Bread Baking Experiment

[YoungCampaigner]

Hello All,

Over the past few weeks, I have taken an interest in Civil War army bakeries as well as small baking ovens that would have been set up in permanent camps. Last weekend, I built a small-scale brick oven in my backyard to try out baking in it. There were a few flaws in my recipe (I used a period recipe that called for four eggs, but I was using modern eggs, which are a whole lot bigger than 19th century eggs) and the bread turned out like an evil omelette. Plus, parts of the oven could not stand up to the high heat. I am currently chronicalling the whole thing on my website, http://www.theyoungcampaigner.com.
Any suggestions from people who have done this before would be helpful. I need help!

[Silas]

Re: Bread Baking Experiment

That's one ugly oven you created. Same for the bread omelette. I congratulate you on the horrible creations of both. Keep on it, and you'll do fine. Not sure if your question for assistance is related to the oven or the bread, so try this title : Camp Fires and Camp Cooking ; or Culinary Hints for the Soldier : including Receipt for Making Bread in the "Portable Field Oven" Furnished by the Subsistence Department. It's a nine page pdf and can be a somewhat slow download, but it's a handy pamphlet. It even includes tips on making coffee. Hint : boil the water first!

Here's another title : How to Feed an Army (1901). Don't let the date fool you. The information derives directly from a request in 1865 about the feeding the army. Not sure if Chawls has seen this book yet. If not, I think we've lost him for the summer. Lots of facts, figures, diagrams and reports to satisfy the most discriminating bean counter.

Here's another : The Army Ration : how to diminish its weight and bulk, secure economy in its administration, avoid waste, and increase the comfort, efficiency, and mobility of troops by Even Norton Horsford (1864).

Seems to me there was a fantastic article with many color photographs in a copy of CWH from a year or two ago about earthen ovens and bread.

How about some recipes? Try this : The American Home Cook Book (1864).

There's a world of information out there just waiting to be discovered. Thanks to technology, much of it is as close as your fingertips.

[john duffer]

Re: Bread Baking Experiment

http://www.westernindependentgrays.org/images.html

Mr Matt Woodburn baked bread for the battalion at the 2006 WIG event at Fort Granger, he should be an expert. There are pictures of his ovens at the link.

[Vuhginyuh]

Re: Bread Baking Experiment

William, that oven is a thing of beauty. You get my Post of the Month nomination... heck make that the year. GOOD JOB

[gweninla]

Re: Bread Baking Experiment

Good job! Keep experimenting.

I've made the Sunset Oven, the use directions might serve you well. More of a Californio/horno style.

http://www.sunset.com/sunset/garden/article/0,20633,690891,00.html

and for a first recipe, with any style oven, would suggest corn bread. The recipe on the box. 1 egg :)

[Charles Heath]

Re: Bread Baking Experiment

William, I second Garrison's nominations.

If you go to the Winter 1864 2006 photographs, you should find a version Craig & Coldfoot built for feeding approximately 60 men enough bread for several meals. I have it on good account that even Erasmus Hopkins enjoyed the bread baked in this permanent oven. I don't believe they baked any bread from this oven at the 2008 rendition of Winter 1864, although it was test fired.

A few miles from you in Falmouth is an unmortared (loose brick) oven in the commissary area of the small winter camp behind D.P. Newton's White Oak Museum. Since the work day when this little oven was constructed (in about 30 minutes), D.P. has turned it into a trash incinerator, but it baked a few biscuits that could be confused with a small herd of feral albino hockey pucks. That oven was very simple in that it was a brick floor and walls, a piece of sheet metal for a lentil, and another layer of brick from the top. Twig fires were made inside and on the top, and when the brick was hot enough the ashes raked out, dough inserted, and the front bricked up. It baked very fast and reasonably even.

Matt's tri-hole oven at Fort Granger was a thing of great beauty. Due to the outpouring from the clouds above, it may have been the first reproduction self-cleaning bake oven since the time of the Civil War. The proliferation of baking and bakers in season 2006 may suggest it was the year of the bake oven.

[YoungCampaigner]

Re: Bread Baking Experiment

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm going to rebuild my oven (it collapsed this morning from being too charred on the inside) and try it again!

[rkg]

Re: Bread Baking Experiment

William,

I worked on the detail at Fort Grainger baking bread in the oven, it did a good job. IMHO the bread we let rise a little before putting in the oven seemed to bake the best. Good luck in your next venture into bread.

[BrianHicks]

Re: Bread Baking Experiment

Here are a few of the Ft. Granger bread Oven Pics:

[KarinTimour]

Re: Bread Baking Experiment

Dear William:

Welcome to the world of baking! Be very aware that if you get too good at this, you'll be in high demand for future events. You'd be surprised the number of people who don't get good homemade bread on a regular basis.

No question you've got the creativity and "out of the box" thinking that will help you a lot in campaigning.

With regard to getting better at it, I've got a few suggestions:

1. You've got two independent techniques you're working on simultaneously -- each of which can be both simple and challenging: oven building and bread baking.

2. I know zip about oven building.

3. Period bread ovens made of brick would usually have the fire built in the oven, then when the bricks were hot enough, have the fire raked out and the bread put in.

4. You've already discovered one of the issues central to period cooking -- the size, weight and quality of modern raw ingredients can vary a great deal from period ones.

5. Bread baking takes few tools and few ingredients -- once you know how.

6. And that's the rub -- period recipes often assume that the cook comes with quite a bit of expertise already. I've seen few period bread recipes which go into the kind of detail that would be needed by someone who has never made bread before. They usually just have the "variables" that are particular to that recipe, and skimp on the description of the different steps of bread baking.

7. Terms like "make a sponge," "proof," "punch down," and "when the bread looks like it has completed rising for the second time," all have very specific meanings. It's not hard at all to get some really good printed instructions and read your way through making great bread. The first time I made bread I did it to instructions in Seventeen magazine. The internet or a good modern cook book (can be found in the library if you don't have one that details bread baking at home) can help you here. Make bread a few times in your modern oven, using a modern recipe and measured ingredients. You are training your hands, eyes and nose how to judge what the bread should look like at each stage. Once you've made bread to a modern recipe at home a few times, pull out a period recipe and you'll see a lot of steps they left out of the period instructions.

8. If you are planning to made bread with whole wheat flour, be careful. This flour goes rancid very quickly, because the oils, bran and wheat germ from the milling spoil quickly. Buy it in small quantities (like 2 lb bags) from a store where the stock turns over quickly, and check the expiration date. The milling company will have an expiration date that is far too far away -- at this moment I forget how long you have from the point that it's milled before it goes bad -- but I think it's a matter of weeks, not months. If you are going to use yeast cakes or packets, check their expiration dates. Some stores don't have much turnover in this area, and may have yeast that is too old to use. Very frustrating when your yeast is dead right at the start.

Baking is a lot of fun, and once you've tasted really good bread, well, it will spoil you for store-bought. Then you can expand to cornbread, biscuits, cake, etc. Can make you very popular!

Hope that's helpful,
Karin Timour
Period Knitting -- Socks, Sleeping Hats, Balaclavas
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: Ktimour@aol.com

[YoungCampaigner]

Re: Bread Baking Experiment

Great suggestions! Thank you very much for all of the posts. I can't wait to try it out again. Were loaves generally just placed directly on the floor of the oven during cooking or were they sometimes cooked in pans?

[KarinTimour]

Re: Bread Baking Experiment

Both are period correct. If you are just shaping the loaves and putting them on the floor of the oven, you might want to scatter cornmeal or semolina flour on the floor of the oven. That will keep the bread from sticking to the bottom of the oven in the first stages of baking. Ash can also serve this purpose. If you want to have bread with less soot on it, after you move the fire out, quickly sweep out the ash, then scatter your cornmeal or semolina.

You don't want the loaves to stick to the floor of the oven, because there might be hotter or cooler spots in the oven. If the bread isn't sticking to the floor of the oven, you can move them around in the hot oven using a peel. A peel is a flat piece of wood on a long handle, sort of like a "bread shovel." When putting loaves or other baked goods in a large bake oven, you put the loaves on the peel on a floured peel, then shake them off onto the floor of the oven.

Larger scale bakeries -- like an organized Corps bakery, used regular bread pans, often formed in blocks of several loaves-- like four loaves across, and five loaves long. There was a huge bakery at Cold Harbor that operated 24 hours a day. In the first stage of baking, the yeast would continue to live, and the loaf would rapidly rise to overtop the bread pans. Because the pans were wired or bolted together, the top of the loaves (above the edge of the pan) would stick and bake together, into one "block" of loaves, each of which was clearly separate in the part of the loaf which had been in the pan.

They baked the bread, then just dumped them out of the pans in a block. The bread was then transported to the troops in a block of 20 or so loaves, and then were torn apart into individual loaves on the unit level.

There is a great photo of two or three soldiers with several large blocks of this bread stacked under a fly. It was stored under the fly with animal fodder. If memory serves it was sort of "bread on one side, fodder stacked on the other side" of the space under the fly. I think you could find that picture if you did a search in the National Archives pictures under "bread" or "bakery."

Karin Timour
Period Knitting -- Socks, Sleeping Hats, Balaclavas
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: Ktimour@aol.com

[Silver Spring Mess]

Re: Bread Baking Experiment

Suggestions on doing this again