These recipes were originally posted for people attending my Bread History and Practice Seminar #68 on American Bread, December 15, 2022. If you are attending the seminar, please make one of the breads that I am posting here so that we all have some experience with the taste and texture of the bread. Insights can…
Category: Bread Seminar
Miss Leslies Book of Household Management, 1840 “Rye and Indian” bread.
A mix of rye and cornmeal, “Indian,” in the vocabulary of 19th century American cookbooks, was a common bread in New England for most of the 19th century. Emily Dickinson won second prize for her version of this bread at an agricultural fair in Massachusetts in 1856. This bread pairs well with molasses which was…
American Soda Bread
It was in the 1830s that leavening bread with an alkaline salt first became an important leavening. There was substantive uptake of this modern leavening — calcium carbonate mixed with muriatic acid was the first popular alkaline leavening for bread — in both Ireland and in United States. Less so elsewhere in the Anglophone world….
Rubel Spring 2022 Bread History Seminar Series
This Spring 2022 seminar series taking us from Seminar #29 through #34 starts with an in depth look at the history of written bread recipes starting with Ancient Egypt and ending in the late 19th century. There are three talks in my “close reading” series where I read from historic texts and then talk about…
Seminar #28 The Fabulous Breads of John Cochrane, 1797
John Cochrane’s portrait dating to the 1780s doesn’t suggest suggest someone who was passionate about bread. He kind of looks like a stuffed shirt sitting there with his wig and frilly collar and cuffs. He is a good one to apply the adage, Don’t judge a book by its over. Cochrane’s Seaman’s Guide was published…
Recipes for the Introduction to Egyptian Bread Seminar #22 & Revised for #24
The ancient Egyptian bread that is most often the focus of recreation is the molded conical loaf. Working out how to bake conical loaves in clay molds on an open fire is not a challenge that fits into my interest in historic breads. For me, it is a too specialized product. Emmer and barely are…
Salt Rising Bread Recipes and Instructions
Jenny Bardwell, Guest Speaker Bread History Seminar #20 February 18, 2021 9am Pacific: 6pm Belgium: 9:30pm Bangalore SALT RISING BREAD (made with potatoes + cornmeal or garbanzo) Yield: 2 loaves STARTER: Slice 2-3 potatoes (with the peel) into a quart mason jar. Add 1 tablespoon of cornmeal, 1 tablespoon of garbanzo flour (optional), and…
Recipes: Prison and Slave Breads for William Rubel Thursday Bread History Seminar #19.
These recipes were first published for people attending my Thursday Bread History Seminar on prison and slave breads on February 4, 2020. There is no cookbook where you can look up how to make breads for prisoners, or for the enslaved. Prison and slave breads are really and truly written in the hearts of jailers…
Page of Useful Research Links
I am just starting work on this page — late January 2021. My bookmarks could be used to define the meaning of chaos. I use two browsers so even if my bookmarks were well organized on either browser, and they are not well organized on either, it would be hard to find what I want….
Ship’s Biscuit Recipes and Instructions
Jeff Pavlik, Guest Speaker Bread History Seminar #18 January 21, 2021 9am Pacific: 6pm Belgium: 9:30pm Bangalore These are various ways to replicate the basic ship’s biscuit of the eighteenth century using readily available ingredients. The final amount of dough made using these recipes will equal a ration of one pound of biscuits after they…
William Rubel 