Robert May's "To Make French Bread the Best Way"

 

Robert May's "To Make French Bread the Best Way"

I must smile whenever I reference "bread", because there is a great debate about what differentiates bread from pastry especially in period. I am also reminded of a rather tart blog post that referenced my interpretation of "rastons" calling me out publicly on the fact that I had "incorrectly" referred to rastons as a kind of bread.  Here we have the root of what I like to call “The Great Debate" which at its epicenter is this: all pastries are bread, but not all breads are pastries. The difference between a pastry and a bread (aside from purpose) is fat content. 

At a minimum pastry’s are made of flour, water, salt and fat in different proportions. The leavening agents for most pastries are steam and air except for brioche, danish and croissants which use yeast. The minimal ingredients for bread any bread are flour and liquid. The leavening agent being mostly yeast. 

Bread is defined as a food made from flour and water (also known as a paste). And there you have it, the answer to "The Great Debate".  All pastries are a kind of bread, but not all breads are pastry.  

To make French Bread the best way.

Take a gallon of fine flour, and a pint of good new ale barm or yeast, and put it to the flour, with the whites of six new laid eggs well beaten in a dish, and mixt with the barm in the middle of the flour, also three spoonfuls of fine salt; then warm some milk and fair water, and put to it, and make it up pretty stiff, being well wrought and worked up, cover it in a boul or tray with a warm cloth till your oven be hot; then make it up either in rouls, or fashion it in little wooden dishes and bake it, being baked in a quick oven, chip it hot. 

Interpreted Recipe 

1 cup lukewarm water

2 tbsp. dry yeast (or 2 cakes fresh)

1 cup lukewarm milk

1 tbsp. salt

1 egg

6 cups sifted unbleached flour

 Pour water and milk into a mixing bowl mix in the egg, 1 cup flour and then add the yeast.  Allow to sit until a sponge has formed.  Once the sponge has formed sprinkle in the remaining flour until it has all absorbed.  Turn the dough out onto a flat surface and knead it for approximately five minutes.  Put into a cleaned warmed bowl and allow to rise until doubled in size. 

When the dough has doubled in size, turn it onto a floured work surface and knead into a ball. Divide the ball into 2, 4, 8 or more equal parts. Knead each into a small ball, and with the palm of your hand flatten the ball.  Cut around the circumference of the ball halfway between the top and bottom.  Place each roll approximately two inches apart on a floured cookie sheet and allow to rise until doubled in size.  Bake at 400 degrees for approximately 20 minutes.  

I take a couple of shortcuts when I make this bread and a few liberties.  I add an equal amount of honey or sugar (1 tbsp) to the original sponge and then add the salt in when I add the additional flour.  I find that the addition of the honey makes the bread sweet and a little more interesting in flavor.  You may notice that the bread is also darker than expected.  The honey was very dark, and 1/3 of my flour was whole wheat for this loaf.  

 

An Onion Pottage, The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May

An Onion Pottage

Fry good store of slic’t onions, then have a pipkin of boiling liquor over the fire, when the liquor bils put in the fryed onions, butter and all, with pepper and salt: being well stewed together, serve in on sops of French bread.

Interpreted Recipe

3 tbsp. olive oil
½ pound of onions peeled and sliced 1/4 “thick
4 cups vegetable stock
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper

Melt butter in a large skillet, add sliced onions and sauté for about 10 minutes or until golden brown stirring occasionally. Bring broth to boil, add onions and cook over medium heat for ten minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Put toasted bread in individual bowls, pour broth over the onions and serve immediately.

To Marinate Salmon to Be Eaten Cold The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May

To Marinate Salmon to Be Eaten Cold

Take a Salmon, cut it into joles and rands, & fry them in good sweet sallet oyl or clarified butter, then set them by in a charger, and have some white or claret-wine, & wine vinegar as much as will cover it, put the wine & vinegar into a pipkin with all manner of sweet herbs bound up in a bundle as rosemary, thyme, sweet marjoram, parsly winter-savory, bay-leaves, sorrel, and sage, as much of one as the other, large mace, slic’t ginger, gross pepper, slic’t nutmeg, whole cloves, and salt; being well boil’d together, pour it on the fish, spices and all, being cold, then lay on slic’t lemons, and lemon-peel, and cover it up close; so keep it for present spending, and serve it hot or cold with the same liquor it is soust in, with the spices, herbs, and lemons on it.

If to keep long, pack it up in a vessel that will but just hold it, put to it no lemons nor herbs, only bay-leaves; if it be well packed, it will keep as long as sturgeon, but then it must not be splatted, but cut round ways through chine and all.

To Marinate Salmon to be Eaten Cold

1 ½ -2 pounds salmon
4 tbsp. butter or oil
¼ c minced parsley
1 tsp. fresh grated ginger
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. peppercorns
4 cloves
1 bay leaf
½ nutme g broken up
1 large piece whole mace
¼ tsp . each thyme, rosemary, marjoram, savory and sage
6 tbsp. wine vinegar
1 ¼ cup wine
1 lemon sliced thin and seeded

Rinse the salmon under cold water and pat dry with a towel. Cut into squares. Melt the butter in a pan, or heat the oil and saute the fish until it is cooked.

Heat the herbs, spices, vinegar and wine in a pot until it boils. Lower heat and cook for ten minutes.

Layer the salmon in a deep bowl and pour the hot marinade over the salmon. Arrange the lemon slices over the top, pushing a few down at the sides of the bowl. Cover and set aside until the marinade has cooled.

Refrigerate until needed. Serve cold with some of the marinade poured over it.

To Broil Bace, The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May

To Broil Bace, The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May 

Take a bace, draw it and wash it clean, broil it with the scales on, or without the scales, and lay it in a dish with some good sallet oyl, wine-vinegar, salt, some sprigs of rosemary, tyme, and parsley, then heat the gridiron and lay on the fish, broil it on a soft fire on the embers, and baste it with the sauce it was steeped in, being broild serve it in a clean warm dish with the sauce it was steeped in, and the herbs on it, and about the dish, cast on salt, and so serve it with slices of orange, lemon , or barberries.


Or broil it in butter and venegar with herbs as above-said and make sauce with beaten butter and vinegar.

To Broil Bass

2 pound fresh water bass
½ cup white wine vinegar
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp thyme and rosemary
¼ c minced parsley
4 tbsp butter melted
½ lemon sliced thin

Make a marinade of the vinegar, salt, thyme, rosemary and parsley. Place the fish in a shallow baking dish and pour the marinade over it. Marinate for at least half an hour. Sprinkle half the butter over the fish and bake at 350 degrees until cooked. Garnish and serve.