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Bread, Wheat and Rice
Beat one pound and a half of well-boiled rice to a paste, and mix it with seven pounds of fine wheaten flour while still warm; take a pint and a half of warm milk and water, four ounces of salt, and four table-spoonfuls of yeast, put them into the centre of the flour, make a thin batter, cover the top with flour, and leave it to rise for an hour and a half; then make it into a dough with more milk and water, and after kneading and forming it into loaves, set it by the fire for another hour to rise before being put into the oven. Bake from one and a half to two hours. Probable cost, 1s. 10d. Sufficient for four loaves.
A sponge-and-dough rice bread scaled for a Victorian household oven: seven pounds of flour makes four large loaves. Most of it translates directly, but the salt, the yeast and the baking time all need attention.
- The hinge: mix the rice while warmBoiled rice beaten to a paste and worked into the flour while still warm gelatinises the starch and lets it hold water it would not otherwise absorb. That is the whole point of the loaf — it stays moist and keeps for days. Cold, stiff rice will stay in lumps and give you a speckled crumb instead.
- Scale it downSeven pounds of flour is roughly 3.2 kg, about 25 cups. Quartering the whole recipe gives one loaf: 1 lb 12 oz flour, 6 oz cooked rice, about 7 1/2 fl oz of the milk-and-water sponge liquid plus more for the dough.
- The salt is highFour ounces of salt to seven pounds of flour is about 3.5 per cent of the flour weight, well above the modern 1.8-2 per cent. Two ounces is closer to current taste and will not slow the rise as much.
- YeastFour tablespoonfuls indicates a wet yeast, most likely barm or a similar liquid ferment, less predictable than anything sold today. For the full quantity use about 1 oz fresh yeast or 2 sachets (14 g) of instant dried; for a single loaf, roughly 1 teaspoon of instant.
- Milk and waterA pint and a half is 30 fl oz in imperial measure, a little under 4 US cups. This is only the sponge liquid — the recipe openly calls for "more milk and water" at the dough stage, so expect to add another pint or so by feel. Half milk, half water is the usual reading.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. In a modern oven, start at 425F for the first fifteen minutes to get oven spring, then drop to 375F for the remainder.
- Baking timeAn hour and a half to two hours suits four large loaves of around three pounds apiece. In a modern oven a 2 lb loaf is done in 40-50 minutes; bake to an internal temperature of 200-210F rather than to the clock.
- Rising timesThe stated hour and a half for the sponge and an hour for the shaped loaves assume a kitchen kept warm by the range. In an ordinary room both stages will take longer — judge by a sponge that is domed and bubbling, and shaped loaves that spring back slowly when pressed.
Rice bread belongs to a long line of "extended" loaves in British cookery, where potato, rice, barley or bean flour was worked into wheat dough to stretch expensive white flour. The practice intensified during the grain shortages of the later eighteenth century, and the promotion of substitutes by Parliament and various agricultural societies belongs chiefly to the scarcities of 1795-1801; it never entirely went away. By the time Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery appeared in the 1870s, rice bread was still being made, with a soft, close, slow-staling crumb, useful in a household that baked once or twice a week. The costing of 1s 10d for four loaves is given as a matter of course.