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Bread, Unfermented
Take two ounces of carbonate of soda, one ounce and a quarter of tartaric acid, and a piece of sal-ammoniac, about the size of a hazel-nut, powdered. Let these be well mixed in a perfectly dry state. Then blend them with half a peck of wheaten flour--or one-third of barley flour may be used--and about two ounces of salt. Make a deep hole in the middle of the flour so prepared, and pour in as much cold water as will make the dough somewhat less stiff than bread dough is usually made. Mix it briskly and well. Make this quantity into three loaves. Put them immediately into a quick oven, and let them bake for about one hour and ten minutes. The exact time will depend, of course, upon the heat of the oven; but a very little practice will determine this. Sweet, palatable, nutritious bread can be made cheaply by carefully following this recipe.
This is a chemically leavened bread from the era before packaged baking powder, and it is scaled for a large household. The proportions of soda to acid are worth checking before you commit seven pounds of flour to it.
- Half a peck of flourFlour was reckoned at 14 lb to the peck, so this is about 7 lb, or roughly 25 cups, divided into three loaves carrying about 2 1/3 lb of flour apiece -- heavier again once the water is in. To test the method, divide everything by eight and make one loaf.
- The soda and acid are not balancedTwo ounces of bicarbonate of soda needs about 1.8 oz of tartaric acid to neutralise it fully; at 1.25 oz the soda is in clear excess, which gives a soapy, faintly metallic taste and a yellowish crumb. Raise the tartaric acid or cut the soda if you want a clean flavour.
- Sal-ammoniacAmmonium chloride. Only a pinch is called for; with soda present it will react to release some gas, but its contribution here is minor. It is inessential, and the sal ammoniac sold for soldering is not food grade; leave it out unless you have a food-grade source.
- Work fastTartaric acid is the quickest of the baking acids and starts reacting the moment the water goes in. The instruction to put the loaves in "immediately" is the hinge of the recipe: any delay between mixing and baking and the gas is spent before the crumb sets.
- Mix briskly, but not longThis is a soda dough, not a yeast dough. Bring it together with a light hand as you would a scone or Irish soda bread; extended kneading develops gluten you have no rising time to use and toughens the loaf.
- Quick ovenRoughly 400-425F. For loaves this size, start at that heat for the first 15 minutes and drop to about 375F for the remainder, or the crust will be black long before the centre is done. An internal temperature of 205-210F is a better guide than the stated hour and ten minutes.
- Barley flourSubstituting a third barley flour, as suggested, gives a denser, sweeter, faster-staling loaf, since barley contributes almost no gluten. Barley was the cheaper grain, so economy is the likely reason, though the recipe does not say.
- KeepingUnfermented bread goes stale noticeably faster than yeast bread. Eat it the day it is made, or slice and toast it after.
Unfermented bread was a cause as much as a recipe in nineteenth-century Britain. Sanitary and temperance-minded reformers objected to yeast on the grounds that fermentation wasted flour by converting some of its starch into alcohol and gas, and suspected the brewers' barm then commonly used by bakers of carrying adulterants; chemical leavening promised a loaf made in an hour, in the home, from ingredients the cook could see. The commercial answer came from the same impulse, with Alfred Bird's baking powder work in the 1840s, Henry Jones's patented self-raising flour of 1845, and John Dauglish's aerated bread process of the following decade, which gave London the Aerated Bread Company teashops. A recipe like this one, giving raw soda, tartaric acid and sal-ammoniac to be weighed and mixed dry at home, is the household version of the same idea, from the years before a tin of ready-blended baking powder made the arithmetic somebody else's problem.