Questions on 18th Century British/American Military Bread

[Artificer]

This question comes from having seen descriptions/drawings of some of the field ovens that British and British American Armies used in garrison or IOW at semi-permanent and permanent camp sites up through the FIW and at least in the case of the British Army - through the AWI and later. In the more permanent camps the field ovens were earthen made and resembling a wheel with the central fire and chimney in the hub and covered trenches like the spokes of a wheel going out to open ends where the bread was baked. It looks like they used stones at the ends to form the oven. Descriptions mention they baked about every three days.

OK, so I have been wondering what the bread was like and what it would have looked like. Accounts are not very descriptive on these points. I do not believe this was all what we would call Hard Tack or Ship’s Biscuit, because of the many accounts noting “Fresh Bread” was baked, though I could be mistaken. I imagine individual loaves were made to issue to each Soldier and the size loaf came from the One Pound of Flour daily allotted to each Soldier. Or was the “Fresh Bread” just that they baked Hard Tack/Ship’s Biscuit more frequently?

Here is a list of the daily ration for each British Soldier during the FIW and I assume that was also the daily ration for British Americans serving with the British Army, though I may be mistaken about that.

Bread or flour 1 pound
Meat or
Pork 1 pound
9 1/7 ounce
Butter 6/7 ounce
Peas 3/7 pint
Rice or oatmeal 11/7 pint


My problem is I know almost nothing about baking. The daily ration accounts do not seem to include yeast or anything to make the bread rise or is this something I do not understand about baking bread?

There are also descriptions of the Army buying fresh bread from local bakers at times they could not get enough flour. I don’t know if that was Hard Tack/Ship’s Biscuit or if it was a more conventional leavened bread?

My intent with these questions is to find out more on conventional bread than Hard Tack/Ship’s Biscuit that was authentic to the period and was or could have been issued to Soldiers. Also, along with this, to see if there are baked breads that would be available from some modern bakeries that would be authentic to the period?

Any assistance would be sincerely appreciated.

Gus

 

[Artificer]

I may not have worded the above very well, so let me try this:

"My intent with these questions is to find out more on conventional bread (rather than/instead of Hard Tack/Ship’s Biscuit) that was authentic to the period and was or could have been issued to Soldiers."

Gus

 

[George]

A good place to get a general overview of bread in the 18th century is with a series of YouTube videos by Townsend. Very well done and informative, there are seven of them, each about 10 minutes. Civilian, and the series starts with ships biscuit, but you can learn a lot from them. Much of it could be applied to a military situation, baking is baking. I've baked a few of his recipes including breads, they work, they are good, and I find them fascinating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyjcJUGuFVg&list=PLD1F368B5848077C3

Other than the series, he also does several episodes on soldier's fare....
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=soldier+jas.+townsend

....a couple on making and using a clay oven to bake bread and other things.

There is a little book about food at Fort Niagara 1726-1812, The King's Bread 2d Rising, which is pretty well done, but I don't know that it would have what you are looking for.

Spence

 

[Artificer]

Spence,

Thank you. I have already watched a couple of the videos and they helped immensely.

Since I do not bake bread, I wondered where the yeast/leavening agent may have come from and the one video showed how to make the leavening agent from ale. Small beer and ale was issued to the Soldiers, so there was a way to make leavened bread for them after all.

I will definitely look into the sources you mentioned and again, thank you very much.

Gus

 

[coloradoclyde]

This might help too.....

[youtube]/1ioxF9OUjms[/youtube]

 

[George]

Since I do not bake bread, I wondered where the yeast/leavening agent may have come from and the one video showed how to make the leavening agent from ale. Small beer and ale was issued to the Soldiers, so there was a way to make leavened bread for them after all.

It is a little different than that, I think, Gus. Townsend used ale to make his imitation barm in order to give an authentic taste, not that there was yeast in the ale. Barm is the foam which collects on the top of fermenting beer, which does contain yeast, and people in the 18th century got that from the brewer to use in making bread. Townsend put modern dry yeast in his mix. In the 18th century people hadn't figured out what yeast was, that it was alive, but they knew how to use it, propagate it and keep it active. In the day, the ale may have had live yeast in it so that soldiers could have used it in the way you suggest, I don't know, but not today. I'm not a beer drinker or brewer, but isn't commercial beer pasteurized now?

This episode is appropriate for your query, if you haven't seen it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dtBjqIu5W8

Here's a recipe for making and keeping a continuous supply of liquid yeast, as it would have been in 18th century. She would have started the process with barm from the brewer.

Mrs. Rundell’s Yeast [1807]
Thicken two quarts of water with fine flour, about three spoonfuls; boil half an hour, sweeten with near half a pound of brown sugar; when near cold put into it four spoonfuls of fresh yeast in a jug, shake it well together and let it stand one day to ferment near the fire without being covered. There will be a thin liquor on the top, which must be poured off; shake the remainder and cork it up for use. Take always four spoonfuls of the old to ferment the next quantity, keeping it always in succession.

Spence

.

 

[George]

Gus, here's a blurb from _Army and Empire: British Soldiers on the American Frontier, 1758-1775_, by Michael Norman McConnell.

"At smaller forts bread was probably baked in the barracks, though at larger posts and at places like Pittsburgh, Detroit, or Pensacola, ovens run by soldier-bakers could turn out bread rations for whole garrisons. Field armies carried portable iron ovens with them in the field; garrison ovens were normally made of brick and stone like those at Fort Niagara, dating from 1762, and at Fort Ste. Frederic, whose French-built ovens continued to serve British troops at nearby Fort Crown Point."

There are photos of the bake house at Fort Niagara on the web.

Spence

 

[Tallswife]

Sourdough is also another option. Its been in use since the Egyptian days, and would have been known to the British. It travels well, is sustainable, can be made in large quantities for daily baking, and no other leavening agent would be needed. It also made a lighter dough than other leavening agents would make.

sourdough history

BTW todays beer can be used for baking quite successfully

Beer bread
3C self rising flour
3T sugar
one bottle of beer.

Mix well, it makes a pretty wet dough. Pour into a greased pan and bake for about 45 mins at 400 degrees.

 

[Tallswife]

I found this on the Colonial Williamsburg site that may help answer your questions too.

French bread

And this...
18th C baking

Or this describing basically sourdough..
bread without barm

 

[Coot]

Mrs Coot is familiar with wood fired bake ovens and helped bake bread for a military camp at Colonial Williamsburg a few years ago. She & the baker used the beehive oven next to the Magazine. The baker provided the yeast which was a wild yeast that the baker had collected/captured. A search for "wild yeast" will describe several methods & uses. In town or at a fort where a large bake oven was available, the bread was most likely a conventional loaf that we would recognize today. On the march or at sea, hardtack was likely probable (but not necessarily popular). Bake ovens were (and are) often described by the number of loaves that they would hold. For their most efficient use, the baker would fire the oven once in the morning & then use it to bake a load of bread (which requires a high heat) then a load of cakes or pies as a second load as the oven slowly cooled, then perhaps cookies and lastly say a pot or two of beans which could be left overnight.

 

[Artificer]

This reply is to everyone who answered,

I VERY much appreciate your posts. I am finding them extremely informative. Thank you all.

I'm working a show this weekend, so have not yet had the time to answer individually, but look foreword to doing so later on this evening or tomorrow.

Gus

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Sourdough is also another option. Its been in use since the Egyptian days,

Beware the conjecture and supposition of archaeologists who are not familiar with the trades which they uncover. :redface:

As far as I've been able to read and learn...., they may have used a "sponge", but it is assumed that the Egyptians had what we call sourdough simply because they baked about every three or four days..., so the sponge "must have soured", but do they consume large quantities of sourdough today? Did they suddenly forget how to make the stuff somewhere in the past two millennia and switched to what we call pita? When did they change bread styles to the styles of today? I've kept sponge on my counter for several days between bakings, hoping it would sour as it had in the past..., no luck. :wink:

GUS...,

The British Army in North America had a brewer marching with it. He was in charge of brewing large quantities of spruce beer to keep away the scurvy, so you have at least one source for yeast in the field. Soldiers were forbidden to cut down spruce trees for fuel or other reasons without the brewer's permission.

Tallswife is correct that a bread sponge could be used to bake the bread for the men.

Hardtack was a specific contract item, and was made from the lowest quality flour. I think the soldier's flour was the next higher form and probably had some malted grain added when being ground into flour. This would facilitate baking without adding any food source for the yeast.

Why ship and issue flour (which could easily spoil and often did) to the men to make ship's biscuit when it would be simpler (and far cheaper) to have it made into ship's biscuit and then shipped? Conclusion, they were making leavened bread.

In addition to yeast, which could be cultivated from the air as it was for their beer...and that they had soldiers experienced in baking as well as portable ovens as Spence showed, you can also make Salt-rising bread. Since this was introduced to the colonies by Scots-Irish immigrants, it came from Britain in the first place.

Now..., I have never seen any references to the smell that would come from salt-rising bread remarked upon in early sources, so I am betting this wasn't the bread of the British Army.

So you have Jas Townsend & Son demonstrating it is pretty simple, if you have earth with enough clay, to make cob for an earth oven, and you yourself have knowledge of the British military oven for a fixed fortification.

Cob was a pretty common building material..., ***** a cabin, make walls in a half-timbered home, etc.

A simple iron pot with a lid may be used just like a Dutch Oven for bread and other baked items (I have such a pot and it does work). Even a hole in a hill if the earth has enough clay, can be fired like a clay oven, and a lidded iron pot or lidded clay pot will bake bread in such a location.

Leavened dough and baking it into bread isn't that hard for them at a fixed location or in the field. Their only real problem appears to be getting enough time to do it before moving/marching.

LD

 

[coloradoclyde]

On a related side note:

Today I made an oven simply by stacking bricks or pavers into the shape of an oven....It had plenty of gaps and cracks in it...
I heated it for an hour and a half and then put some dough in it and closed up the entrance with more bricks....
35 minutes later I had a very nice loaf of bread....

 

[Artificer]

CC,

Thanks for posting the video. I wondered what they meant when referring to “a or the sponge” when making bread.

Spence,
Thanks for the further info on Townsend making the ale into the barm by using dry yeast. I missed the dry yeast part when I first viewed that video.

Also from the blurb you mentioned from “Army and Empire: British Soldiers on the American Frontier, 1758-1775_, by Michael Norman McConnell.”

“Field armies carried portable iron ovens with them in the field”

I have seen repro’s of such ovens and one original one on display at Valley Forge, PA, yet I have to sheepishly admit I did not realize they used them for baking the Soldiers’ Bread in the field. This was a real “Duh” moment for me. I had previously and incorrectly assumed those ovens were used for higher ranking Officers’ Messes.

Really appreciate the info, Gents.

Gus

 

[Artificer]

Thank you for the links and information.

Back in the early 1960's, our Den Mother for my Cub Scout Den had a "Sourdough Starter" that she claimed had been in her family for over 100 years. I really did not know what she meant and anything that old seemed to me it would have been inedible, but I never found out more back then.

Gus

 

[Artificer]

Thank you for that info.

I never realized they started using a hot oven for bread, then pies, then cookies and finally baked beans overnight.

I have read at least one or two accounts of civilians around Boston eating baked beans for breakfast in the years leading up to the AWI. Now those accounts make sense. Heretofore I could not imagine heating up an oven first thing in the morning to bake beans, but with your information, I now see that was not what they did.

Thank you,
Gus

 

[Artificer]

LD,

I was hoping you would chime in on this question. I really enjoyed the information you provided.

I don't believe I have ever eaten Ship's Biscuit, but have read many accounts of it becoming infested with weevils on long ships voyages. I have eaten a lot of hardtack and not only does it "get old, quick," but with the lack of Dentist technology, I assume many of the older soldiers could only eat it by pounding it into small chunks and adding it to the boiled stews the British Army so dearly believed was the only way to cook food in a healthy manner. Fresh bread would have been much easier for men with bad teeth to eat.

I also did not realize a British Regiment had at least one Brewer to brew the Spruce Beer, though I probably should have realized it.

I was talking to my Sister who has baked bread before and is our family historian. Come to find out we have an ancestor who was a brewer in PA in the early 19th century. She did not realize that people got their yeast from brewers, but mentioned there are accounts of our ancestor selling "the dross" from the brewing process to local farmers who used it to get the fermentation process going quicker for silage. Now she is going back to see if there is any information on our Ancestor selling Barm or Yeast as well.

Thanks again,
Gus

 

[Tallswife]

Thank you for the links and information.

Back in the early 1960's, our Den Mother for my Cub Scout Den had a "Sourdough Starter" that she claimed had been in her family for over 100 years. I really did not know what she meant and anything that old seemed to me it would have been inedible, but I never found out more back then.

Gus

Hehehe! I have starter that came out of the CA gold rush, and is still in use today. Be glad to send you some if you like.

I'm happy to answer any sourdough questions you might have, I bake with it quite often here.

I do wish I had a cob oven for baking. Its on the "to-do"list.

 

[Artificer]

I absolutely love sourdough bread, rolls and pancakes; but I am afraid I would never use a sourdough starter even with that historic of an origin. That does not diminish my appreciation of your kind offer, though, Dear Lady. Thank you.

Gus

 

[tenngun]

Whys that? Does it get to infected with other yeast?