with milk breads of the softer, sweeter, quicker rising breakfast variety on the grounds that the dough is more forgiving and the final product closer to cake - so overall it is a less intimidating experiment. Here is a nice easy version from The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-day Cookery, (1877), by Juliet Corson. You can, of course, substitute regular yeast for the hop yeast, which not too many of us have to hand these days.

Milk Bread.
Take one quart of milk, heat one-third of it, and scald with it half a pint of flour; if the milk is skimmed, use a small piece of butter; when the batter is cool, add the rest of the milk, one cup of hop yeast, half a tablespoon of salt, and flour enough to make it quite stiff; knead the dough until it is fine and smooth, and raise it overnight. This quantity makes three small loaves.

As we have often discussed before, early cakes (before the widespread use of baking powders) were in effect yeast-raised sweet breads. I give you a good example – which we would now call fruit bread - from a source with a most unlikely title for a cookery book.

Sour Milk Cake
Take two pounds of flour, three-quarters of a pound of butter, four eggs, one pound of sugar, one pound of currants or raisins, one-half pint of good yeast; wet it with milk, and mould it on a board. Let it rise overnight. A loaf should bake in three-quarters of an hour.
The Family Doctor, or guide to health, (1844) by H.B.Skinner

The instructions in the next recipe are minimalist to the point of non-existence, reminding us once again that in the not so distant past cooking skills were sufficiently widespread that cookery book writers could assume much knowledge on the part of their readers. Slightly more detailed recipes with the same title have the mixture rolled out and made up into small pieces – so perhaps are ‘cake’ that some of you would call ‘biscuits’?


Hot Milk Cake.
4 eggs, 2 cups sugar, 2 cups flour, ¾ cup hot milk, 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder.
Hanover Cook Book 1922.

For those of you who prefer your cake to be honest-to-goodness, properly cakey cake, may I refer you back to the Chocolate Malted Milk Cake recipe we enjoyed several years ago?


Quotation for the Day
I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.
Woody Allen

Sawdust Bread.

Blood Bread may not have appealed to you yesterday, but there is no doubt it would be more nutritious than ‘Sawdust Bread’. The epithet of ‘sawdust bread’ has been applied in past times to many breads of uncertain constitution and gritty, hard texture which have been produced in times of great privation or punishment such as wars and prisons. Sometimes such bread did literally contain sawdust – or ‘tree flour’ as it is also called, as this sounds slightly less inedible.

Nineteenth century scientists were able to justify the addition of sawdust to ordinary bread by claiming not only its nutritional value but its digestibility. The subject of ‘sawdust bread’ got quite a bit of journal space at the time on account of the possibility of it assisting the feeding of the poor at little cost to the rich during times when wheat prices were high.

Here is an extract from the Proceedings of the New York Agricultural Society in 1868.

“Pereira says, "When woody fibre is comminuted and reduced by artificial processes, it is said to form a substance analogous to the amyloceous (starchy) principle and to be highly nutritious." Schubler states that "when wood is deprived of everything soluble, reduced to powder, subjected to the heat of an oven, and then ground in the manner of com, it yields, boiled with water, a flour which forms a jelly like that of wheat starch, and when fermented with leaven makes a perfectly uniform and spongy bread. …

Tomlinson, in his Cyclopedia, asserts that in Norway and Sweden sawdust is sometimes converted into bread for the people by a similar process; and the newspapers have stated, lately, that Norway was reduced to the necessity of using sawdust bread. So we see that woody fibre, practically as well as theoretically, is nutritious, and that heat will develop this nutriment. Heat will develop it into starch, and the action of an acid is necessary to turn it into sugar. The gastric juice supplies this acid, and after the proper application of heat, can dissolve woody fibre or starch, and probably convert it into sugar before it becomes nutritious. Starch is an element of respiration, and supplies animal heat, and, according to Liebig, the surplus contributes to the formation of fat in animals. ….And it is highly probable that even the trunks of trees, when so reduced, are nutritious.”

There is a recipe for bread containing ‘tree flour’ for the use in prisoner of war camps, which is said to have been published in Germany in 1841. It sounds grim.

Black Bread.
50% bruised rye grains.
20% sliced sugar beets.
20% tree flour (saw dust).
10% minced leaves and straw.

Quotation for the Day
O God! that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap!
Thomas Hood.

Blood Bread.

The simplest recipe in the world is for bread: take flour, water, and yeast; mix, leave, and bake. You can even avoid the nuisance of adding the yeast yourself, by ignoring the dough long enough that it picks up its own supply from the atmosphere. This simple formula gives us the basic, sustaining, staff of life. But how marvellous are the ways that we have learned to embellish this blank canvas over the millennia.

I thought I had seen all possible bread ideas, until I came across the following ‘health food’ recipe recently:

Blood Bread.
“Make as ordinary wheat bread, using about 20 per cent of uncoagulated blood from raw flesh, preferably beef. It is nutritious and anti-scorbutic.”
The Complete Bread, Cake, and Cracker Baker, J. Thompson Gill, (Chicago, 1881)

For those not forbidden by their religious beliefs to eat it, blood is highly nutritious; for those not held back by an apparently not uncommon repugnance, it is also pretty tasty. Culinary history includes a long litany of recipes specifying blood as an ingredient. Blood sausage (‘black pudding’) was a tradition at the annual harvest time pre-winter animal slaughter, and is still by many considered an essential component of a traditional British breakfast (whatever that is – but don’t get me on that topic.) Blood Pie was not unknown either, and it featured in a blog post some time ago. Another idea, suggested in a recipe from 1790, was that a pig be rubbed over with ‘a little rosin beat exceeding fine and its own blood …’ before it was put to be roasted.

Pig’s blood mixed with vinegar was supposedly the base for the infamous and maybe mythical melas zomos (‘black broth’) that supposedly gave the famous and apparently fearless Spartans of Ancient Greece their fighting edge (see the quotation below for a theory of why it might have worked.) And at the five-star end of the culinary spectrum, the blood of the hare is a key ingredient in the famous dish Lièvre a la Royale.

But blood in bread? Wouldn’t have thought of it in my wildest vampirest cooking dreams? What do the bread enthusiasts amongst you think?

P.S Blood is also an ingredient in ‘American Cutcheree Soup’ (1827)


Quotation for the Day.
“Now I do perceive why it is that Spartan soldiers encounter death so joyfully; dead men require no longer to eat; black broth is no longer a necessity.”
Supposedly said by ‘a certain native of Sybaris’ after he tasted the soup.

A Nice Dish of Braughwham.

If the bread left over yesterday from your experiment with ‘bust-coat’ is now cool and less appetising, you could make yourself a nice dish of ‘braughwham’ for your supper - if we can work out what that is, of course. Using your leftovers from yesterday's recipe would not be quite authentic, as braughwham is supposed to be made from clap-bread, not wheaten bread, but why not give it a try anyway?

According to the source that introduced us to ‘bust-coat’ - Nathan Bailey’s Etymological Dictionary (1675) – ‘braughwham’ is “A dish made of Cheese, Eggs, Clap Bread and Butter, boiled together.” Sometimes dictionary definitions are not quite definite enough for clarity, and I remain unsure as to the exact nature of ‘braughwham.’ Is it a sort of savoury bread custard? A cheesy bread pudding in a cloth? Some form of coarse scrambled eggs? Or maybe a dish of dumplings? It sounds like a dish guaranteed to continue to bust you out of your coat, however.

I give you a basic recipe for bread dumplings (‘light’ dumplings, too, if there is such a thing), to get your creative juices flowing. This recipe begins with the raw dough, so as it turns out it will not help you use up your leftover bust-coat bread – sorry about that, but I am moving house in two days and have run out of recipe-search time!

Light Bread Dumplings.
Take as much lightened dough as will make a loaf of bread. Work into it half a pound of stemmed raisins tie it up in a cloth, and boil it an hour and a half.
Domestic Cookery, Elizabeth Lea, 1859

Quotation for the Day

“I am the Emperor, and I want dumplings.” 
Emperor Ferdinand I.

Busting Out with Bread.

I hope you will indulge my love of old food words over the next few days in posts that may be brief as I move house. I am on a constant voyage of rediscovery through old dictionaries and glossaries, and have been saving my gleanings for a busy time such as this.

Meals can be rather ad-hoc, as one prepares to move house. The staff at the café across the road from my ‘old’ home have become like a second family to me recently, and I particularly love the very ‘seedy’ bread with which they make their sandwiches. It is delicious, but it is not ‘Bust-coat.’

‘Bust-coat’ may well have been familiar to Samuel Pepys, although I don’t recall any reference to it in his diary (perhaps because he was a city man). According to Nathan Bailey’s Etymological Dictionary (1675), bust-coat is a country word for ‘Tosted Bread, eaten hot with Butter.’ In a later edition of this work, Bailey’s Etymological Dictionary (1773) bust-coat is ‘soft bread, eaten hot with butter’, and in The Philological Society’s New English Dictionary (1861) it is simply ‘hot bread.’ The Oxford English Dictionary cannot be our arbiter, for – most inexplicably sadly – it has no entry on ‘bust-coat.’ It seems however, that the consensus is that bust-coat, as the name suggests, is a particularly indulgent and irresistible form of warm bread oozing with melting butter.

I give you the following recipe, from the marvellous Eliza Acton’s The English Bread Book (1857)

A SURREY RECEIPT FOR GOOD HOUSEHOLD OR COTTAGE BREAD.

(From the Wife of a Parish Clerk.)

The good woman whose receipt for bread is given here, is often called upon to supply it to persons who cannot otherwise procure it homemade without much difficulty; and as one feels assured in eating it that it is composed of honest country flour *, and as it is light and well-flavoured, it is often peculiarly acceptable in London and elsewhere. She makes it even for the family of the clergyman of her parish, when their own servants cannot perform that duty; and the constancy with which it is required from her is sufficient evidence of their deficiency in that respect.

"Mix with about five gallons and a half of flour, a teacupful or about six ounces of salt, and three pennyworth, or rather more than a pint, of yeast. Make these up into a dough at once, with something more than a gallon of warm water; let it stand to rise until it is quite light, and in the meantime, kindle the fire in the oven, and heat it well. A fourpenny faggot is all the fuel that is used for it; but it is always heated once a week, and sometimes twice, so that it requires less than ovens which are not so regularly used. Divide the dough into four-pound loaves, and bake them well. They will be nicely done in about two hours."

This bread, when carefully stored, remains perfectly good in cool weather for ten days; and has occasionally been found quite eatable at the end of a fortnight, which it would not have been unless it had been wholesomely made and thoroughly baked. I think it might be slightly improved by diminishing a little the proportion of yeast used for lightening it, and allowing it to be rather longer after it is kneaded down, before it is put into the oven. A portion of milk, too, is always a desirable addition to bread when it can be had. Flour (resembling what is called households, but excellent of its kind), four gallons and a half; salt, one small teacupful; fresh brewers' yeast, three pennyworth (or rather more than a pint); water, four to five quarts; made into a firm dough at once, and left to rise for an hour; kneaded down, and shortly afterwards divided into 41b. loaves; baked in well-heated brick oven two hours. Remark.—The proportion of fresh yeast for this bread being large, it becomes light in a shorter time than that specified for the second rising of the dough in the generality of the receipts contained here; but slower fermentation is to be recommended. In cottage life, many laborious avocations falling often on one individual, the same time and the same minute attention cannot well be bestowed on any of them as in families where the work is divided between several persons. The "clerk's wife," cited above, has to make bread for a large family of her own, as well as for her customers, yet the order and neatness of her house, even on the busy baking days, and the attractive appearance of her " batches" of wholesome-looking bread, have been remarked with pleasure by accidental visitors.
* Occasionally with that of the wheat grown in her own allotment ground, or with that which her family have gleaned, — the leasing corn,—supposed to make the best bread of any; and hers has been certainly most sweet and nice in flavour.

Quotation for the Day.
The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. Gluttony is a lust of the mind.
Thomas Hobbes.

Soulmass Bread.

The second of November is a special day of observance in some branches of the Christian Church. It is “The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed” or “The Feast of All Souls” - more commonly known as “All Souls’ Day”, or, in Spanish-speaking countries, the Day of the Dead. Many of the traditions of the day have ancient pre-Christian roots, as do many other church feast days (Christmas being particularly notable.) Naturally, there are some special foods associated with the day.

In some part of England, special breads called Soulmass loaves (Sau’mass or Solmas-Loaves) were made – perhaps to be eaten, but some to be kept, for luck (a similar tradition existed for Easter hot-cross buns). A mid-nineteenth century glossary of Yorkshire words describes them:

Soulmass Loaves, soul mass bread, …eaten on the feast of All Souls, November 2d. They were sets of square farthing cakes with currants in the centre, commonly given by bakers to their customers, and it was usual to keep them in the house for good luck. Dr. Young, in his History of Whitby, mentions a lady as having one above a hundred years old.

(A glossary of Yorkshire Words and Phrases, Francis Kildale Robinson, 1855)

I doubt that the bread was anything other than the baker’s basic everyday dough, and that there were more than a token number of currants in this special bread. So, for today’s recipe I give you a much richer, fruitier version of currant bread, from The New Hydropathic Cook Book (1854) by Russell Thacher Trall.

Currant Bread.
Take three pounds of flour; one pound of currants; one pint and a half of new milk; and one gill of yeast. Warm the milk, and mix it with the flour and yeast; cover with a cloth and set it by the fire. When risen sufficiently, add the fruits and mold it; then put it intoa baking tin or deep dish, rubbed with sweet-oil or dusted with flour; after it has risen for half an hour longer, bake it in a moderately hot oven.

Quotation for the Day.

Where our bread is concerned, it is a material matter. Where our neighbor’s bread is concerned, it is a spiritual matter.
I.D. Douglas

How Useful are Turnips?

Unless they are tiny, and called navets, and served with duck, in Paris, by a handsome waiter (with a French accent, naturally), turnips lack both elegance and sex-appeal, methinks. Not that I don’t like them, but we are talking image here. Turnips are most likely to evoke ideas of robust peasant farmers and cold days and thick soup, and they are hardly featured in early cookery books, which describe the food of the well-to-do. Nevertheless, useful things are, well, useful, and we must celebrate useful too, must we not?

The turnip is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘the fleshy, globular or spheroidal root of a biennial cruciferous plant, Brassica Rapa, var. depressa, having toothed, somewhat hairy leaves, and yellow flowers, cultivated from ancient times as a culinary vegetable, and for feeding sheep and cattle; also, the plant itself, of which the young shoots (turnip-tops) are frequently boiled as greens.’ As I said, not elegant or sexy, but an ancient, hairy-leaved, animal food. The first quotation in the OED supports its useful, nourishing quality: from Elyot’s Castel of Helth (1533) we read ‘Turnepes beinge well boyled in water, and after with fatte fleshe, norysheth moche.’ I note that the entire list of quotations is devoid of reference to turnip flavour or other deliciousness.

How useful are turnips, really? They turn up in the medicinal chapter of The Queen’s Closet Opened. Incomparable Secrets in Physick, Chirugery, Preserving, Candying, and Cookery (1655)

Syrup of Turneps.
First bake the Turneps in a pot with houshold bread, then press out the liquor between two platters, put a pint of this liquor to half a pint of Hysop water, and as much brown Sugar Candy as will sweeten it, and boyl it to the consistence of a Syrup. It is very good for a Cold or Consumption.

And how much more useful can a recipe be than the following one from the same era – cheap bread for the poor, with medicinal qualities to boot?

Turnip bread.
Take about half a Bushel of middling sort of Turnips, not sticky, but such as will boil soft: being pared and boiled, press out the Water very hard until they are quite dry, beat them in a Mortar, and mix with the Pulp about two pound of fine Wheat-flower, and two ounces of Carraway-seeds; put in a pint, or somewhat more of new Ale-yeast, mould it up as other Bread, and let it be well soaked, and it will not only look, but tast like Bread. This is not only made for saving Charges in poor Families in a dear Year, but of late has been much in esteem for Consumptions, and those troubled with shortness of Breath and Ptissick; being very wholesome and nourishing.
William Salmon’s Household Companion (1695)

Wine is pretty useful too, although I doubt if there were some good shiraz grapes around that this recipe would be popular.

To make Turnip Wine.
Take good many turnips, pare, slice and put them in a cyder press, and press out all the juice very well. To every gallon of juice have three pounds of lump-sugar, have a vessel ready just big enough to hold the juice, put your sugar into a vessel, and also to every gallon of juice half a pint of brandy. Pour in the juice and lay something over the bung for a week, to see if it works. If it does you must not bung it down till it has done working; then stop it close for three months, and draw it off in another vessel. When it is fine, bottle it off.
The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy, Hannah Glasse (1774)


Quotation for the Day.
A degenerate nobleman is like a turnip. There is nothing good of him but that which is underground.
English saying.

Stealing Bread.

I found more than I was looking for when I went in search of an early recipe for rice bread the other day. Just below the recipe (which follows) in the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, of August 1, 1839, was this short, sad, tale.

DISTRESS: On Tuesday last a little boy of about seven years of age was committed to take his trial for stealing three loaves of bread from a shop. The boy stated that he was hungry, and his mother was in the watch-house on a charge of drunkenness.

A ‘little boy’ – not even worthy of his own name! It is hardly likely, given the era, that his name was withheld on account of his young age. And he was ‘about seven years of age’ – did someone ask, or did he not even know his own birthday?

Most of the early convicts transported to Australia in the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries were the urban poor, driven to crimes such as stealing a loaf of bread, by hunger. Supply problems were serious for the first decades in the new settlement, and convicts who stole food were severely punished – sometime actually executed. In the very first year of 1788, on February 11 - less than two weeks after the colony was declared - the first criminal court session was held. Three convicts were tried, and all were found guilty. One Thomas Hill was accused of stealing bread and was sentenced to a week in chains, on bread and water (and presumably not much of that), on a tiny, bare, rocky outcrop called ‘Pinchgut Island’ (now Fort Denison) in Sydney Harbour. The name may have reflected the nautical use of the term to mean the point where a channel becomes very narrow, but it certainly became apt as far as its temporary convict inhabitants were concerned.

I wonder what happened to the little Australian boy mentioned in the Sydney newspaper article in 1839? I don’t think there would be any doubt that he would have been convicted.

Rice and Wheat Bread.

Simmer 1 lb. Rice in 2 quarts of water till it becomes perfectly soft; when it is of a proper warmth mix it extremely well with 4 lbs. Flour and yeast and salt as for other bread; of yeast about 4 large spoonfuls. Knead it well, then set it to rise before the fire, some of the flour should be reserved to make up the loaves. If the rice should require more water it must be added, as some rice swells more than others. From this 8 ½ lbs of good bread will be produced.

(A gentleman of our acquaintance has requested us to give the above recipe publicly through our columns, and informs us that he has tried the experiment in his own family with perfect success. Now that wheaten flour is so dear, and rice so cheap, we cannot do better than to recommend our readers to go and do likewise.)

Quotation for the Day.

“There's a bread van outside Kathleen O'Connell's shop. The back door is open on shelves of steaming newly baked bread. The van driver is inside the shop having tea and a bun with Kathleen and it's no trouble for me to help myself to a loaf of bread. It's wrong to steal from Kathleen with the way she's always good to us but if I go in and ask her for bread she'll be annoyed and tell me I'm ruining her morning cup of tea, which she'd like to have in peace, ease and comfort thank you. It's easier to stick the bread up under my jersey… and promise to tell everything in confession.”
Frank McCourt,  Angela's Ashes (1996)

Borodinsky Bread.

This day is the anniversary in 1812 of the Battle of Borodino. The event was the largest, and by far the most significant, of Napoleon Bonaparte’s campaign to invade Russia. There always has to be a ‘winner’ of a battle, and technically on this day it was the French, although the total cost was high – 65,000 bodies, lying six to eight deep in places, littered the battlefield at the end of the day.


The temporarily defeated Russians made a strategic withdrawal, but could recover on their own land, and had a massive population from which to draw more troops. Napoleon’s depleted Grand Armée may have won the battle, but they lost the war – defeated in large part by the bitter Russian winter as they made their way home.


What has this got to do with food, you ask? Well, there is a particular Russian rye bread called Borodino, or Borodinsky Bread which is associated with this day. Myth says that a wife of a General, wishing to cheer the troops on the eve of the battle, made a batch of the staple Russian rye bread, adding wild coriander seeds which she had gleaned that day. Truth says that sour rye bread had been around in Russia for centuries. And common sense says that it would have been logistically impossible for even the most caring and skilled General’s wife to have made rye bread for many thousands of troops (a few select officers, perhaps, but that is not the myth.)


I have been unable to find a genuine historical recipe for this Borodino bread, but can assure you there are many ‘on the net.’ There is however, is an interesting explanation of the Russian method of making sour rye bread in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1778) – a very interesting non-cookery book source of recipes. I guess if coriander seeds were to be added, it might represent the real thing. The article makes a point about the Russian preference for a degree of acidity in their bread, and also discusses the making of quass (kvass) – a fermented beverage made from rye bread.

The manner of making the Russian rye bread. – In the morning they mix as much rye flour with warm milk, water, and a bason full of grounds of quass, or leaven, as will make a thin dough, and beat it up for half an hour with the chocolate staff before described*; this they set in a warm place till night, when they add more meal by degrees, working it up at the same with the staff, till the dough becomes stiff. They then return it to its warm situation till morning, at which time they throw in a proper quantity of salt, and work it with the hand to a proper consistence for bread; the longer this last operation is continued the better; they then place it before the fire till it rises, when it is cut into loaves, and returned once more to the warm place where it before stood, and kept there for an hour before the last part of the process, the baking, which completes it.

*In the instructions for the preparation of quass there is reference to “ a machine resembling the staff of a chocolate pot, but larger”, for the ‘working’ of the liquid.


Quotation for the Day:


Every few thousand years some shepherd inhales smoke from a burning bush and has a vision or eats moldy rye bread in a cave and sees God.
Kerry Thornley.

Thumb-bits

Do you like a thumb-bit for a quick snack? I do, although I admit it is not an elegant meal. It is just right for some occasions however - such as when you are cleaning out the fridge and some of the scraps are too tempting to scrap, or when the desire for a supper snack cannot be resisted, or when it is too late for breakfast but too early for lunch and you are not pretentious enough for brunch.

It is obvious that I have been doing some foraging for old food words. A ‘thumb-bit’ is a piece of meat eaten on bread, and is so called for the obvious reason that the thumb is used to secure the meat in place. Delightful, isn’t it? Sounds more fun than ‘open sandwich’, doesn’t it?

The word is recorded in A dictionary of archaic and provincial words, obsolete phrases … (1847). The nineteenth century was a time of great interest in ‘lost’ English dialects, and there are many similar texts waiting to provide linguistic fodder for us in the coming weeks and months.

For added historical interest, you can, if you wish, use your thumb not to hold the meat on a vapid modern slice of white foamy stuff, but on a substantial large piece or ‘dad-of-bread.’ This treat is courtesy of Brockett’s Glossary of North Country Words (1825). A plain meat sandwich is getting more interesting and more fun all the time, isn’t it?

I have, I think, chosen an interesting recipe for the day. It is a sandwich. It is true that it is more complicated and more elegant than our thumb-bit, but who needs a recipe for a piece of meat on bread? It is attractive on a number of counts. It sounds interestingly savoury and tasty, which should be reason enough. It is versatile, which is always a virtue in a sandwich. It would, methinks, make a marvellous canapé, if cut as suggested, or a marvellously substantial snack if left intact. It requires a ‘knife-point’ amount to be spread on the bread – and when did you last see an instruction like that in a recipe book?

It is also impossible to resist the title of the book from whence it came - Culina Famulatrix Medicinae: or, Receipts in Modern Cookery, with a Medical Commentary, written by Ignotus (York, 1806). How many publishers of cookery books today would accept a title in Latin? Have we cookbook buyers become dumbed down?

A Cheshire Sandwich.
Take anchovies, Cheshire cheese, and butter, of each equal parts. Made mustard to the taste. Pound in a marble mortar till all the ingredients become well incorporated. Spread a knife-pointful of this upon slices of white bread, and between two pieces put a thin slice of ham, or any kind of cold meat. Press together, and with a sharp knife, divide the sandwich into mouthfuls.

Quotation for the Day.
Too few people understand a really good sandwich.
James Beard.

Dyspepsia Bread.

I must be honest, I have never really fancied ‘dyspepsia bread’. It may well be worth recreating on historical grounds, being a particular dietetic phenomenon of nineteenth century America, but frankly - notwithstanding the fact that many recipes sound delicious - I have real trouble getting past the name.

The health gurus of the time (and there were a lot of them) protested long and hard – and with considerable justification – about the poor quality, nutritionally depleted, and adulterated bread bought by the general public from bakers not worthy of the name. They promoted a return to the good old days when the good wife baked wholesome brown bread for her family every week, thus preserving their morals as well as their health. This whole-wheat brown bread was often called ‘dyspepsia bread.’ I don’t for one minute believe that the bread was intended to induce dyspepsia, although that is the image that pops into my head when I hear the phrase. I assume it was so named because it would avoid or relieve the dyspepsia caused by the inferior commercial product. I assume also that no marketing gurus were consulted in the naming of the product.
Even dyspepsia bread however was not always what it appeared. Here is an opinion (and a recipe) from the author of The Ladies’ Indispensable Assistant (1850).

Brown or Dyspepsia Bread.
This bread is now known as “Graham Bread,” – not that Doctor Graham invented or discovered the manner of its preparation, but that he has been unwearied and successful in recommending it to the public. It is an excellent article of diet for the dyspeptic and the costive; and for most persons of sedentary habits it would be beneficial. It agrees well with children; and, in short, I think it should be used in every family, though not to the exclusion of fine bread. The most difficult point in manufacturing this bread is to obtain good pure meal. It is said that much of the bread commonly sold as dyspepsia is made of the bran or middlings, from which the fine flour has been separated; and that saw-dust is sometimes mixed with the meal. To be certain that it is good, send good clean wheat to the mill, have it ground rather coarsely, and keep the meal in a dry cool place. Before using it, sift it through a common hair-sieve; this will separate the very coarse and harsh particles.
Take six quarts of this wheat meal, one tea-cupful of good yeast, and half a tea-cup of molasses; mix these with a pint of milk-warm water and a tea-spoonful of pearlash or saleratus. Make a hole in the flour, and stir this mixture in the middle of the meal till it is like batter. Then proceed as with fine flour bread. Make the dough when sufficiently light into four loaves, which will weight two pounds per loaf when baked. It requires a hotter oven than fine flour bread, and must bake about an hour and a half.


Quotation for the Day.
Bread is a staple article of diet in theory, rather than in practice. There are few who are truly fond of bread in its simplest, most pure, and most healthful state....Is there one person in a thousand who would truly enjoy a meal of simple bread of two days old?
 William Andrus Alcott, 'The Young House-keeper' (1846)

Adding Fragrance.

Every baker knows that the smell of hot bread and pastry is a powerful lure for customers. When the VAT legislation was being formulated in the UK, bakers successfully argued that hot meat pies should be VAT-free, as the main reason for having them hot on the premises was to create an enticing smell. Real estate agents have a similar trick, and say that the smell of coffee helps sell a home.

In the words of Alan Hirsh, director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago “Odorants are potentially more efficacious than any other modality in increasing sale ability of consumer products”. In simpler words: “smell sells”.

Why is it so? One reason is that smell has a powerful alliance with memory, which always comes with a lot of associated emotion. All it takes is a whiff of something familiar – so small as to be almost un-noticed by the conscious brain – to trigger a whole flood of nostalgia, so that the smell of bread or coffee make us feel at home, or drawn to a comforting feeling of what a home should be.

The other, more primitive, reason why smell sells is that we are hard-wired to believe that whatever smells good will also taste good. This makes sense of course, because our sense of smell IS intimately tied to our sense of taste. We are all familiar with the lack of a sense of taste that goes with the lack of sense of smell when we have a cold, and the party trick that fools you into thinking you are eating an apple when your eyes are closed and your nose pinched shut and someone puts a piece of pear in your mouth.

Our taste buds can actually only distinguish four basic “tastes” – sweet, sour, salty, and bitter - or five if you include the controversial “umami” or “savoury”, as researchers are increasingly inclined to do. At least 70% of the flavour that we perceive as “taste” actually comes via our sense of smell, and although humans are very limited in comparison with dogs, we can still discriminate between 5-10,000 different odour molecules. In all sorts of permutations and combinations these molecules detected by our noses make up all of the “tastes” beyond the basic four (or five), so that when we taste the “spiciness” of Christmas cake or the “earthiness” of mushrooms, or the sheer “apple-y-ness” of apple pie, what we are actually doing is smelling it.

It makes sense then, to consider carefully the smell of baked goods, and how this might be used to make them even more delicious. We can use flowers for example – and there does seem to be a resurgence of interest in using flowers in food over recent years. We can learn (or re-learn) a great deal from the past in this regard, when flowers were much more freely used - partly it is true, on account of their supposed medicinal qualities, but also for the sheer joy of their colour and fragrance.

We usually associate rose-water with the sweet foods of the Middle East, but in medieval times until the end of the eighteenth century it was a common ingredient in England in many foods, both sweet and savoury. One recipe for “lamb stones” (testicles) sprinkled with rose-water comes to mind, but I think it unlikely it will become a trendy dish no matter how popular flowers might become in food.

Rose-water was particularly freely used in bread and pastry dough, partly because being distilled, it was clean and pure, and without the muddy taint of water bucketed out of the well. The other reason of course was that it tasted (smelled) good. Rose-water and rose-oil were made in the still-rooms of grand homes, often from roses grown on the estates specifically for that purpose, and the preparation was an occupation of the Lady of the household.

One such Lady was Elinor Fettiplace of Appleton Manor in Berkshire, who left us her handwritten cookbook dated 1604. Rosewater appears in many of her recipes, and in this one for sweet bread it is clearly added because it would make the bread more fragrant and delicious – not overpoweringly and obviously rose-scented, as this quantity of dough is sufficient for five large loaves, but it would surely provide a lovely floral note to underpin the nutmeg and sweet buttery flavour.

To make buttered loaves.
Take the top of the morning milk, warme it, &c; put thereto three or fowre spoonfuls of rose water, then run it, and when it is hard come take some flower, the yolks of two eggs, the white of one, &c; some melted butter, &c; some sugar, &c; some nutmeg, then temper this together with the milk, &c; mould it up into loaves, then set them on paper, &c; so bake them, if you make five loaves as big as manchets, you must put half a pound of butter to them, when they are baked, straw some sugar upon them, &c; so serve them.

Quotation for the Day.

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94)

Crackling Bread.

Yesterday’s post introduced me to the possibilities of pork rind. I realise that the amazing culinary potential of pork rind may not be a novelty to my American friends, particularly those in the South, but to this Aussie Yorkshire lass, it has been quite revelatory.

I have never tasted it, but I am in love with ‘Goody-bread’. For those of you not familiar with it, it is Crackling Bread by an even more appealing name. The ‘cracklings’ are of course, the crispy shreds of pork rind remaining after lard is rendered, and, as the name suggests, when this is incorporated in bread dough – you end up with ‘crackling bread’! I guess if I use crispy bits of bacon rind I get ‘bacon bread’ - and there is no way that anything with those two words in the title can be anything but delicious.

Here, for your delectation, are three interpretations of this wonderful idea:

Crackling Bread.
Cracklings are the residue after lard is rendered. Beat or mash the cracklings fine, add one egg, salt, sweet milk and meal enough to make a thick batter for cornbread. Add one teaspoonful of quickeast (not soda) and bake in a quick oven in pones formed by hand and “with the prints of fingers on them.”
Galveston Daily News, February 21, 1909

Crackling Bread.
To one cup of cornmeal allow three-fourths teaspoonful salt and half a cupful of cracklings – the crisp brown particles that are left after lard is rendered. If the cracklings contain a great deal of fat, place them while warm in a cheesecloth and squeeze out part of the fat. Pour boiling water over the meal until it is of such consistency that it can be mashed with the hand. Add the cracklings, shape into cakes, and bake.
Pinedale [Wyoming] Roundup, July 26, 1923.

Crackling Bread.
One cup sifted all-purpose flour
One-half teaspoon baking powder
Two teaspoons baking powder
One teaspoon salt
Two tablespoons sugar
Three fourths cup cornmeal
One half cupbran
One egg
One and one-half cups sour milk or buttermilk
Four tablespoons all-vegetable shortening
One-half cup dry, chopped cracklings.
Method:
1.Sift flour before measuring, sift again with baking powder, soda, salt and sugar; mic with cornmeal and bran.
2. Beat egg well, add milk and combine with dry ingredients, stirring only until flour disappears. Add fat and cracklings.
3. Bake in greased pan in moderately hot oven (400 degrees F.) about 40 minutes. Serve hot with butter. Makes nine three-inch squares.
[Note: To make cracklings, cut fat from fresh pork into small pieces, add a small amount of water to prevent burning at first, then fry very slowly in heavy frying pan or kettle until fat is crisp. Drain thoroughly.]
San Antonio Light, April 12, 1937

Quotation for the Day

Friends are the Bacon Bits in the Salad Bowl of Life.

Bottled Beer.

I have no idea how true today’s story is, but I love it – and you will too, if you have ever wondered about the origin of bottled beer.

Once upon a time, ale and beer were drawn from the barrel as needed. If liquid refreshments were required to be carried out for a day labouring in the fields or, - as in our story today - a day of labouring to catch fish, then a suitable container was pressed into service.

‘The origin of bottled beer is thus quaintly recorded by Fuller. “Dean Newall* [Nowell], of St. Paul’s, in the reign of Queen Mary [1553-1558], was an excellent angler. But while Newall was bent on catching of fishes, Bishop Bonner** was bent on catching of Newall, and would certainly have sent him to the shambles had not a good London merchant conveyed him away upon the seas. Newall was fishing on the banks of the Thames when he received the first intimation of his danger, which was so pressing that he dared not go back to his own house to make preparation for his flight. Like an honest angler, he had taken provisions for the day; and when, in the first years of England’s deliverance, he returned to his own country, and his own haunts, he remembered that, on the day of his flight, he had left a bottle of beer in a safe place on the bank of the stream in which he had fished; there he looked for it, and found ‘no bottle, but a gun,’ for such was the sound emitted at the opening thereof.” And this is supposed by many to be the origin of bottled beer in England.’

*Alexander Nowell, an Anglican clergyman and Dean of St. Paul’s whose style of preaching displeased Queen Elizabeth I, and who fled to Europe on the accession of the Catholic Queen Mary.
** Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London who assisted Henry VIII’s schism from Rome, then returned to Roman Catholicism, and was responsible for the brutal persecution of heretics (Protestants) during Queen Mary’s reign.

Instead of a recipe for beer, in order to prepare you for tomorrow’s post I give you one for bread. Bread recipes did not often find their way into early cookbooks. ‘Everyone’ knew how to make it, so instructions were not necessary. Here is a pretty exception, from the seventeenth century – a lovely soft, rich, white bread perfect for breakfast.

Lady Arundel’s Manchet.
Take a bushel of fine wheat-flour, twenty eggs, three pounds of fresh butter; then take as much salt and barm as to the ordinary manchet; temper it together with new milk pretty hot, then let it lie the space of half an hour to rise, so you may work it up into bread, and bake it: let not your oven be too hot.
True Gentlewoman’s Delight (1676)


Quotation for the Day.
A fine beer may be judged with only one sip, but it is better to be thoroughly sure.
Proverb.

Apple Bread.

In one of those beautiful serendipitous research finds, just as I finished my search for a non-cakey, genuinely bread-y banana bread for yesterday’s post, I came across the following article in a 1938 edition of Popular Mechanics magazine (which also happens to fit beautifully also into my recent ‘recipes from non-traditional sources’ theme too!):

"Bread baked from apple flour is a tasty innovation in Seattle. Each one and one-half pound loaf contains the equivalent of a large apple. The milling of apples into flour was made possible by a vacuum dehydration process which reduces the moisture content to about one percent; the flour is then added to other dry ingredients used in the bread mix, including a proportion of wheat flour. Due to the presence of apple pectin, apple bread does not dry out like ordinary wheat breads and so can be used to the last slice. A ton of apple flour calls for fifteen tons of apples."

Someone in Seattle please tell me that this bread is still being made there, so I can book my flight immediately. What a gorgeous idea, isn’t it?

Most of us don’t have access to apple flour, and the production sounds beyond the scope of even the most enthusiastic home baker, so we must be content with apple bread made from pulp. At least the recipe for today is yeast-leavened, and has no added sugar, so would not be cake-y. I am definitely going to try this very soon.

Apple Bread.
Weigh seven pounds of fresh juicy apples, peel, core, and boil them to a pulp, being careful to use an enamelled saucepan, or a stone jar placed inside an ordinary saucepan of boiling water, otherwise the fruit becomes discoloured; mix the pulp with fourteen pounds of the best flour, put in the same quantity of yeast you would use in common bread, and as much water as will make it into a fine smooth dough; put it into a pan, and stand it in a warm place to rise; let it remain for twelve hours at least; form it into rather long-shaped loaves, and bake it in a lively oven. This bread is very much eaten in the south of Europe.
How to Cook Apples: shown in a hundred different ways of dressing that fruit … Georgiana Hill, , (London, 1865)

Quotation for the Day

Why do we need so many kinds of apples? Because there are so many folks. A person has a right to gratify his legitimate taste. If he wants twenty or forty kinds of apples for his personal use…he should be accorded the privilege. There is merit in variety itself. It provides more contact with life, and leads away from uniformity and monotony.
Liberty Hyde Bailey

Notable Eating Habits.

This week’s source is a book called A Thousand Notable Things, published in 1815, but based on an original from the late sixteenth century. There have been many editions of the book over the centuries, with some of the ‘notable things’ in the 1579 edition still appearing in the nineteenth century version – unchanged apart from the language being modernised. It would be the work of several long days to compare the 1579 and 1815 versions and note the points at which significant changes were made, and I admit have not done this - yet!

I do not know at which point the topic I am giving you today was included, but whenever it was it demonstrates that advice about sensible eating is surprisingly enduring. Note that ‘meat’ in this context at this time referred to food in general, not specifically to animal flesh.

Rules to find out a fit measure of Meat and Drink.

1. If thou eat so much as makes thee unfit for study or other business, thou exceedest the due measure.
2. If thou art dull and heavy after meat, it is a sign that thou has exceeded the due measure, for meat and drink ought to refresh.
3. If thou findest these ill symptoms, consider whether too much Meat or too much Drink occasions it, or both; and abate by little and little, till thou findest the inconvenience removed.
4. Pass not immediately from a disordered life to a strict and precise life, but abate by little and little the excess; for ill custom comes on by degrees, and so by degrees must be left off.
5. As to the quality of Food, if the body be of a healthful constitution, and the meat does thee no harm, it matters little what it is; but all sorts must be avoided that prejudiceth thee, though it please the taste ever so much.
6. Let Students eat a good quality of Bread with their Meat, though they ought to avoid all meats that offend, yet, now and then, they may eat a little of any meat that they desire.
7. After Diet is exactly obtained, the appetite will require only what Nature hath need of, it will desire as Nature desires.
8. Let ancient people eat Panado, made with Bread and Flesh, Broth, which is of light digestion, and an Egg now and then will do well.
9. Beware of Variety of Meats, and such as are curiously and daintily dressed, which destroys a multitude of people; they prolong the appetite four times beyond what Nature requires, and different meats are of different natures; some are sooner digested than others, whence crudities proceed, and whole digestion depraved.
10. Keep out of sight of Feasts and Banquets as much as may be, for it is more difficult to refrain from good cheer when it is present, than from the desire of it when it is away; the like you may observe in the objects of all the other senses.
11. Fancy that Gluttony is not good and pleasant, but filthy, evil, and detestable, as indeed it really is.
12. The richest compounds, when concocted, yield the most noisome smells, and he that works hard, and fares hard, hath a sweeter and pleasanter body than the other.

In case you are actually ‘ancient’, or merely feel a little old and indisposed today, here is a nice recipe for ‘panado’(or ‘panada’) – essentially a broth thickened with bread (with other optional ingredients) used as a thickener or binder in other recipes such as forcemeat, or taken in the form of soup, as it is to this day in many parts of Italy. This particular recipe is quite rich, and perhaps not the style that the author of our book had in mind for ancient folk? It is certainly adaptable and can be made in the form of a savoury custard, or a sweet fruity dessert.

To make PANADA.
Grate the crumb of a penny loaf, and boil it in a pint of water, with one onion and a few peppercorns, till quite thick and soft, then put in two ounces of butter, a little salt, and half a pint of thick cream, keep stirring it till it is like a fine custard, pour it into a soup plate, and serve it up.
N.B you may use sugar and currants, instead of onions and peppercorns, if you please.
The Experienced English Housekeeper; Elizabeth Raffald, 1786.

Quotation for the Day.

The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. Gluttony is a lust of the mind.
Thomas Hobbes.

Z is for Bread.

Silly me! In my post of last week “A is for Bread”, in which I mentioned my burgeoning alphabetical list of bread recipes, I said that the letter ‘Z’ was a problem. It is not. There is Zwieback, of course – and I have even discussed it in a previous post. I can only blame the fact that I am working with limited resources on a temporary computer until the hard drive on my fancy new notebook is fixed and I can face the laborious job of restoring all my files.

Today I offer you some more ideas about the other bookend to my alphabetical list. Zweiback is simply ‘twice-cooked’bread, or bread toasted and dried out in an oven. It was considered to be ‘healthy’(I hate that word in relation to food. Unhealthy is no food) in the past, and perhaps still is amongst those sad folk who sneer at hot fresh bread lathered with lots of butter ……

From an early twentieth century vegetarian cook book - Food and Cookery by H.S. Anderson, (California 1917) - I give you two ways to dry out your bread, and a recipe for using it in a nutty alternative to meat loaf.


Cut Zwieback.
Cut bread in slices about three-fourths of an inch thick, put in shallow baking-pan in single layers, and put in a very slow oven or a warming oven for three hours or more, until thoroughly dried. Then put into a moderate oven, and allow it to brown to a golden colour through entire thickness. Baker’s bread makes very good zwieback.


Pulled Zwieback.
Take fresh bread, break carefully, pulling it into pieces instead of using pressure. The pieces should be about the size of a medium apple. Proceed to dry and bake same as for cut zwieback.

Walnut Roast.
¼ cup chopped walnuts.
1 cup zwieback crumbs.
1 cup milk.
2 teaspoons grated onion.
1 egg.
Pinch of sage.
Salt to taste.
Beat the egg, add the milk, and pour over the crumbs, let soak twenty minutes. Mix all ingredients, put in oiled brick-tin and bake until brown and cooked through. Egg may be left out if desired.

Quotation for the Day.

The odds of going into a store for a loaf of bread and coming out with ONLY a loaf of bread are three billion to one.
Erma Bombeck.