Home › The Principles of Cookery › Pulled Bread
Pulled Bread
Take the crust off a newly-baked loaf while it is still warm. Pull it into rough pieces lightly and quickly with the fingers of both hands, and bake the bread in a slow oven until lightly browned and crisp.
Three sentences of instruction, and the whole thing turns on the state of the loaf when you start. Warm bread pulls into ragged, open shreds; cold bread tears into dense lumps that dry rather than crisp.
- The hinge: pull it warmThe loaf should still be warm from the oven, as the recipe specifies. Once it has cooled the crumb sets and you get blunt chunks instead of the feathery, uneven pieces that give pulled bread its point.
- "A slow oven"300F, or a little below. The aim is to dry the pieces through to the centre while they colour only faintly; a hotter oven browns the ragged edges before the inside has given up its moisture.
- TimingThe original gives none. Reckon on 25-40 minutes depending on the size of the pieces, turning them once. They are done when a piece snaps cleanly rather than bending.
- The bread to useA plain white tin loaf or a lean country loaf, both with an open crumb. Enriched or heavily seeded breads brown too fast and go leathery instead of brittle. Modern sandwich bread with a tight, soft crumb will not shred usefully at all.
- What to do with the crustThe recipe has you remove it and says nothing more. Dry it alongside in the same oven and crush it for browned crumbs, which the same period used for coating cutlets and dressing gratins.
- Yield and keepingThe original gives no quantity. Cooled completely and kept in a tin it stays crisp for several days; refresh in a 300F oven for five minutes if it softens.
- ServingTraditionally sent up with soup or with cheese in place of toast or a dinner roll, and it is still better than croutons with a smooth soup.
Pulled bread belongs to the class of Victorian dishes that exist to use up something in the house at the right moment rather than to be shopped for. It demonstrates a technique rather than a dish: what an oven does to bread when the object is drying rather than baking, and the difference between rusk, toast and crisped crumb. It reflects a household in which bread was baked or delivered daily and a warm loaf was an ordinary occurrence, not an occasion. The ragged surface catches more heat than a flat slice of toast, and it was commonly served with soup or with cheese at the end of dinner in place of a biscuit.