baker's bread
(from Miss Beecher's Domestic Receipt-book, by Catharine Esther Beecher, 1846)
Ingredients:
Instructions:
Ingredients:
1 gill distillery yeast
or 2 gills fresh home-brewed yeast
1 quart warm water
flour
On 2nd day:
7 quarts sifted flour
powder volatile salts the size of a hickory-nut
powder alum the size of a hickory-nut
alternately, 1 tsp. of saleratus can replace volatile salts and alum
heaping tbsp. salt
1 quart of blood-warm water
butter for pans
Instructions:
Take a gill of distillery yeast, or twice as much fresh home-brewed yeast, add a quart of warm (not hot) water, and flour enough to make a thin batter, and let it rise in a warm place all night. This is the sponge.
Next day, put seven quarts of sifted flour into the kneading tray, make a hole in the centre, and pour in the sponge. Then dissolve a bit of volatile salts, and a bit of alum, each the size of a hickory-nut, and finely powdered, in a little cold water, and add it, with a heaping tablespoonful of salt, to the sponge, and also a quart more of blood-warm water.
Work up the flour and wetting to a dough, knead it well, divide it into three or four loaves, prick it with a fork, put it in buttered pans, and let it rise one hour, and then bake it about an hour. Add more flour, or more water, as you find the dough too stiff, or too soft.
A teaspoonful of saleratus can be used instead of the volatile salts and alum, but it is not so good.
Photo by D. Farr, Public Domain
Corporal’s Kitchen-BreadDuring the Civil War, food shortages were common and soldiers needed to be able to carry food for days. Consequently, the food they ate was meant to keep people alive, with a rare delight mixed in here and there. The typical soldier was given a daily ration of meat, bread, and coffee. There was no possibility of refrigeration, so food needed to be transportable and couldn’t spoil easily. If supply lines were cut, soldiers would scavenge or steal what they needed to survive.
The food issue, or ration, was usually meant to last three days while on active campaign and was based on the general staples of meat and bread. Army bread was a flour biscuit called hardtack, re-named "tooth-dullers", "worm castles", and "sheet iron crackers" by the soldiers who ate them. The importance of proper facilities and training, essential for producing good bread, was well perceived in the upper echelons of the United States Army. As Major General Winfield Scott explained: “Bread and soup are the great items of a soldier's diet in every situation: to make them well is an essential part of his instruction.”
For garrisoned troops, the post bakery constituted one means for best implementing such dictums. Albert J. Myer, who later established the United States Army Signal Corps and the United States Weather Service, wrote: “You ought to have seen me one day very sagely teaching my servant how to make bread! I knew about as much about it as you do! So I told him "first, mix a little flour with some water, then, take some Saleratus and mix with it." Well: he did so. Now I began to be ambitious for the mess looked very much like dough, and I thought I would have a "short cake" So I told him to take some lard and stir it up with the rest. Well: he did that & then he put it into a frying pan to bake it. Would you believe it: the thing wouldn't rise!! But there it stayed, sulking and getting flatter and flatter until it settled right down in the pan and turned yellow!! I looked at it and told the man to "poke a fork into it"--I remembered the holes in crackers--but it never stirred, Then I put coals on top of it, then it turned black outside, while the yellow within was beautifully variegated with spots! Then I tried to eat it; but couldn't, I have heard of soda biscuit, this was decidedly alkaline. I dare say very much like one-Heavy! I suppose it would run into bullets like lead! I gave up in disgust; from that day, to the present, I have never essayed breadmaking, but I do when marching succeed in making a queer sort of a wafer out of flour and water--or rather my man does-and it is good to eat.”
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