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Rice Bread
Rice when made into bread is usually mixed with some other grain. The following are modes in which it has been so employed with advantage. 1.--The Americans make bread with it in this manner. The rice is thoroughly cleansed by pouring water upon it and stirring it, the water being changed occasionally until all impurities are washed away. The water is then drawn off, and the rice, while yet damp, is bruised in a mortar; it is then dried and passed through a hair sieve. The flour thus obtained is generally kneaded with a small quantity of Indian-corn meal, and is boiled until it has acquired a thickish consistency; sometimes boiled potatoes are added. The mass is fermented either with leaven or yeast, and the dough is then baked in pans. The bread thus prepared is reputed to be light, wholesome, and agreeable to the palate. 2.--Let a quarter of a pound of rice be boiled until it be quite soft; leave it to drain on the back part of a sieve, and when cool, mix with it three-quarters of a pound of wheat-flour, a spoonful of yeast, and two ounces of salt. Let it stand for three hours to ferment, then knead it very thoroughly, and roll it in as much wheaten flour as will give to the exterior sufficient consistency to allow of its being conveniently deposited in the oven. After baking an hour and a quarter it will form a loaf of good white bread weighing one pound fourteen ounces. 3.--To one peck of wheat-flour add half a peck of rice-flour; let them be mixed and kneaded with salt, yeast, and warm water, in the usual manner. Divide the mass, when fermented and duly risen, into eight loaves, and bake them. 4.--Boil a peck of rice till it becomes soft; let it stand all night in a pan, and it will be found greatly distended. Let a peck of potatoes be boiled, skinned, and mashed to a pulp. Knead them while hot with the rice, and a peck of wheat-flour; then add a sufficient quantity of yeast and salt, and leave the dough to ferment; the mass may be divided into loaves, and baked in the usual manner.
Four separate methods for stretching wheat flour with rice, given in the compressed reference style of Cassell's "Principles" chapter. Numbers 2 and 3 are the practical ones for a home oven; 1 and 4 are described at farm or bakehouse scale.
- The salt in method 2 is wrongThe salt in method 2 looks wrong — two ounces of salt to twelve ounces of wheat flour is many times what bread can carry and would badly retard the yeast as well as being inedible. It may be a misprint for a much smaller unit such as drachms, but the text as printed says ounces, and the correct proportion for a loaf of this size is a fraction of that.
- Rice flour has no glutenThis is the hinge of all four versions. Rice contributes starch and moisture but nothing that can build structure, so keep it to roughly a third or less of the total flour, as methods 2 and 3 do. Push it higher and the loaf will be dense and crumbly no matter how well you knead.
- A peckA dry measure of two gallons. A peck of wheat flour runs about 12-14 lb, so method 3 uses something like 18 lb of combined flour for its eight loaves and method 4 well over 30 lb of total material. Divide by eight or ten for a domestic batch.
- Indian-corn mealPlain cornmeal. In method 1 it is boiled with the rice flour into a thick porridge before fermenting, which gelatinises the starch; a cooked-grain porridge of this kind generally makes for a moister crumb that keeps better, though the recipe itself claims only that the bread is light and wholesome.
- A spoonful of yeastThis means liquid barm or brewer's yeast, considerably weaker than anything sold now. For method 2's 12 oz of flour use about 1 teaspoon of instant yeast, or roughly 1/4 oz fresh.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because none could be. Bake at 425F for the first 15 minutes, then 375F for the rest; a loaf of 1 lb 14 oz is done at an internal temperature of 205-210F, which will come well before the stated hour and a quarter.
- Cool the rice firstMethod 2 says to mix the rice in only when cool, and for good reason: hot rice or hot mashed potato kneaded straight into a yeasted dough will kill the yeast. Method 4 has the potato kneaded "while hot" with the rice and flour, but the yeast is added only afterwards.
- Drain the rice hardBoiled rice holds a great deal of water, and any excess goes straight into the dough as unmeasured hydration. Spread it on a sieve or tray until the surface looks dry, then expect to adjust the flour by feel rather than by the stated weight.
- YieldMethod 2 gives a single loaf of about 1 lb 14 oz, roughly a standard 2 lb tin. The others are batch quantities for a household baking a week's supply at once.
Bread of this kind belongs to the long tradition of "economy" or "mixed" breads, in which cooks extended expensive wheat flour with whatever cheaper starch was to hand: rice, potato, barley, oat or bean meal. The American method described first is consistent with practice in the rice-growing lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia, where rice was plentiful and wheat had to be shipped in, and where rice bread and rice batter breads remain a regional tradition, though the text itself does not say so; the milling by mortar and hair sieve is what a household did before rice flour could simply be bought. The potato versions echo the wheat shortages of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when flour substitutes are often said to have been promoted by parliamentary and agricultural bodies, though the measures and the bodies involved varied, and the persistence of such formulas in a late-Victorian dictionary of cookery suggests they were still regarded as useful knowledge rather than curiosities.