Bread in some form has graced the human diet since the Neolithic period (approximately 8500 BC). Evidence suggests that leavened bread (as we most usually see it today) probably hit the proverbial table during the era of early Egyptian culture. There are as many kinds of bread as there are nationalities in the world today. Each recipe has evolved based on the agricultural materials available. The families that landed in the Talbot Settlement would have brought their own recipes with them and adapted those to the local crops and resources.
Leavening of bread dough was facilitated in a number of ways. Baking was usually done on a schedule and a bit of dough saved from the week before could be used as a “starter” for the next week’s batch. Cakes of compressed dry yeast could be ordered from back home. Mixed and unbaked dough could be left out overnight to rise with the help of airborne yeast spores.
The living conditions of the very first settlers would have been quite primitive. This recipe for griddle bread could have worked well in those kinds of surroundings as the ingredients would have been easy to bring along and no oven would be needed to cook the bread. The leavening in this recipe occurs as the soda reacts with the lactic acid in the milk to form carbon dioxide bubbles thus causing the dough to rise.
Ingredients
1 pound flour
1 tablespoon sugar (sugar could have been available in pressed cones)
½ teaspoon soda
Pinch of salt
Sour milk or buttermilk as needed
Knead ingredients into a stiff loaf and then flatten out on a floured griddle. Cook slowly on top of a low fire, 1/2 of an hour each side or until done.
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