Bread: A Problem for English Tea in a Foreign Land
Whenever I plan a tea, the problem of bread arises. Bread is central to English tea. You need a good old-fashioned English loaf for slicing thick for hot toast or thin for bread and butter or sandwiches. I suspect it’s almost impossible to get such a loaf now even in England.
Good white bread does not just mean a crusty peasant loaf. It means a fine-textured loaf for slicing as well. My family were picky about bread. My grandmother was the daughter of the village baker. Although she would dearly have loved to have had a more distinguished parentage, it meant that she knew a lot about good bread.
And it was a village where bread mattered.
I can’t even remember when I was first taken a hundred yards down the village street to see the bread stones sunk into the wall that surrounded the parish church. The important ones are 1800 when bread cost 3 shillings and fourpence a gallon and 1801 when it had jumped to 3 shillings and tenpence, in other words from 40 pence to 46 pence, a fifteen per cent rise in one year.
The village had always been a feisty one and the act of mounting this stone in the wall in protest would have been seen as close to rebellion. All Europe was shaking in its boots fearing that they might suffer a revolution like that of the French.
Well, that’s a long way from a nice tea. I compromised with a walnut bread instead of white bread to go with sliced vegetables, a bought baguette sliced as a base for (oh what a fall from authenticity) open-faced ham sandwiches, little home made oval rolls for bridge rolls stuffed with egg, and (jump off the bridge) Brazilian cassava cheese rolls instead of cheese scones.
A couple of thoughts:
– How widespread was white bread in England (before ‘modern times’)
– The wall is interesting; can you explain more what it is and what it is for?
– Are you hinting about possible bread riots, that never took place at that time?
A belated reply to your comments, Diana. White wheaten bread became the universal bread of England during the course of the eighteenth century. Scotland continued with its traditional oats much longer, Wales with barley, and of course the US did not become a wheaten bread country until the end of the nineteenth century, having maize instead as the main breadstuff.
The wall is the supporting wall of the village churchyard (the cemetery surrounding the church essentially) which overhangs the main village street which presumably thanks to centuries of traffic is now about six feet below the churchyard.
The village in question had always been an uppity one. From the fourteenth century on, there were a series of law suits and protests aimed at maintaining villagers’ rights to collect dead wood for fuel in the hunting grounds of the lord of the manor/landlord/noble/owner of the estate. Unlike all the surrounding villages, they succeeded. This right was last a seriously important benefit in World War II when fuel was at a premium. One of my earliest memories is of villagers with prams or little hand trolleys special to the village trudging the mile and a half up to the woods to collect the fallen branches.
So whoever used the wall as a noticeboard to put up the relative prices of wheat in 1800 and 1801 was not just simply recording a change in price for the benefit of posterity. This must have been a protest.
And yes it does hint at possible bread riots. This is only a few years after the French Revolution which, whatever its ultimate causes, was widely associated with the people of Paris rioting for white bread (the peasants outside Paris could not possibly have afforded it).
And it’s interesting because it does occur in the country–bread riots generally occurred in cities. And that suggests that although the lot of the Wiltshire (that’s the county) laborer was pretty dire in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, they were not as downtrodden as rural laborers often are.
I had never given much thought to bread machine bread. But when Irene and I spent some time with our friend Mabel in Kendall (Lake District), I changed my mind. She would set her timer on her bread machine and we would wake up to the aroma of a baked loaf, just in time for breakfast, and then for sandwiches for our rambles. I took her recipe home with me and will give it to you. I think you’ll be pleased. Since then, I have become a better bread baker. I used my bread machine (well, I have three now as I pick one up whenever one turns up at a garage sale…you never know when a friend may want one) for many years for dough mixing only. I used either Mabel’s recipe of the oatmeal bread recipe on the back of the King Arthur bread flour package (also excellent) when I needed a loaf bread for get-togethers. These days, I am just using the no-knead bread recipe as I enjoy the convenience and flavor. Here is Mabel’s recipe for a two pound loaf:
1 tsp yeast
500 grams bread flour
1 tbs sugar
25 grams butter
2 tbs milk powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
350 ml water
I use Saf yeast, unsalted butter and Kosher salt all with the intention of reducing the salt content. My setting is the standard white bread 2 lb setting with medium crust.
PS: I’m on facebook if you’d like to catch some of my food photographs from Oaxaca.
PPS: I’m teaching a mole class in a couple of weeks and I”ve made your Scientific American article mandatory reading prior to the class!
PPPS: The no-knead recipe that I use calls for 3 cups of bread flour, 1 5/8 cups water, 2 tsp of salt and 1/4 tsp of yeast and then the slow ferment for 24 hours. One of the reasons, I’m convinced that Mexican bolillos look great but have little flavor is that they are produced quickly for rapid sale and consumption. Hence, no slow ferment for the flavors to build.
Hi Jay, good to hear from you. I shall certainly check out your photographs of Oaxaca. And I’m delighted you are using my mole article.
And thanks for the bread recipe, another one to try. Like you I am a big fan of the bread machine and use it every week (though I usually do final rising and baking in tins, not in the machine). Although I make various kinds of bread that are much to my liking, I have never managed to produce a loaf that is good for English-style bread and butter or sandwiches. For that you need a bread that you are hard pressed to find in England now–it’s fine-texture, a little moist, and stands up to thin slicing and spreading. I just gave up and avoided sandwiches for my tea.
errata:
“Mabel’s bread recipe OR the oatmeal bread recipe…”
There are records of bread riots being suppressed by the Wiltshire Yeomanry (in Devizes for example), so the locals were most likely closely watched for any hint of trouble.
Interesting Adam. May be some day I will get the chance to do a bit of research on this.
What with ‘Grovely, Grovely, Grovely and All Groveley’ etc, it sounds like an interesting village. Where there any special foods associated with the festival/event?
It was an interesting village. There were no special foods associated with the event though. Too bad.