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RICE-FLOUR BREAD (another way)
Take one quart of rice-flour, make it into a stiff pap by wetting it with hot water; not so hot, however, as to make it lumpy. When the flour is well wet, add boiling water, say two or three quarts; stir continually till it boils; when it cools, put in half a pint of yeast and a little salt; knead in as much wheat-flour as will make it a proper dough for bread; put it to rise, and when risen add a little more wheat-flour. Let it stand for half an hour in a warm place, then bake.
A wheat-extender loaf built on a cooked rice-starch porridge. The quantities are given by volume and the wheat flour is left entirely to the cook's judgement, so treat the rice stage as fixed and the rest as a working method.
- Let the pap cool before the yeastThis is the hinge. Boiled rice paste holds heat for a long time, and yeast begins to suffer above about 120F and is killed close to 140F. Cool the mixture to blood heat, around 100F, before adding it.
- A quart of rice flourBy volume that is roughly 1 lb 4 oz to 1 lb 8 oz, or about 580-700 g depending on whether the quart is read as US or imperial. Rice flour packs differently from wheat, so weigh rather than scoop if you want a repeatable loaf.
- Two or three quarts of boiling waterThat is a very loose ratio, and at the upper end you get thin gruel rather than pap. Add the water in stages and stop when the cooked paste is the consistency of stiff porridge that just falls from the spoon.
- Half a pint of yeastMost likely a liquid barm or home-raised yeast, far weaker and wetter than anything sold today. One sachet of dried yeast, about 2 1/4 teaspoons, or 15-20 g fresh yeast, will do the work; account for the missing half-pint of liquid in the dough.
- "As much wheat-flour as will make it a proper dough"Expect to work in a great deal, well in excess of the weight of the rice flour, because the gelatinised starch carries so much water. The dough should be soft and slightly tacky, never dry.
- Stir continually till it boilsRice starch catches and scorches readily, and lumps that form here never disperse. Use a heavy pan and a flat-ended wooden spoon that reaches the corners.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Bake at 425F for the first 15 minutes, then drop to 375F for a further 30-40 minutes; the loaf is done at an internal temperature of about 200F.
- Half an hour in a warm placeThis is the final proof after the second flouring, not the full rise. Judge it by the dough, which should be visibly swollen and spring back slowly when pressed.
- Yield and keepingThe full quantity is a large batch, several loaves rather than one or two; scale down if you only want a single loaf. The cooked rice starch holds moisture, so the bread stays soft for several days but stales into something quite dense; it toasts well.
Rice-flour bread appears in nineteenth-century English cookery books as one of a family of "mixed breads" that stretched wheat with cheaper or more available starches: potato, barley, oatmeal, Indian meal, rice. One version is followed directly by "another way," which suggests the compilers regarded it as a practical economy rather than a curiosity. The technique here, boiling the starch to a pap before mixing it with wheat flour, is essential rather than decorative, since rice flour has no gluten and contributes nothing to structure; gelatinising it first lets it hold water and keeps the crumb from turning to sand. Similar rice breads were long associated with the rice-growing Carolinas and with periods when wheat was dear.