Home › The Principles of Cookery › Bread, Pulled
Bread, Pulled
Pull the soft portion of a new loaf into rough pieces; let them be of equal size, say about two or three inches each way. Dry the pieces in a slow oven or before the fire, till they become a nice light brown colour, and when they are quite crisp they will be ready for use.
Pulled bread is one of the simplest things in the Victorian repertoire and one of the easiest to get wrong: the point is torn, ragged surfaces that crisp into spikes, not neat slices of toast.
- "Slow oven"Read this as roughly 300F (150C), or a little lower; the book gives no temperature. The pieces should dry through rather than colour quickly, and a hotter oven tends to brown the peaks before the centres lose their moisture.
- TimingThe recipe gives none. At around 300F allow perhaps 30 to 45 minutes, turning the pieces once, and judge by the result: they are done when a piece snaps cleanly rather than bending. If the middle is still leathery, give it longer at the same heat instead of raising it.
- The right loafA "new loaf" means one baked that day, still soft enough to tear by hand without crumbling to nothing. A plain white tin or hearth loaf with an open, chewy crumb works best; sandwich bread is too fine and dense, and sourdough with very large holes gives you little to pull.
- Tearing, not cuttingCut the loaf in half, then pull the crumb out in lumps with your fingers, leaving the crust behind. The torn faces are what crisp into the characteristic rough edges, so resist tidying them with a knife.
- Before the fireThe alternative given is a hearth or range front, which is radiant heat from one side. A modern equivalent is the oven with the door slightly ajar, or a very low grill setting with the pieces well back and turned often.
- Yield and servingHalf a large loaf will roughly fill a bread basket. It was commonly served alongside clear soups and with cheese.
- KeepingOnce fully dry it stores for several days in an airtight tin. If it softens, five minutes in a 300F oven brings the crispness back.
Pulled bread belongs to a family of Victorian and Edwardian bread accompaniments "totoast, croutons, sippets, toast Melba "Ethat gave a soft, mild table bread some texture and keeping quality at a time when bread was often baked or bought fresh daily and an oven was left cooling after the main baking. Its usual station was with clear soup or with the cheese course, where the ragged crisp surfaces were preferred to sliced toast; Melba toast, the later and finer idea, is generally credited to Escoffier and named for the singer Nellie Melba.