Copyright © 1998 Patricia Bunning Stevens.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-8214-1232-9
Chapter One
BREADS
Grain made civilization possible. No group of people has ever gone directly from a hunting and gathering economy to cities and empires and the more complicated way of life that goes with them. First there must be agriculture and especially the cultivation of grains, crops that can be stored to provide sustenance for all in every season of the year, stored even to provide for years of bad harvests and the possibility of famine. Wheat and barley flourished in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, and along the Indus river, millet and rice in China, and maize or Indian corn in the Americas; without these vital crops there could have been no progress.
Porridge or gruel may be older than bread, at least in some parts of the world, and if it was not too appetizing it did at least fill hungry bellies. Milling stones made possible the production of coarse meal or flour, and then bread baking began. The earliest breads were hearth cakes, unleavened and baked on hot stones set in the embers of the fire. The best-known example today of such an ancient bread might be the tortilla; though its name is Spanish (little cake), its ancestry is Indian.
Bread raised by yeast was first made in Egypt. Spores of wild yeast, naturally present in air, readily contaminate wet dough, and the first raised breads were the product of the resultant spontaneous fermentation. Real progress occurred with the discovery that a piece of old dough could be saved to leaven the new dough, a technique still used in many parts of the world. Later, beer brewers found that the sediment from the fermentation process, which contains yeast, also worked as a leavening agent. Although Egyptian peasants no doubt continued to bake coarse hearth breads long after the advent of yeast-risen breads, the wealthy, by 2000 B.C., had professional bakers to serve them raised breads.
The Greeks and Romans were slow to learn the art of bread baking. The Greeks grew mostly barley and baked it in flat, unleavened loaves, while the Romans ignored the vast potential of bread in the early days of their republic, preferring instead to make a simple porridge or mush called pulmentum. The obvious forerunner of polenta, pulmentum was made first from crushed millet, then from barley, then from an early form of wheat called far. Sternly plain and practical, perhaps pulmentum suited the austere farmers and soldiers of the first centuries.
When milling methods improved, the crushed grain was made into farina, genuine flour. The Romans probably learned about leavened bread from the Egyptians, but in time the most highly prized yeast was a cultivated type imported from Gaul, where it was used to make beer. Professional bakers began to appear in Italy around 170 B.C.
The problem of feeding the proverbial Roman mob led to the introduction of bread doles. The number of recipients on the dole roster rose from 40,000 in 72 B.C. to 200,000 by the time of Caesar and to an estimated 300,000 in 275 A.D. Huge shipments of wheat came regularly from North Africa. The large rotary mills turned by donkeys, oxen, or slaves were superseded by immense water-driven mills, some of which were capable of producing an estimated twenty-eight tons of flour in a ten-hour day. Public bakeries did the baking, for the poor lived in such hideous tenements as to make cooking at home almost impossible. When the poet Juvenal accused the Romans of wanting nothing but "Bread and circuses!" he was speaking the literal truth.
To the north the barbarians still depended on oats and rye, raised in clearings in the woods. With their simple hearthcakes our story begins.
BANNOCKS OR SCONES
4 servings
The Celts emerge, as the Victorians would have said, from the "mists of antiquity." They are the first people north of the Mediterranean whom we know by name. Before them Western Europe must be left to the archaeologists, who can identify people only by burial customs, battle axes, or pottery styles.
The Celts are a branch of the great family we call Indo-European, for strictly speaking, Celtic is a linguistic term; a Celt is someone who speaks a Celtic language. Nevertheless, the ancient writers noted their height, their fair skin, and their red-golden hair and described them as a brawling, sprawling race of barbarians who inhabited a vast area between the Alps and the North Sea. Their languages today can be found only on the fringes of Europe, in western Ireland, northern Scotland, Wales, and Brittany.
The Celts, wherever they settled, divided the year into four quarters, with four festivals to mark their beginnings. February 1 and August 1 were relatively minor feasts, while May 1 and November 1 were the most sacred days of the year. (Curiously, these dates were called witches' sabbaths in the Middle Ages, proof that European witchcraft, where it really existed, was simply the last dying gasp of European paganism.)
To commemorate this division of the year the Celts invented the sun wheel, a circle divided into four parts, quite similar to the equally ancient swastika. This symbol remains in the Celtic Cross and can also be detected in the hearth breads of the British Isles.
The oldest of these breads is probably the bannock. Before there were bannocks made of wheat flour there were bannocks made of oats and barley, and special bannocks for each of the traditional feasts. The bannock was mixed quickly, always stirring to the right, as the sun was thought to move, and put on a griddle at the hearth. It was always round, for women in primitive times knew nothing of loaf pans, and always cut into four quarters, forming the ancient symbol. In time such hearth breads also came to be called scones and today the words are almost interchangeable.
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/8 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter or margarine
1/2 cup buttermilk
1. Preheat oven to 425°F.
2. In a large mixing bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Cut in butter with pastry blender or two knives until mixture resembles fine crumbs. 3. Add buttermilk. Mix only until the dry ingredients are moistened. Gather the dough into a ball and press so it holds together.
4. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead quickly twelve times. Pat the dough into a circle 1/2 inch thick. Cut the dough into four quarters. Place 1 inch apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake 12-15 minutes, or until tops are browned. Serve hot, with butter or margarine, and jam.
IRISH SODA BREAD
1 round loaf
In Ireland a hearth bread similar to bannocks is called Irish Soda Bread. It, too, is always marked with a deep cross cut into the dough before it is baked. Modern Irish cooks rationalize the custom as intended to ensure even distribution of heat, or to make the loaf easier to break apart, but really it is the old pagan symbol of long, long ago.
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
1/2 cup raisins (optional)
1 teaspoon caraway seeds (optional)
3/4 cup buttermilk
1. Preheat oven to 875°F. In a large mixing bowl combine flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Cut in butter with pastry blender or two knives until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in raisins, caraway seeds, and just enough buttermilk so dough leaves side of bowl.
2. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth, 1-2 minutes. Shape into round loaf about 6 1/2 inches in diameter. Place on greased cookie sheet.
3. With a floured knife, cut a cross about 1/2 inch deep through top of loaf. Bake until golden brown, 35-45 minutes. Brush with butter or margarine, softened, if desired.
Note: It is not advisable to try to bake Irish Soda Bread on a griddle. In historic times Irish women have always baked soda bread in a heavy, three-legged iron pot called a bastable. Glowing turf (peat) sods are put on top of the close-fitting cover while baking, making the bastable an improvised oven.
HOT CROSS BUNS
24 buns
Hot Cross Buns, too, recall Britain's ancient past. They once must have been part of one of the Celtic spring festivals, for in historic times they were baked only on Good Friday. Well into the nineteenth century hundreds of poor children and frail elderly people would converge on the bakeries at dawn, eager to spend the morning hours selling the buns from large, covered baskets. Their cry was so familiar it became a nursery rhyme,
Hot cross buns!
Hot cross buns!
One a penny, two a penny,
Hot cross buns!
If you have no daughters,
Give them to your sons.
The common folk carefully dried a bun and saved it, for the belief persisted that even a few crumbs from a bread baked on Good Friday would cure any ailment. The crosses, originally cut into the dough, are now usually made with vanilla icing.
1 package active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water (105-115°F)
1 cup lukewarm milk (scalded, then cooled)
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 egg
1 egg yolk
3 3/4-4 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup dried currants
1 egg white, slightly beaten
1 tablespoon water
1. In a large mixing bowl dissolve yeast in warm water. Stir in milk, sugar, shortening, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg, egg yolk, and 2 cups of flour. Beat on low speed until smooth. Stir in currants and enough remaining flour to make dough easy to handle.
2. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Place in greased bowl; turn greased side up. Cover; let rise in warm place until double, about 1 1/2 hours. (Dough has doubled when two fingers, pressed into it, leave an indentation.)
3. Punch down dough; divide into 4 equal parts. Cut each part into 6 equal pieces. Shape each piece into a ball; place about 2 inches apart on greased cookie sheets. Cover: let rise until double, about 40 minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 575°F. Mix egg white and 1 tablespoon water; brush tops of buns with egg white mixture. Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Cool. Make crosses on buns with icing.
Note: For vanilla icing, mix 1 cup confectioners' sugar and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla with enough cream or milk to give a spreading consistency.