“Bread: A Global History” with William Rubel

Bread was the most important food for thousands of years—and arguably the food that built the civilization that we enjoy today. Bread has been a food for humans, a food for gods, and a manufactured object carrying multiple layers of cultural meaning. While it is no longer a staple in Europe and North America, bread continues to be very important to us, as the care with which we select the loaf for dinner attests. William Rubel will talk about issues of crust and crumb, of white versus whole-wheat flour, of yeast versus levain, offering historical context for current debates. What is good bread? What bread is best for us? A history of bread is largely a history of attitudes regarding what constitutes the best loaf.

William Rubel is the author of “Bread: A Global History.” It offers a wide ranging revision of what—up to now—have been the accepted facts about the history of bread, as well as a fresh view of bread culture today. In this talk, William Rubel will discuss what he has uncovered about the history of bread from 10,000 years before the invention of agriculture through to the twenty-first century bread revolution currently underway. Using a combination of different research methods, including traditional archival searches, online databases, agricultural records, paintings, contemporary descriptions and other sources, as well as extensive milling and baking experiments in his own kitchen, Rubel has delved deep into the history and culture of this staple food. He will share some insights into his methods as well as some of the historical recipes he has discovered. Moderated by Andrew F. Smith.

Location: Roger Smith Hotel
501 Lexington at 47th Street
New York, NY 10017

Time: 6:30-9:00 pm
Fee: $50, which includes a copy of Bread: A Global History, a four course tasting dinner inspired by the book, and a beverage

Advance registration required. Please note different time and cost. To register: http://bread.eventbrite.com/

This is one of the earliest bread recipes known to be written in English and this is its first publication.

The  recipe is found in a manuscript book mostly written by Sir Hugh Plat but as Malcom Thick points out in his book, Sir Hugh Plat: The Search for Useful Knowledge in Early Modern London, many of the food recipes, including this one, were written by an unknown author with the initials TT. Malcolm Thick believes that this recipe probably dates to the 1550s or 1560s. I am preparing these early manuscript bread recipes for publication. If you would like to be notified when this book will be available for publication please sign up for my mailing list.

Here is a first look at the first recipe in this important collection. The handwriting is  difficult to read. The transcription is by Malcom Thick who, through years of work with the manuscripts of Sir Hugh Plat, has acquired an enviable ability to read what to the rest of us largely looks like scribbles.

The paragraphs are numbered. This is paragraph 1.

1 Take 3 quart of a pound of fine searced flowr: 2 spoonefulls of new barme worke this together wth hotte licore and cover yt close and let it stand and rest one houre & yt wilbe risen enough, then worke yt & breake yt well make small loaves & sett into the hotte oven the space of halfe an hour or lesse

The colon following “flowr” in the first line means “in a ratio of.” In other words, for each 3/4 pounds of flour use so much barm, etc. A clearer transcription.

1 Take [for each] 3 quart of a pound of fine searced flowr: [use] 2 spoonefulls of new barme worke this together wth hotte licore and cover yt close and let it stand and rest one houre & yt wilbe risen enough, then worke yt & breake yt well make small loaves & sett into the hotte oven the space of halfe an hour or lesse

This is a recipe for rolls with a soft white interior, a close crumb, a neutral taste and a crispy crust. I emphasize that these are white rolls — white flour both being assumed for rolls and also implied by the instruction to refine what would have been freshly ground meal to the finest level possible by first sifting out the larger impurities with sieves and then when the flour was already reasonably refined, to sift it through a searce which was the class of sifters that included the finest screens, like those used to sift medicines and gunpowder for fireworks. While cheap flour refined to a whiteness that can be likened to the whiteness of snow was not available to bakers until the 19th century, this is an elite bread made in small quantities and could have been made with very white flour. It is a style of bread that is now out of favor but I think you will find that it is refreshing.

This core recipe makes “small loaves.” It was intended to be scaled up from the 1 pound of dough (4 4-ounce rolls) as needed. The amount of water is not specified but there was a general assumption that bread was made with roughly 50% water (including the yeast) by weight of flour. Thus, in this recipe, 12 ounces of flour is mixed with 6 ounces water, including the 2 spoonfuls of barm. In my most recent batch I needed to use 6 oz of water plus a tablespoon as the 6 oz didn’t quite let me incorporate all the flour.

What does TT mean by “small loaves?” There is reference in a later recipe to choosing between pieces of dough sized 5 ounces or 4 ounces. Thus,  I think that dividing the dough into thirds or quarters is the most likely interpretation for small loaves.

Conceptually, this should be understood as a master recipe. The baker is told how many people are coming to dinner, decides on a roll size, and scales the recipe to fit. I do think, though, that the very small size of this core recipe (1 pound of dough) suggests that it was often used for very small parties. As many of the early bread recipes — meaning recipes published well into the 18th century — call for pecks and even bushels of flour this early very small household-scale recipe offers a healthy reminder that people have always sat down to family-sized meals, or eaten as couples, and been served (if they could afford it)  freshly baked rolls prepared by their staff.

The weight of the spoonful of barm (the yeasty foam that rises to the surface in ale brewing) is given as 12 pennyweight in recipe number 2. There are 1.5 grams in each pennyweight which lets us calculate how much yeast is in the recipe. No mention is made of scoring the rolls before baking but scoring is probably assumed. The warm dough, lack of salt, and plentiful yeast produces a soft sweet tasting bread. Given the date for this recipe, assume that the barm is the yeasty sediment from unhopped ale barm.

This recipe produces a terrific roll. Period diners may have let the rolls sit a day before eating them (they let bread sit) and they may  have chipped off the crispy crust (they to-us insanely thought that bread crust was hard for the stomachs of refined people to eat). This said, this bread has a distinctive character and I hope yo make it.

As these are working papers what I am offering here is a bit of my working out how to present old recipes. For myself, I hate reading redactions that don’t explain where they come from. What I am playing with here is the idea of offering the same recipe with increasingly modern-style revisions — always true to the underlying text — but with increasing levels of the type of recipe detail that we have come to expect.

Here is the recipe offered again but this time written with standard spellings and minor changes in language

For each 3/4 pound of finely sifted flour: 2 spoonfulls or 24 pennyweight of new barm, work this together with hot water and cover it close and let it stand and rest one hour and it will be risen enough, then work it and break it well, make small loaves and set into a hot oven the space of half an hour or less.

Here is a version that sticks close to the original, but is written in a more modern language and includes information that TT assumed his readers knew but is still close enough to the original that it might make more sense to someone familiar with historic practice than to a modern baker.

For  four 4-ounce rolls, place 3/4 pound (12 oz) of unbleached all purpose white flour in a bowl, work together with 38g of new barm together with enough water that is 90F to 110F to a stiff but supple dough with a temperature of around 78F, cover and let stand for one hour, which is enough time for it to rise, and then knead it by hand and further work the dough under a brake or with your feet until it is very smooth and elastic, make into rolls and immediately without proofing set into a hot oven to bake for at most thirty minutes.

And again, but with yet more detail for the modern baker.

Put 12 ounces of freshly ground wheat sifted and bolted to produce white flour into a bowl or use 12 ounces unbleached white flour, preferably purchased in bulk.  Add 2 spoonfuls (38g or a little over 1oz) fresh unhopped ale barm or 7g dried ale yeast (or 7g bread yeast if you can’t buy ale yeast) mixed with 1oz water and 5 oz warm (90F) to hot (100F) water to produce a supple yet stiff dough with a dough temperature of around 78F. Mix, adding small amounts of water if needed. Cover, let stand one hour, which is enough time for it to rise. Work well by hand and then use a brake or a rolling pin to work the dough until it is supple, elastic, and even a little whitened by the working. Let rest for a few minutes and then form into rolls. No mention is made of how to score the rolls so score as you like, or match to a period print or painting, if you know of one. Immediately, without giving the bread time to proof,  put into a hot oven (425 to 500F) and bake for no more than 30 minutes.

Here is the original recipe in baker’s math:

Freshly ground and sifted white flour: 100%
Fresh unhopped ale barm: 10%
Water 90F to 110F: 40%

Here is the recipe with modern ingredients:

Unbleached white flour: 100%
Dried ale yeast: 2%
110F water to hydrate yeast: 20%
Water 90F to 110F: 30%

Angelica candied.

Gather your Angelica in April, cut in lengths, and boil it in water till it becomes tender. Having put it on a sieve to drain, peel it, and dry it in a clean cloth, and to every pound of stalks take a pound of double-refined sugar finely pounded Put your stalks into an earthen pan, and strew the sugar over them. Cover them close, and let them stand two days. Then put it into a preserving-pan, and boil it till it is clear. Then put it into a cullender to drain, strew it pretty thick over with fine powder sugar, lay it on plates, and dry it in a cool oven, or before the fire. The accomplished housekeeper, and universal cook by T Williams, printed for J. Scatcherd, London 1717

Angelica candied.

TAKE it in April, cut it in lengths, and boil it in water till it is tender, then put it on a sieve to drain, then peel it and dry it in a clean cloth, and to every pound of stalks take a pound of doublerefined sugar finely pounded, put your stalks into an earthen pan, and strew the sugar over them; cover them close, and let them stand for two days ; then put it into a preserving-pan, and boil it till it is clear ; then put it into a cullender to drain, strew it pretty thick over with fine powder sugar, lay it on plates, and dry it in a cool oven. The English art of cookery, according to the present practice: being a complete guide to all housekeepers, on a plan entirely new; consisting of thirty-eight chapters, by Richard Briggs. Printed for G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1788

This photograph, taken by Reaktion Books publisher Michael Leaman in Tiblisi, Georgia, very clearly shows that the top of the oven is angled so that breads stuck to its side will receive direct radiant heat from the embers or fire at the bottom of the oven. If you build a tandoor oven I would use this photograph as a model.

The Peruvian potato oven is constructed in situ with sod or weedy soil. If your soil has a high clay content then using clumps of soil that are already bound with roots is more or less equivalent to building a cob or adobe oven. I don’t know how big a dome one can build out of sod but if one doesn’t have a weedy field to dig up I imagine the following experiment: seed a prepared bed of clayey soil large enough to construct the dome of an oven that is three feet (1 meter) in diameter with grass and when the grass is well established shovel clumps to build an oven as illustrated below.

These videos are posted by the Standford University Clay Technologies Lab associated with the Department of Archeology.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HNo41Tu6do

The following video illustrates the loading of the watia oven with potatoes. The text that accompanies the video reads, “Ricardo, Lucho, Luis, and Genaro adding potatoes to the preheated earth ovens. First, they throw the potatoes through the door and onto the hot coals. Then, they open a hole in the top of the dome, collapsing some of the hot dirt clods onto the potatoes below, before adding the rest of the potatoes through the hole. Finally, they collapse the entire structure onto the layers of potatoes, break up the dirt clods and cover the mass with loose dirt. It takes 30-45 minutes to bake the potatoes. Footage by Melissa Chatfield (Clay Technology Lab) (July 2008)”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aABwjRnfIps

httpv://www.youtube.com/user/ClayTechnologyLab

http://yemar.com/FieldJournals/cuzco.asp

This story was told me by Donald “Babu” Zakayo, of Wamba, Kenya in the mid to late 1990s along with several other stories, a few of which I offer here. The edited transcription is mine.

OMAR WAS NOT crazy before. When he was eighteen he was a little bit crazy, but the Muslim took care of him and he was normal again.

This man was selling. This man was a business man. He had to sell his brother’s shop. For so many years he had been selling shop without coming out of the shop.

When he was around thirty years the brother said, “It’s too difficult to stay with this old man without a wife. Lets marry him a wife.”

He was asking, “Do you want a woman?”

“Yes! Why not?”

Well, the Muslim contributed money and he went to Marsabit and got a lady.

The brother returned. “Now, this one, your wife!”

Omar said, “Yes, I like it! Good! beautiful!”

The day of marriage came and they married one another. According to Muslims you don’t sleep with the lady before you marry. They were taken to the home to spend the night. Omar didn’t want to have to sleep with that woman. So he sit down throughout the night until it’s morning.

The next night, he came with a mattress. Instead of going up the bed he laid down his mattress and slept there.

Tomorrow, the woman went the old people. “Oh, this man has never done me anything! What’s wrong with him?”

So, Omar was called, told, “Why don’t you sleep with that woman? Love her?”

He said, “Ya, I love her, she is my wife!”

It was then he was told, “Since she is your wife you should spend the night with her.”

He said, “Yes! Today! I wasn’t feeling well.”

The night came. Omar went the bed. When the woman came he dropped from the bed. He went under the bed!

“Oh!,” the woman said, “what’s wrong with him now?”

She want to call people, “Come and see! Now he is under the bed, not on top of bed! Under the bed! What’s wrong with him?”

The old man come and said, “Omar, come out. Come out! Why are you hiding yourself?”

“No, no, no! I’m not hiding!”

Omar went and put on his suit. He left. He came down here and he climbed that tree you see there. He climbed on top. People went looking for Omar. All the night. Was not around. All the day. Was not around. He migrated from this tree. He went to that one. He climbed up.

For three days.

The fourth day people saw him on top of that tree and they saw him because he was saying, “Hello! Police control from Miali? Control! Can GO AHEAD!”

Allah what wrong?

So they went and told the old man, “The person you are looking for is on top of a tree!”

The old man came. He told Omar, “Climb down!” Omar didn’t even know how to climb down. So he took a ladder and Omar came down slowly slowly at the ground. He was taken home and told, “Your wife is here.”

“NO! I don’t want this one! This one not mine! I don’t want!”

The woman went.

From that day he started being crazy. Crazy. Even still.

This story was told me by Donald “Babu” Zakayo, of Wamba, Kenya in the late 1990s along with several other stories, a few of which I offer here. The edited transcription is mine.

THE OLD MAN was very very old. He had two sons. Only. He was not rich. He was poor.
Yes, he was very poor.

That old man told his two sons, “Now I am about to die. What do you think I owe you now?”

One boy said, “Me, I don’t want you to owe me anything. I don’t want you to owe me anything now, but when I am about fifty, sixty, I want you to bless me to get a lot of wealth.”

The other boy said, “Me, I won’t wait. I want them right now.”

The father ask, “What’s that you want right now?”

He said, “Wealthy.”

Then the father say to that boy, “When I die, when you go to bury me, my finger look upward.”

And the other one was told, “I bless you. When you be old you’ll get money.”

Now, when the old man died they went and buried him. They did that. After a few days they went to see their father’s grave. They saw a lot of tall trees! Oh, it was wonderful!

The boy who said I want wealth right now said, “These are my wealth that father tell me, ‘When I die you bury me my finger look upward.’”

So, he took the trees. He started cutting, making some for the firewood, some for timber. And he sold! The man became rich. The other one never became. He went poor and poor and poor.

The boy who said, “I want mine first, he was real rich, but he could not keep the money he was given because he was too young. He started drinking beer, making loving with ladies, misusing the money. Oh! When he was fifty the wealth is finished! He has spent everything!

Now, the first brother, his wealth is started. But before this wealth is started he tried selling firewood. Nobody would buy from him. He tried to sell the stone. Nobody wanted anything. Everything he tried in his life was impossible, so, one day he went to rest, like right now, where we are resting. It was, I think, two o’clock when he came to rest. When he was asleep he heard some queer voices coming up the tree.

He said, “Oh! What’s that?” When he look up he saw an eagle with a chicken, a small chicken. The eagle wanted to pick the chicken’s head. The eagle dropped down the chicken. When it was almost to take it again the old man went and fetched the little chicken.

The eagle was really angry.

He said, “What can I do with this chicken? This little chicken? Should I kill it?”

He said, “No! I’ll take it home.”

In this world he was left with one little chicken.

He took the little chicken home. He gave it posho to eat. He stayed with the chicken. The chicken became bigger, bigger! When it was ready it went around eating the small worms, and one day, when the old man came in his house, he found an egg.

“Chicken’s egg!” he said, “Oh, wonderful! What is this egg for? Oh, it is from my chicken!”

Tomorrow he came again, and he found two eggs! After one month there were thirty eggs!

When he came out next there were thirty chickens, plus the one he had. There were thirty-one! Oh! The old man was happy!

“Oh! Oh! Oh! I’m really lucky! Why did I get this wealth from?”

The old man kept on looking after his chickens. Now he was very much wealth.

Now all those chickens laid eggs. There were about sixty! Oh! After that they came many many, but it was impossible to look after them. The old man try and sell them but it was impossible because there were too many.

He said, “These chickens are too much. They are even disturbing my house! I don’t have room to sleep because everywhere there are chickens!”

Now, what he did, he went to exchange every ten chickens, one goat. Every ten chickens one goat. He exchanged, but the chickens were still more and more! He came home with goats and still chicks. He looked after the goats, because he had five. And then when they give birth, every one gives two so there were about, how many? There were five, now there were fifteen! Next time there were over forty! The old man was very rich. It was wonderful! But how is this old man getting money from these goats? Cow! Lets take cow!

He exchange with man. Says the man, “You just give us two goats and we give you a cow.”

The cow was weak. Too weak.

The old man thinks, thinks, said, “Yes, yes, I like!” He give two, he add one cow. He give two, he add one cow. “Have more lucky goats! Give me the cows!”

Too many! He couldn’t look after them! So he had to look for a wife. He got one wife. One wife was not enough. Who would take care of the goats? Who would take care of the chickens?

So, he say, “I must have a second wife!”

The brother came to the brother and said, “What’s wrong? Now I am poor and you are rich?”

“Why, you see, when our dad died he asked us, “What do you want?” and you said, ‘I want my money before,” but I said, “Later, when I grow up, let me be wealthy.’”

So, now, the old man came many many rich. Even he couldn’t know his children! He had sixty children and he divided the wealthy, but there was still a lot a lot a lot; even what he wanted.

Babu’s stories center on the life in the Samburu district of Northern Kenya. They are about the villagers of Wamba, and about the Samburu who live in the countryside with their cattle — their goats, cows, sheep, and camels. I first recorded stories by Babu, the owner along with his mother, Rose, of the now defunct Quick Service Hotel in Wamba, Kenya, in 1995. I asked Babu to tell me about a few of the characters I had seen wandering around town. We sat under a tree on the edge of town and he told me the stories of “Omar,” “Goat Woman,” and “Two Sons.” Over the years I have recorded over sixty stories by Babu, a few of which are included here.

Several people have asked me whether they can meet Babu. The answer is, yes, if you go to Wamba you can meet him. Unfortunately, however, Babu ‘s health has been seriously impaired by the local distilled beverage, changaa, and this has negatively affected his previously brilliant ability as a storyteller.

During the height of his powers Babu was famous all around Wamba and even deep into the mountains on the path to Maralal. I used to joke with him that he must be the most popular person around and could easily win an election as MP. I always hope that my friend will regain his narrative skills, but he will first have to wrestle with the devil changaa and win; as so many people who have poisoned themselves with alcohol have learned, it is not so easy to become whole.

The stories that I include here are selected from approximately 60 stories that were mostly recorded over a period of three weeks in the late 1990s. I would like to acknowledge the brilliant transcription of the stories made for me by Sashi Gajendran. I recorded the stories in the field which means wherever we were at the time, whether indoors, sitting on his veranda, or on a walk. Babu was  rarely  situated to optimize the quality of the recording and his English, though fluent, has its eccentricities. Sashi negotiated the technical defects in the recordings and was not phased by Babu’s English.

Inevitably, some of the stories are told more fluently than others and thus the degree of my own editing varies. Babu performed in an improvisational theater group when he was in college. In reading, some of his English makes us associate his prose with the language of young children, such as, “the piece of the hand falled down.” This is the prejudice we bring to the text and it can get in the way of finding the power in his stories. Aspects of his prose require dramatic presentation. “The man felt very very very very pain” reads poorly, but when Babu performs it he uses the repetition to wind you up for the explosive pain that hits the reader with the shock of it probably about the same time it hit the poor thief as there was likely a delay in his comprehending what had just happened to him.

Okay.. the man put his hand inside.  The one inside took the panga, panga is a sword.  He chopped the hand, he chopped his hand, he cut down and the piece of the hand falled down.  The man felt very very very pain.  He put out his hand and he ran away, but he never wanted anybody to know that he is the one.  Because you know, the oozing bra… blood coming out of his hand, the oozing.  Now, we have the dots, so he did’nt want anybody to know where… where about he is going to, so he went to the toilet.  He took out his shirt, he tied the place which was cut, he went into the toilet and he put the half .. the half hand inside the toilet so that the blood will do what…will go into the toilet.  Instead of going to the hospital, he was crazy.  He went to the toilet and slept there, letting the blood ooze inside the toilet so that nobody will know why he is about.  Now, the blood oozed, all the blood he had went into the toilet.

I keep changing my mind regarding how to best represent his stories. I had hoped to have Babu’s help with this but when I returned with the transcribed stories his mental health had deteriorated to such an extent that he couldn’t help and unfortunately, on more recent visits, his mental health has only deteriorated further. When it was possible to let Babu’s exact words speak for themselves, I have let them. When, for the sake of translating an oral tale to writing its been necessary to edit his words I have done that. Where I go back and forth is with the stories that need heavy editing as they offer multiple options for the editor. I’ve tried to  remain true to what I perceive to be Babu’s vision. I include the raw transcription when there is one  so that  you can make up you own mind  and in any case, so you can superimpose his words over mine.