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Barm Crust
723. Of the various kinds of paste, barm crust is the plainest, and the most easily made; but it is not very generally approved of in flavour. 724. To Make Barm Crust very Plain. -Mix together one pound of flour, a quarter of a pound of butter or lard, one table-spoonful of barm, and a little salt, with milk enough to make a paste. Let it stand in a moderately warm place till it rises, then roll and use as a crust, baking as quickly after as possible.
Another Barm Crust (sufficient for three Tarts). - Take one pound of flour, three ounces of butter (or an ounce and a half of clarified dripping, and an ounce and a half of lard), the white and yolk of an egg well beaten, and one table-spoonful of yeast. Warm the butter in half a pint of new milk, let it stand till only lukewarm; mix all up together, and let the leaven stand to rise. Then roll the paste, cover the pies, and put them into the oven directly. (If you suspect the barm to be bitter, blow the ashes off a red-hot coal, and put it in.)
Two versions of a yeast-raised pie crust, one lean and one enriched with egg. Both behave more like a soft bread dough than shortcrust, and both depend on getting the pastry into the oven before the yeast exhausts itself.
- BarmBarm is the yeast-laden froth skimmed from fermenting ale, sold or begged from a brewer. Its strength varied a great deal, so no reliable equivalent in modern dried yeast can be given; cooks judged by how the dough rose rather than by measure.
- The bitter-barm trickDropping a red-hot coal into suspect barm was a common attempt to strip hop bitterness. It does nothing reliable and adds ash to your dough; if the yeast smells sharp or sour, replace it.
- Weights in cupsOne pound of flour is about 3½ cups; a quarter pound of butter is one stick (115 g); three ounces is about 6 tablespoons. Half a pint in an English book of this period is 10 fl oz, not 8.
- New milkFresh whole milk, unskimmed and not soured. Warm the butter into it and let it fall to blood heat before it meets the yeast, as the text says — hot milk will kill the leaven.
- DrippingDripping, usually beef, saved from a roast. Lard alone works, or an equal weight of butter, though the crust will be slightly less short.
- Rising"A moderately warm place" means comfortably warm rather than hot, and the dough wants perhaps an hour, until visibly puffed rather than doubled. Overproved barm paste collapses in the oven and bakes heavy.
- "Baking as quickly after as possible"This is the hinge, and it concerns speed rather than oven heat: once rolled and laid over the fruit, the crust must go straight in. Standing on a wet filling makes it sodden and lets the gas escape. The book gives no oven temperature; a hot oven sets it best.
- YieldThe second version is headed "sufficient for three Tarts" of ordinary pie-plate size. The first uses the same pound of flour, so should go about as far.
Before packaged yeast, domestic bakers depended on barm — the living froth lifted off a brewer's fermenting vat — which is why bread, buns and this sort of raised paste were bound up with the local brewery's schedule and quality. Hopped beer left the barm bitter, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century household books carry remedies for it: rinsing with water, stirring in flour, or the red-hot coal recommended here, all of them traditional rather than tested. Barm crust sits at the plainest end of the English pastry range, cheaper in fat than shortcrust and puff and useful for covering fruit in a household that already had leaven working; the compiler's blunt admission that it "is not very generally approved of in flavour" suggests it was a thrift measure more than a preference, and it fell out of use as reliable compressed and dried yeast became available.