Bread was an important food source in the
18th century. Not only was it a staple, in and of itself but it was also an important
ingredient in many other foods. It was known to many as a staff of life. Bread played such
an important role in the nutritional needs of society that when there were shortages
in the supply of wheat, other grains had to be used to avoid mass starvation.
Today we’re going to be making a multigrain loaf. It’ll be very similar to the kind
of bread used to feed common people in the 18th century. During the latter half of the 18th century,
western European countries saw a massive increase in population. England itself saw a 70% increase
in its population during that same period. This expansion had a dramatic effect on the
demand and availability of food. Wheat for instance doubled in price in this time period.
The result was an important trade link between the American colonies and England.
Wheat became the largest export crop for the Mid-Atlantic colonies in the 1700s. When George
Washington decided to diversify away from tobacco, he chose to cultivate wheat and consumer
goods that were imported into the colonies were often paid for in wheat flour. Back in
England, wheat was so important in feeding the populous that the British government enacted
laws regulating the production of bread. These ordinances fixed the price of the bread while
controlling the weight of each loaf all according to the price of wheat flour. Commercial baking
became highly regulated. The types of bread that bakers could bake, the grains to be used
and even their salaries were decreed by law. For centuries, white bread was revered by
the public as the best bread to eat. The white bread flour came from regular flour that was
bolted or sifted many times through cloth to get the finest flour available. Originally
this flour was separated out and used only for sacramental bread or for bread for the
gentry, but over time, the regular public started to demand to have this white bread
too. Members of the medical community and government did their best to encourage the
consumption of whole wheat or brown bread as it was thought that it was much more healthy
than the white bread that the common people demanded, but these claims were met with general
resistance. These mixed grain breads were made with a
combination of grains, wheat, barley, oats, and rye, and at other times other things were
included, potatoes, rice, beans, even peas. Mixed breads were generally considered far
inferior in taste and in texture to wheat breads. This is a loaf that’s made from
a regulated ratio of two parts green pea flour to one part wheat flour. This is not the bread
we are going to make today. Instead we’re going to be making this mixed bread. It’s
made from wheat flour, rye flour and barley flour. It would have been a much less expensive
loaf to produce intended mostly for commoners. It would have been found in England and the
American colonies. Let’s get started. Let’s start by talking about yeast. Bakers
in the 18th century got their yeast from the brewer. The brewer collected the yeast by
skimming the croizen or the foam that is on the top of a fermenting batch of ale. Bakers
would then cultivate this yeast. It was called barm and it was in a liquid form. Here’s
how to make your own barm. You need some ale, either a home brew or a good imported ale.
You could use water, but ale makes a better product, a more authentic flavored bread when
you’re finished. We’ve got a bottle here with about a half a cup of wheat flour in
it and to that I’m going to add 1 ½ teaspoons of dry active yeast and to that I’m going
to add this 12 ounce bottle of imported ale, and we need to give this a really good shake
and get all the dry ingredients mixed up. Once you’ve got it all good and mixed up
you can set this aside, give it 15 or 20 minutes to activate. Our dough is fairly simple. We’ve
got three kinds of flour. I’ve got a wheat flour, a rye flour and a barley flour. Because
the flours have different densities, it’s best to weigh them, but in this case it turns
out to be about a cup and a half of wheat flour, a cup and three quarters of rye and
two cups of barley flour. That’s about 8 ounces of each one of these flours. Because
we’re using both wheat flour and rye flour, this is sometimes called maslin bread. All
these flours are usually available at your local grocery store in the specialty baking
section. To this we’re going to add about a tablespoon of salt, and now we can mix it
up. Now let’s add our barm. We’re going to
add that with about 4-6 ounces of water and we’re going to mix this and it should make
a nice sticky, but firm dough. We’re going to knead this quite a while
until the dough becomes very elastic. Now I’m going to form this up into a loaf. We’re
going to take our red ware pie pan and sprinkle it with a little bit of flour and we can put
our loaf in there and cover it with natural linen. Natural linen is something that we
offer on our website and in our print catalog. This is a whole grain dough. It’s going
to take quite a while to rise, several hours, even overnight. We want it to rise until it’s
about twice as big as when it started. We want to make sure to preheat our oven.
If you’re using an earthen oven, you want to get that up to full temperature and then
let it cool down to bread temperatures. If you haven’t got your wood fired oven yet,
you can use a standard home oven. You want to make sure to preheat it to about 400 degrees. For more information about baking in an earthen
oven like this, you want to make sure to check out our video Baking Bread in an Earthen Oven
Part 2. We’re going to transfer our dough onto our peel. First we sprinkle a little corn meal and now we can turn our dough out onto the peel. Your bread’s going to take 30-45 minutes
to bake depending on the temperature of your oven. Well, this looks done. It should sound hollow
when tapped and you should let this cool at least an hour before slicing. You know, the crust might be tough, but for
all their complaints about this not being white bread, this mixed grain bread is very
good. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you can receive notification of
future video releases and be sure to visit our Facebook page so you can get the latest
news from Jas. Townsend and Son. All the items you’ve seen here today, all the cooking
utensils, all the clothing, these things are available in our print catalog, on our website
and I want to thank you for coming along to savor the aromas and flavors of the 18th century.
