The Great Wheat Shortage of 1797 - Bread for the Commoners

Imagine you're a baker in the 18th century and  your main ingredient is almost impossible to get   what are you gonna do you're gonna substitute  that's what we're talking about today   thanks for joining us as we savor the  flavors and the aromas of the 18th century. Bread was the most important food component  of the everyday man's diet in the 18th century   most everyday laborers in the 18th  century they survived on nothing but   beer and bread and they generally didn't bake  that bread for themselves they went to the baker   to get that bread they survived upon it  it was so important to the diet in England   that bread was regulated for hundreds  of years before the 18th century   bread was regulated in its price, in its weight um  all the price of the loaf all had to do with the   price of wheat in the time period that's  one of the problems that everyone in that   time period was demanding white wheaton bread  that's what they really wanted they didn't want   dark household loaves the inexpensive bread,  everyone wanted to eat white wheat and bread   what happens though when you have crop failures  in the 18th century or before they had numerous   crop failures. The 1630s the 1690s the 1740s and  the 1790s over and over they would have weather   problems they would have very very cold summers  the whole wheat crop would fail or you would   lose say 80 percent of it and so the rich people  they could still get their white bread they they   could afford to buy expensive bread maybe even  from wheat that was imported from the continent or   even from north america in that time period so  the common man he needed something else the baker   had to be able to make some other bread for this  common man to eat and we have wonderful numerous   sources that we can rely on to see just what  that baker was doing to feed that everyday man. In 1804 this little amazing book comes out it's  called the treatise on the art of bread making and   the author is responding to this idea of um what  are we gonna do to feed the common man because   bread is so important so he covers the whole  art of the baker and he spends an entire chapter   on these substitute items that we need for wheat  because wheat is very hard to get even in the time   period 1804 wheat was still very expensive and  still in great demand in that time period so the   the baker has to come up with a solution so some  of the ingredients that he mentions as substitutes   making bread with peas or partially made with peas  doesn't make a very good bread sometimes we'll use   something like oats or oatmeal that's all ground  up definitely used in bread we use that today   he talks about maize or as we call it in North  America corn that is one of those things that that   he talks about but it never really gets popular  in Great Britain of course it's been used in   North America all these hundreds of years we make  lots of bread from corn and something like barley   we also have buckwheat and a lot of things  that are grain like that are being used but   some things aren't like grains at all being  used in this bread and he mentions potatoes   specifically and in other works something very  very similar as turnips being used in our bread   now we can't necessarily make bread completely  from potatoes but we can use that as an additive   to stretch the amount of wheat that you're going  to be using in your loaf. So today we'll be doing   a recipe right out of the treatise on the art of  bread making we'll be using potatoes let's get   started. So this treatise is on the art of bread  making a wonderful book not only does it have   one potato bread recipe in it but it has three  potato bread recipes in it and he spends a great   deal of time talking about how to prepare these  potatoes for this bread now uh we're going to   use the simplest of the three because it gets  complex and I don't think it really needs to.   "To make potato bread pair one peck of potatoes  put them into a proper quantity of water and boil   them till they are reduced to a pulp and then  beat them up fine in the water they're boiled in   and knead them with two pecks of wheat flour  with a sufficient quantity of yeast and salt   into a dough cover it up allow it to ferment  for two hours or upwards according to the   state of your weather and then make it up into  loaves and bake them". Pretty simple recipe   as simple as it is basically the straight bread  recipe of the 18th century which is just wheat   flour and yeast and salt and water and then we  add in this potato mash basically mashed potatoes   in a ratio of one parts potatoes to two parts  flour so we're stretching that out we're getting   as much bread as we can from the wheat flour we've  got so maybe one of the reasons why the author of   this book stressed potatoes as much as he did is  because the potatoes used in this bread continued   to make a very white wheaton loaf in fact you  might not be able to tell a difference maybe he   could get away with making bread with potatoes and  his customers might not even know the difference   if he's using some of these other grains uh you  can tell immediately by the color of the loaf but   the smell of the loaf or even by the look of the  crumb that hey this is substitute bread this isn't   what I wanted and he might even get in trouble  from the authorities because bread was regulated   but these potatoes they make an almost perfectly  white loaf just like a regular white wheat loaf. So the recipe talked about boiling these to a pulp  and sometimes we you know can can interpret that   these uh 18th century recipes is sort of over  boiling the food I don't know if they necessarily   did that or was just how they described it one  of the problems we have with these potatoes is   we can overwork them we can trying to get them  down to that very fine consistency we can get   them to a gloop that we don't want and so  some of these recipes talk about forcing   the potatoes through a sieve just like this one  which is very similar to an 18th century design   and it turns out that if we do that  if we send that through the sieve   it does almost exactly the same thing as a modern  day potato ricer so they were doing basically the   same operation so they would just squish this  right through the sieve squishes it down through   that and gives it just the right consistency  without us having to overwork these potatoes   so I kind of peeled these off of the bottom of  the sieve and they're in the perfect consistency   at this point now the recipe calls for mixing up  all these ingredients we've got our main component   of flour here again we need two parts of flour to  our one part of potatoes we've got a little bit of   salt and we're gonna use some water and here's our  our main active ingredient it's our yeast today   we'll use you know just active yeast we're getting  a little packet from the store so just follow the   directions like that this we're kind of using it  as they would have done in the 18th century a barm   or a yeast that you get from the brewer and it's  a liquid yeast it's a yeast that is a byproduct of   making beer and so or making ale sometimes  ale's probably a little bit better won't   have the bitter hops in it or at least as  much as a standard beer but that's what   we're going to be using for our yeast today you  can use just regular bread yeast from the store   so the water and the flour those are the  things you're going to adjust to get to that   nice soft loaf consistency that you're shooting  for if that ball of dough is too hard it just   cannot grow and you'll have this dense dense  loaf that doesn't do what you want it to do and   then of course if it's too soft it just sags and  and you have this giant flat loaf which is still   good bread and it's totally worth eating it just  isn't as beautiful and isn't quite as easy to use   so our consistency feels really good obviously not  too hard not too soft looks good so we can set it   in our bowl kind of bring that around all to the  bottom and then set that in so that it can grow   there we go so this bowl is still nice and  warm we're going to let it set for about that   two hours I mean he says in the recipe it all  has to do about the weather right they didn't   have as much climate control as we do so they  had to adjust their rise time to their weather   but two hours should work great for this we're  just going to cover this up and set it aside   now we have to work on our oven getting it  up to temperature so we can bake this bread. The fire is looking good in this oven it's  got to heat up for an hour or two just about   the perfect time when this is up to heat  the bread should be ready you know this   oven we made I don't know six seven eight years  ago on the channel but this oven is a long way   away from our homestead set where we're gonna  be doing a lot of cooking so we're going to be   building a new earthen oven a bigger earthen oven  right beside the cabin so make sure to stay tuned   subscribe to the channel hit the notification  bell so you can watch us make this new oven. So three things before I try this bread out  I know you want me to try it out right now   that's why I did not wait for the crumb to totally  set up on this thing it might be a little gummy   but I know you want me to try it out now number  two on on something like this use the best butter   you can get I'm telling you try something  like Kerrygold or go to the grocery store   and get a specialty butter it's worth it and  the third thing is we bake this in an earthen   oven and it definitely makes a difference  if you get a chance to use an oven like this   do it because it makes the best bread let's  try this out it smells so good it is a nice   and tender loaf because it's just come out  of the oven it's still warm let's try it. Superb bread you would never guess that this bread had an  additive because you were trying to stretch   out the wheat you know it's so moist it's so  tender I can't see how anyone would complain in   1804 or any other time about getting a  wonderful potato bread it is excellent stuff and   easy to make it's so great to be able to do a  recipe that connects directly with a situation an   event in history it isn't just some random recipe  out of a cookbook but it's out of a book that was   basically written because of bread shortages we  were able to take one of those recipes and try   it out and enjoy it if you're interested in the  treatise on the art of bread making make sure to   check out the link in the description and if you  want other bread making videos check this out.

Channel: Townsends

Views: 2,234,198

Keywords: 18th century, 18th century cooking, 19th century, baking, bread, bread baking, cob oven, earthen oven, history, jas townsend and son, jon townsend, mud oven, mud oven baking, potato bread, reenacting, townsends

Id: _4UR0MUBnOM

Length: 13min 30sec (810 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Xanthina]

Townsends is always worth an upvote and watch

[u/smellmyfoot]

I love this guy and his channel. You can tell he really loves what he's doing.

[u/didled]

I could fall asleep to this guys videos in a good way

[u/scooterlego]

I love when mealtime videos are about meals

[u/reprya]

That bread does look delicious

[u/[deleted]]

This guy might be Frank Gallagher's long lost brother who was raised in a good home.

[u/TheSnackShack]

always the best late night videos with townsends

[u/plutonfeld]

In napoleonic times Norway, the substitutes were lichen and tree bark

[u/jurble]

when he talks about how the working man in the 19th century's mainstay was bread, it reminds me about what my mom told me the peasant-farmers in Pakistan eat

they just eat naans and parathas (with a bit of lentils, but mostly the breads); parathas are a flat bread that are basically cooked in and slathered in butter. No meat in their diet, because they can't afford it.

Just like multiple pounds of bread and butter a day, ridiculous amount of calories, but they're stick-thin on account of the heavy manual labor.