In 2020, many of us spent a great majority of our time at home. This gave us the opportunity to get creative and explore new hobbies. One such hobby that became a viral sensation, plastered across social media, food blogs, and television news outlets, was that of baking bread. Bread has been around in some form for nearly as long as human civilization, although before industrialization, it was a means to survive, not just a fun challenge for the amateur baker. So here is a crumb of history on bread and what this glutinous baked good was like in Colonial America.
To start with the basics, bread is made up of 3 simple ingredients: Flour, water, and a leavening agent. Typically salt and some kind of sweetening, like sugar or honey, are also added. Everything else is extra.
Wheat flour was (and still is) the most common ingredient used for bread. Wheat quickly became a desirable crop in Colonial America. We can infer wheat was grown on Lewis family land based on documentation of family members paying for goods in wheat. Biological remains in the ground found by archaeologists at Ferry Farm suggest wheat was planted there too. Wheat and other crops were planted, cared for, and harvested by enslaved laborers on both plantations. Wheat specifically was a difficult crop to care for, requiring vast knowledge and careful timing to produce a fruitful harvest. Wheat is a form of grass, usually not well digested or particularly nutritious to humans. When wheat is ground into flour, put through the fermentation process of breadmaking, and baked, it becomes far more digestible, nutritious, and caloric for people to eat. For most of Europe’s history, bread was about half of calorie intake for poorer classes, and wheat still makes up about 20% of people’s diets today.
In the early 18th century, sieves made of fine Chinese silk that allowed for separating the bran from the wheat seed made whiter flour easier to obtain. Although the bran is the most nutritious part of wheat, it quickly became associated with the poor and lower classes in many Western European cultures. White bread was a sign of wealth. This led to bakers putting additives like alum, lime, and chalk into bread to make it whiter. Despite British Parliament passing laws regulating ingredients allowed in bread, it continued to be an ongoing issue throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.[1] Even with contemporary knowledge about the benefits of whole grains, 70% of bread baked today is white, based on this century old principle of white flour’s superiority.[2]
By the time Colonial America comes into the picture, bread is engrained into life. This is so much so that most 18th century cookbooks do not have bread recipes in them as it is assumed everyone already knows how to make basic table bread. That’s right, Hannah Glasse does not have a simple bread recipe in The Art of Cookery. It is just the three simple ingredients worked into a dough with the hands that is set aside to rise, then baked until a strong crust forms, after all. This is something foreign to us in a time when sliced bread is $1.99 in the supermarket. There is no need for us to spend hours baking bread ourselves in this modern age, but when you made bread every week or every day, it was something as simple as getting dressed or brushing our teeth is now.
In urban areas, bakers were trained in the art of breadmaking, but in rural places, it was left to the individual household to make their own bread. Trained or not, the science behind breadmaking on a molecular level was not understood until the 19th century. What they did know was that they needed a leavening, or rising, agent in their bread to ensure it rose properly. Leavened bread came into existence in Egypt about 6,000 years ago. Bread could be made without a rising agent, but it would be a completely different texture. In the 18th century, leavening agents came from a few different places. Barm is the frothy substance on the top of beer after production and is the perfect rising agent for bread, making connections between bakers and brewers in urban areas imperative. Also, just leaving dough to sit for a day or two to collect the bacteria in the air, from the kneader’s hands, and from the dough bowl with leftover dough bits can also be enough to leaven a batch of dough.[3] This method of collecting bacteria from the dough’s surroundings is reminiscent of creating a sourdough starter.
Loaves of bread were placed into a bake oven, a large cast iron Dutch oven, or on a hot hearth. Regulating temperature was up to the expertise of the cook or baker, there was no temperature dial like we have on our modern oven. And despite this, when the temperature is kept controlled, the baking process takes about the same amount of time as it does in a modern oven. The physical baking process is about the same both ways.
Whether you prefer white or whole wheat bread, I hope this entry has given you a grain of insight on the importance of bread throughout history. Breaking the bread down in this article may make it sound simple, but I will say from experience that getting the dough smooth, the crust tender, and the crumb coat correct is no easy task. Put that loaf over coals from the hearth and you add a whole new element of challenge. Reflect on the enslaved cook at Kenmore or Ferry Farm who was responsible for not only making bread, but three meals a day, along with planning and prepping ingredients for future meals. Cooking and baking in an 18th century kitchen were physically and mentally challenging, making it one of many difficult jobs for those enslaved on southern plantations. I suggest everyone try baking a loaf for themselves. To me, it is a task that humanizes food production and reminds us of its delicate nature now and throughout time.
Allison Ellis
Manager of Public Programs
[1] Federation of Baking. “Fact Sheet No. 9 – the History of Bread.” Last modified 2011. https://www.fob.uk.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/FS-9-History-of-Bread.pdf.
[2] Pollen, Michael. Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation. New York: Penguin Books, 2014.
[3] Edlin, A. A Treatise on the Art of Bread-making. London: J/ Wright, St. John’s Square for Vernor and Hood Poultry, 1805.
Lives & Legacies 