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Making Pulled Bread
Take a loaf of bread when it is cooled just enough to handle and remove the crust on all sides. Pull the loaf apart in halves with the fingers as lightly as possible. Then tear it into quarters and the quarters into small pieces, and keep on until the entire loaf is in pieces small enough to pack away. Place these in a pan and dry out the moisture in a slow oven. When the bread is dry, increase the heat until the bread is a very delicate amber color. If it is not eaten when perfectly fresh, reheat before serving.
Pulled bread is a technique rather than a formula: a fresh loaf torn by hand and dried until the ragged surfaces crisp. Two things decide whether it works — the heat of the loaf when you tear it, and drying before browning.
- The hinge: tear it warmThe loaf must still be warm enough that the crumb pulls apart in soft, shaggy lumps rather than crumbling. Once fully cold it shatters and you get breadcrumbs. Remove the crust on all sides first, then work with your fingers only.
- Slow oven means 300FSlow oven -- A slow oven is usually taken as somewhere in the 250-325F (120-160C) range; start at the lower end with the pieces in a single loose layer on a sheet pan, and drive the moisture off before you chase colour. Expect it to take some time, depending on how wet the crumb was.
- Then raise the heatFor the "very delicate amber" stage, go up to about 375F (190C) for five to ten minutes and watch it. The torn peaks brown well ahead of the flat sides, so shake the pan once.
- Choose the right loafA plain white sandwich loaf with an open, springy crumb pulls best. Enriched or heavily seeded breads, and dense sourdoughs, tear into hard shards instead of feathery pieces.
- Yield and servingA standard loaf will serve several at table. Pulled bread was customarily offered with soup, salads or cheese in place of crackers or toast.
- Storage and reheatingStore airtight once completely cool. The instruction to reheat before serving is the recipe's own, and a brief spell in a slow oven restores the snap.
Pulled bread appears in British and North American cookbooks through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a genteel alternative to plain toast — the irregular torn surfaces give it far more crisp edge than a sliced piece could. Its place in a milling company's book is no accident: Five Roses was published by Lake of the Woods Milling Company to sell flour, and the White Bread section is arguably the heart of it, so a page showing one more use for the household loaf serves the book's purpose exactly. The same trick survives today in the torn croutons scattered over salads, which rely on the principle that a rough surface dries and browns better than a smooth cut one.