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bread recipe?
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Greenhorn
posted
You always read stories of people getting travel rations ready for a trip. Most was a loaf of bread, hunk of cheese, and meat of somekind.
I want to find a recipe for the bread they used. I am sure it was not a sweet bread but something to use for a sandwich or just to eat with the meal. It would be able to last for a week or so on the counter or in a pack.
I dont think they ate sourdough bread all the time either. Or had store bought ingredients.
What did they use for yeast or how did they make the yeast? Or what they used.

Thanks
William Brown
 
Posts: 3 | Registered: 24 September 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Pilgrim
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hardtack comes to mind it was more than just a military food. but i'm sure they did make a type of loaf bread also.
 
Posts: 86 | Location: North central Alabama, Limestone County, Athens | Registered: 09 August 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
Picture of SCLoyalist
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Hoecakes,johnny cakes (possibly a corruption of journey cake),and cornbread are options that don't require leavening. Yeasts are available naturally on the surface of berries and fruit, but since you don't have much control over what strains of yeast are present, if you chance upon a strain that gives good bread or beer or whatever, you save some back and try to keep the culture going (e.g. like sourdough).

I suspect in colonial America, what your bread was made of and whether it was leavened depended on your social and financial status.

Be a good question to ask the guides on a tour of Colonial Williamsburg.


Here's a health to the King and a lasting Peace. May Faction end and Wealth increase....Old Loyalist Ballad
 
Posts: 767 | Location: Panhandle Florida | Registered: 02 February 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Factor
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It depends on a couple of things. First what access a person had to barm, emptins, godisgoode, in other words, yeast..., and what one had for baking. Some folks did take baked bread with them depending on how they were travelling, but for extended journeys especially on foot, they might take ship's biscuit (an early form of "hardtack"), or as the previous posts mentioned, hoecake, johnny cake, ash cakes, or..., no bread at all.

Parched corn, or ground parched corn called rock-a-hominy, were very popular and are high in calories, AND don't need any preparation. Corn meal was known to be carried, but you want the course ground style. One might also carry whole oat groats, which is the grain not ground nor cut, or wheat "berries" again not ground nor cut. (The oats or the wheat was boiled until it puffed open..., takes about a half hour or so.)

If you decide to make ship's biscuit or hardtack, please use whole wheat pastry flour, wheat bran, water, and salt, and nothing else. The wheat of America through 1840 was what we today call "soft white wheat", and it is used to make pastry flour. In addition to that the flour used to make ship's biscuit was the lowest quality, so had much more "bran" mixed in with it than did the best quality stuff, so to simulate that, make your dough with about 25% wheat bran. The stuff was meant to be stored for very long periods of time, so any sugar or fat added would've caused them to spoil more quickly.

Scots often made a thick sort of oat pancake called a bannock, and this can be made in a pan or on a hot rock. Modern recipes for it include baking powder, and are "lighter" than the original product. Basically you end up with a really large round piece of oatmeal hardtack. Big Grin

NOW, if you want to make a loaf of bread, here's a reference recipe, and a modern adaptation.
"To Make French Bread"
"Take half a peck of fine flour, put to it six yolks of eggs, and four whites, a little salt, a pint of good ale-yeast, and as much new milk, made a little warm, as will make it a thin light paste ; stir it about with your hand, but by no means knead it ; then have ready six wooden quart dishes, and fill them with dough ; let them stand a quarter of an hour to heave, and then turn them out into the oven ; and when they are bak'd, rasp them : the oven must be quick."
The Complete Housewife by Eliza Smith, c. 1736

This is a "no-knead" bread recipe, and there are several versions in 18th century cook books. I mention it here as it is again "all the rage" at many modern bakeries. I made some the other day in my regular oven..., it works very well, although for really fancy bread in the 18th century, they would use a fine grater, and scrape off the crust (and use the crumbs for other stuff). I leave the crust on as it's tasty, and if travelling crust will help preserve the bread.

Jas Townsend's No Knead Bread Demonstration

I hope this helped.

Oh one more thing, instead of a really big loaf, you can use the no knead recipe and make several smaller "rolls". These keep longer, as you eat one roll per day, and the crust is intact on the others and thus protects them.., and may last as much as a week before mold comes.

LD


It's not what you know, it's what you can prove
 
Posts: 3843 | Location: People's Republic of Maryland | Registered: 10 November 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Greenhorn
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LD,
That looks like what I am searching for. I was thinking about what I would do if I had to grind my own wheat and corn for flour. Where to get the rest of the ingredients.

Thanks,

William Brown
 
Posts: 3 | Registered: 24 September 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Greenhorn
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I think the yeast can also be made with the help of potatoes. Thatis boil the potato and mash it and add water to it and then mix it.
 
Posts: 1 | Location: 10300 Highway 196, Collierville, TN | Registered: 25 September 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Factor
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Well for parched corn you need dry corn for milling or for parching. Some places that sell "stone ground" cornmeal will sell you a bag of unmilled corn, BUT you need to parch it or freeze it otherwise you run the risk of weevils..., personal experience. Most folks can't use 50 lbs. of corn so opt for smaller packages.

Parched corn is not a snack food in most parts of America, but you can find it. Shoprite and Shopper's Food Warehouse carry Chulpe which is dried corn, and you have to dry roast it in a frying pan to turn it into parched corn. To make rock-a-hominy you need to then grind it up a bit. "Inca Cancha" is very similar, but I have found it to be a South American variety of Indian Corn, and very starchy although you can make parched corn from it. If you have the choice, go with the Chulpe.

You can find whole white wheat berries, unsalted dried pumpkin seed, millet, wild rice, cane sugar varieties, juniper berries, spearmint, buckwheat, and khorasan wheat, at Bulkfoods.com. I get my oat groats at the local Amish market.

LD


It's not what you know, it's what you can prove
 
Posts: 3843 | Location: People's Republic of Maryland | Registered: 10 November 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
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I buy ears of corn and cut the corn off the cob. I dry it and then I have a hand mill I grind it in. It is some work but I like the result and that I did it all myself. It also makes it easy to only get the quanity you want.

BC


"Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad."
Thomas Paine
 
Posts: 649 | Location: Oregon | Registered: 27 June 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Factor
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IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP!

Mea culpa folks for omitting this...,

IF you run across a field of feed corn, the kind raised for feeding cattle, it WILL NOT make parched corn, or corn meal, as it's a hybrid for cattle. The much higher cellulose content(which a cow is made to digest) will make a person "well regulated" or in other words, very regular when the stuff is made into parched corn and eaten. Eeker

LD


It's not what you know, it's what you can prove
 
Posts: 3843 | Location: People's Republic of Maryland | Registered: 10 November 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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