FoodMuseum - The Bakery

PRM Inv. nr: 1900.13.2

Bread Stamp

Iceland 1876

Notes about bread stamps from Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir:

There are several bread stamps in Icelandic museums (some of them can be seen here: http://sarpur.is/Leit.aspx… ) but this is probably the largest and most elaborately carved that I've seen. The text is a verse (read clockwise from the top inwards), rhymed and allitterated:

Sar að grennist sultar naud

sjerhver madur romi.

Þetta vort a bordi braud

blessi herran frómi.

Artal 1876 JD

meaning something like:

The sore pain of hunger should diminish

so every man should say (pray).

This bread that is on our table

may the good Lord bless it.

Year 1876 JD

The stamp is said to come from the north of Iceland, as do most of the surviving bread stamps I've seen, although that may be a coincidence. The size of the stamp and the elaborate carving indicate that it was likely made for someone who was fairly well off.

The letters JD are probably the initials of the owner, rather than the maker, although three letters would have been more common at the time (GJD might stand for Guðrún JónsDóttir, for instance; my own initials would have been NRD). But it could also stand for Jóhanna Daníelsdóttir, for instance, or a male name like Jón Daðason.

There were almost no ovens in Iceland at the time so the stamp would have been used for so-called pottbrauð (pot bread). The dough (sourdough, usually barley or rye) was made and flattened and often decorated, frequently by pressing a bread stamp down on it. Those breads do not rise much so the pattern would not really have been distorted. At the end of the day, the embers of the fireplace were leveled and the dough was laid carefully on them (sometimes on top of an iron sheet). Then an iron pot/cauldron was inverted over the dough, then covered in moð (leftover hay) or crumbled peat. This would then burn slowly through the night and the bread would bake slowly and gently.

PRM Inv. nr 1900.78.23

“Outurep”

Two breads made from wild potato, Japan (Ainu),1900

Voltaire Cang: Wild Potato Bread

This bread made from wild potato is labeled as ‘Ainu Yezo’, ‘Ainu’ being the hunter-gatherer people who were also called Ezo (‘Yezo’ is the less-common spelling), as was the territory they occupied north of Japan’s main island of Honshu. Although Ezo territory included Sakhalin and the Kurile islands, the place name ‘Ezo’ specifically referred to the island renamed as Hokkaido in 1869, when Japan formally incorporated this northern frontier into its domain. By then, the government had already forced Ainu to assimilate into Japanese society by compelling them to adopt sedentary and agricultural lifestyles, conscripting adults into the labour force and reeducating their children while also outlawing many of their traditional customs and practices.

The bread’s label also indicates the procurer’s name, ‘Father J. Rousseau’, and year of purchase, ‘1900’, confirming that it was part of a collection of Ainu-related objects that Rousseau had been commissioned by British Japanologist Basil Hall Chamberlain to acquire for the museum. The precise date, location, and method of the bread’s acquisition are unknown, although since Rousseau’s name appears in early 20th century resident registration lists as a member of a French Catholic mission in Hokkaido, he may well have procured it directly from his constituents among Ainu.

The bread is clearly marked as ‘used in wars with the Japanese’, indicating its initial purpose as war rations. Ainu did engage in intermittent ‘wars with the Japanese’ in the 19th and into the early 20th century. Wild potato was also among the plants they gathered, together with wild garlic, nuts, grapes, and other berries, to supplement their regular diet of game and fish. Ainu, however, also cultivated grains and vegetables, but only on a small scale.

Though nearly 120 years old, this wild potato bread appears not inedible; a good soak in water and some heating in the oven or frying pan would render it ready to eat, as one does with freeze-dried bread. Indeed, it appears similar to today’s muninimo (alternately, potcheimo), an Ainu dried pancake made from potatoes that have fermented in storage under the snow during winter. (‘Munin’ means ‘to rot/ferment’ in Ainu; ‘imo’ is Japanese for ‘potato’.) The potatoes are processed in the warm months, first by peeling their skins off and mashing them, and then through repeated soaking and draining in water, have their impurities removed while retaining their starch. Once most of the liquid has drained off the starch, it is then shaped into round discs, often with holes in the middle - like these museum pieces - for them to be tied together and hung out to dry. The dried potato pancakes can be stored indefinitely, to be consumed as needed. They are the ultimate preserved food for lean times and emergencies or, indeed, for war rations.

Muninimo today, however, are made not from wild but from farmed potatoes. Potato farming was introduced to Hokkaido, and forced on the Ainu, only late in the 19th century, when potato was seen as a better alternative to rice, which was difficult to grow in the cold and dry region. It became a successful crop, so much so that Hokkaido now grows 80 percent of all the potatoes in Japan, providing most of today’s supply of the starch food to Japanese, as well as Ainu.

PRM Inv. nr. 1981.11.2

Hot cross bun

UK 1976

Allison Reynolds: Hot Cross Buns

There is no doubt about it, I’ve always believed home-made hot cross buns take some beating. My thoughts are confirmed by eminent 20th century food writers Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson who both assert that the modern commercially made bakers’ hot cross bun is just not comparable to home-made ones. David claims, “Made at home, Bath buns and spice buns are by no means heavy, and hot cross buns, well spiced and fresh from the oven, are entirely delicious.

(English Bread and Yeast Cookery 1977).

Grigson says, “Until you make spiced hot cross buns yourself…it is difficult to understand why they should have become popular. Bought they taste so dull.“

(English Food 1974).

Initially, the general public purchased breads and buns from bakers because homes did not have ovens. A decree issued in 1592 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1, permitted bakers to offer ‘spiced’ breads, buns and biscuits only on special occasions. Her aim was to suppress what she saw as a symbol of papal Christianity – which had no place in the new protestant world. Consequently, the buns became even more popular. Two centuries later, there were still only two holidays in the year when spiced fruited buns could be baked and that was the Friday before Easter and at Christmas (Burials were also an exception).

In Great British Bakes (2013) Mary-Anne Boermans writes of the crowds in London going ‘a-bunning’ to the famous bun houses around Chelsea in 1793 and causing a near riot. Boermans attributes the patronage of the royal family in the late 18th century to the fame of the ‘Royal’ Bun House. And she goes on to say, “… it was rumoured that that the bun house took over 250 pounds Stirling on Good Friday for their (Hot) Cross buns. At a pre-decimal penny per bun, this sum would have come from the sale of 60,000 buns.”

The scarcity and the anticipation of spiced fruit buns would have certainly been something to look forward to. It is not surprising then to find that from the 18th century onwards hot cross buns were referred to in nursery rhymes. (see below).

In The Taste of Britain (1999), Laura Mason and Catherine Brown declare that few recipes for hot cross buns are given in domestic cookery books before the 20th century. Early editions (1870s/1880s) of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management include recipes for light buns and plain buns but not for hot cross buns. However, in my battered 1906 copy of this famous cookery book there are seven bun recipe and one of these is for two dozen hot cross buns. Beeton’s recipe calls for mixed spice and she also recommends the cross is cut with the back of a knife and she does not include a final glaze after baking. Mrs Beeton has given the average cost as 1d each and under Seasonal she writes, ‘on Good Friday’.

Ovens in homes were well established by the time I grew up in 1950s England, but we still bought our buns at Easter. Hot cross buns were not for sale in bakers’ shops until a week or two before Easter. They were a special once a year treat. Nowadays, supermarkets flood the shelves with hot cross buns even before we have seen the old year out. Something has changed in the commercial manufacturing process.

I can still remember one Easter in 1964 staying with a friend’s family in the Dorset countryside and setting out early the day before Good Friday to visit the local bakers to pick up our large order – a baker’s tray of sticky fresh hot cross buns greeted us. What a sight, and an intoxicating fragrance of spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and cloves) permeated the car all the way home. We tucked into the soft and fresh buns with lashings of farmhouse butter (I doubt if we waited until Good Friday) but, we always ate them toasted for Good Friday breakfast, equally as nice.

Hot cross buns are round and are made from a rich yeast dough (flour, milk, yeast, sugar, butter, eggs, currants and spices). The top is marked with a cross, usually made by a cut in the dough with the back of a knife, a strip of pastry or, a paste of flour and water is piped as a cross on top (most popular with commercial bakers). Although rarely seen today, there are some English cookery books that suggest the cross can also be made with strips of candied peel or almond paste (marzipan). A sugary glaze is brushed over the tops of the buns as soon as they come out of the oven; this gives the buns an attractive glossy appearance and adds to the sticky sweet texture.

These days, I do bake the family hot cross buns for Easter. I often return to Elizabeth David’s recipe which is a traditional spice bun mixture. Unlike the commercial baker’s paste version, Elizabeth David, like Mrs Beeton, also uses the back of an ordinary table knife to emphasise the cross. She does not see the need for ‘unnecessary fiddling work’ and goes on to suggest,

“There is no need to worry overmuch about the exactitude of the cross. You have made the symbolic gesture. That is what counts”.

Hot cross buns are deeply embedded in English folk traditions, symbolism and superstition. Thought of as a ritual food, hot cross buns were, and still are by many people, traditionally eaten on Good Friday. Today, the power of the symbol of the cross is associated with Christianity and represents the cross of the crucifixion and is synonymous with the Easter festival.

Kate Colquhoun in Taste: The Story of Britain through Cooking (2007), attributes the earliest form of the hot-cross bun to Monks. It appears that as Christianity spread, the small loaves studded with dried fruits and baked in honour of Eostre were “marked with a cross by monks: the earliest form of hot-cross bun.”

Journalist Katherine Knowles also shares this theory and writes that the most likely origin story comes from St Alban’s Cathedral. Her article, Were Hot Cross Buns the First Food Fad? A Brief (and Fascinating) History (April 2017) states, that this ‘cross-anointed bun’ is mentioned in Ye Book Of St Albans , a gentleman’s guide to hawking, hunting, and heraldry, printed in the 1480s. Knowles continues, “Here, we are told, a monk, working in the refectory, Brother Thomas Rocliffe, created a recipe and distributed the bun to the local poor on Good Friday to great popular acclaim.”

The cross shaped markings also have culinary ties with our pagan past. The fire/sun symbol is represented by the round shape and the cross denotes the seasonal four quarters. The Saxons ate buns marked in a cross in honour of the goddess of dawn and light, Eostre – whose name was later transferred to Easter. The Egyptians offered small round cakes with markings of the horns of an ox to the goddess of the moon. The Greeks and Romans also had festive cakes that bore such symbols.

The hot cross bun is shrouded with superstition and it was commonly thought that hot cross buns baked on Good Friday had magical qualities. These buns never went mouldy and were kept as good luck charms from one year to the next. Sailors would take a hot cross bun on board a vessel to ward against shipwrecks; cooks would hang a new hot cross bun each year from the corner of the kitchen ceiling to prevent fires and crumbs from the same bun steeped in water were thought to have curative properties and were added to medicine. It is also thought that sharing a hot cross bun will strengthen a friendship and reinforces the old saying, “Half for you and half for me, between us two good luck shall be.”

Nursery Rhymes

‘Perhaps no cry – though it is only for one morning – is more familiar to the ears of a Londoner, than that of One-a-penny, two-a-penny, hot-cross buns on Good Friday.’

(Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, 1851

Sourced from, English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David, 1977)

Hot Cross buns; Hot Cross buns.

One a penny, two a penny, Hot Cross buns.

Smoking hot, piping hot,

Just come out of the baker’s shop;

One a penny poker; two a penny tongs;

Three a penny fire shovel, Hot Cross buns.

( sourced from, The Taste of Britain. Laura Mason and Catherine Brown. (1999)

One for the poker,

Two for the tongs;

Three for the dust-pan,

Hot Cross Buns!’

(Good Friday rhyme recorded by Allan Jobson in An Hour-Glass on the Run, 1959.

Sourced from English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David, (1977)

PRM Inv. nr 1990.47.3

Cassava sieve.

Square basket woven with two types of coloured material with one colour acting as weft and the other warp.

Brazil. Amazonas State, Satare Maue, 1990.

1908.13.1-4

Four pieces of Cassava breads ,

Guyana 1908

PRM Inv. nr 1906.20.81

Cassava roots grater

Brazil. Amazonas State < 1896

Marcia Zoladz: The Caribs, the Sataré-Mawé and a cassave bread

The Pitt Rivers Museum has two objects displayed separately although they closely related. The first one is a basketry sieve used in the preparation of the main ingredient of the other one – a cassava bread. Listed as Object 1990.47.3 in the museum collection, the square shaped sieve is decorated with geometrical patterns, it was made by the Sataré-Mawé, an indigenous group who lives in the State Amazon, in the North of Brazil. The other one, is a cassava bread, Object 1908.13.2, from the Caribs. The sieve still is, or was used in the past, by several Amerindian groups and local populations in the Amazon Forest and in the Northern part of South America and, as Amerindian spread in a fan like movement from the region towards the South of the Continent, it can be also found as witnesses of the material culture of the population living the coast in or around the Atlantic Forest.

Nowadays, this kind of sieve is manufactured and sold more for their decorative qualities, the painted decoration has lost its original significance, even when generally acknowledged as of Amerindian origin.

The diamond shape painted in black means the paw of the jaguar, a strong and important animal in the original local cultures, part of Amerindian imagination and sophisticated world view, a place where human beings, animals and spirits have interchangeable significance, according to where they are, how close or opposed to other beings. The original pigment for preparing black ink is made with a mix of a tincture of the fruit of jenipapo (Genipa Americana) and soot, it is used in basketry and for body paintings.

The square basketry sieve introduced in the museum collection in 1990, was used by several Amerindian groups. Anthropologist Berta Ribeiro, in her Dictionary of the crafts* lists one from the Tembé, who live in the State of Pará, also in North Brazil, but quite far from the Caribs from Guyana and the Sataré-Mawé from the South-West in Amazon basin, better known in Brazil for their knowledge of the medicinal qualities of Guaraná (Paullinia cupana), an indigenous plant with high concentration of caffeine and tannins.

Besides the sieve the Pitt-Rivers Museum also has a cassava roots grater, donated in 1906, it is was originally collected sometime before 1896, record 1906.20.81, is the dried tongue of the Pirarucu (Arapaima gigas), a large fish that can grow as heavy as two hundred kilograms, and lives in the rivers and lakes in Amazon basin. Its taste buds when dry are as hard as bones.

In order to prepare the bread, the roots of the cassava plant (Manihot esculenta Crantz), are thoroughly washed as it contains a poison, Cyanide. Different types of cassava have variating amounts of poison.They will be grated and pressed inside a circular basket to eliminate all the remaining liquid. Small circular portions of this pulp will be grilled and transformed into a bread with size and shape like a thick pancake. The leftover water is also collected, after a while a starch will separate from the liquid, and once dried is used in the preparation of pancakes known in Brazil as tapioca. Nowadays the starch is used as a thickening agent in the food industry as it is tasteless.

The cassava bread comes from a different country of the sieve. Guyana is in the Northern most part of South America and faces the Caribbean Sea, but it has a frontier Venezuela and Brazil. It was first a Dutch and then a British colonial outpost, and it is an independent nation since 1966. Today, it has approximately eight hundred thousand inhabitants, mostly descendants of enslaved Africans that started to arrive in the region at the end of the sixteenth century. The slave trade and the employment of enslaved workers was part of the colonial enterprise of Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Britain and France in the North of South America and the Caribbean Islands. After the abolition of slavery in England, in 1834, the African workforce in Guyana was in part substituted by indentured workers from India.

The Carib listed in the Pitt-Rivers as the original cassava bread makers are a large ethnic group spreading from the coast to the North and Centre-Western Brazil. There are Caribs in the French Guiana, in Suriname, in Colombia, Venezuela and in Brazil. The term Carib includes a broad definition of groups of people living in the Amazon Forrest or very close to its borders, in common they have a language, that presents variations according to each group. However, as part of the large number of the people who live inside the Amazon Forest, they have touching communications points not only inside their linguistic group, but also with different ones, as a way exchanging information and objects. It explains why the similar basketry sieve is used by several groups in the region.

Living far from Guyana and the Amazon Forest led me into a search for the original cassava bread recipe, I wanted the original one, as prepared by remaining Carib groups in Guiana. I found a video in YOUTUBE showing its preparation, I also found out that although the cassava bread in the Pitt-Rivers Museum was listed in its collection in 1908, it is still a very contemporary snack in Guyana, and a part of the local food habits.

It is the understanding that there are no borders inside the Amazon Forrest that led me to research the different ways the same cassava roots was used by local populations, and by the newly arrived Europeans, Africans and in the case of the Guiana, also newcomers from India. Distinct colonial powers, from the sixteenth until the twentieth century, influenced the way cassava was adapted in local contemporary kitchens. In Brazil the root is used as flour, as starch, it is mixed with sugar and eggs in different cakes and puddings, with hundreds of regional deserts and savoury uses. The leaves are also used in a stew prepared with salted and jerked meats – maniçoba.

In Guyana it migrated from Amerindian food into a contemporary multicultural use, their main recipes are the cassava bread and cassava pone, a soft sweet pudding and cassareep – prepared by boiling for a very long time the juice of bitter cassava with a small amount of sugar and spices, an important ingredient in a stew, the Caribbean Pepper Pot.

Cassava was introduced in colonial possessions throughout the Tropical belt, and today Nigeria, in Africa, is the largest producer of the world. After the sixteenth century, soldiers and explorers as they travelled inland the South American continent, they substituted the wheat bread for the cassava staple, they made or bought the flour from local groups, and started to develop new culinary uses as thickener or as flavouring in the Pepper Pot. At this point. At the start of the nineteenth century, cassava was distant from their original users. The ingredient turned out to be the origin of local cakes, sometimes mixed with coconut and sugar obtained from sugar cane, new exotic plant introduced by Europeans, but also mixed with cashew nuts, and spices.

Like the cacao tree fruits and corn, cassava and its by products were well known by local groups and it had spread as far as Guatemala, in Central America, where starch grains were found in an archaeological site of the Maya, dated from 600-900 CE.

In the following three videos it is possible to watch different ways of preparing cassava bread. In the first one, a group in inland Guiana demonstrates how the cassava dough is prepared, among several implements they use a sieve like the one at the Pitt-Rivers Museum. The video also shows another byproduct made with the leftover water – cassareep, a dark colored molasses like liquid used in stews – pepper pots. https://tinyurl.com/y6xwyu3y

In the two following video recommendations the cassava bread – beiju is prepared in inland the state of Bahia, in the Northwest of Brazil, in two different versions, one with shredded coconut and the other a plain one made only with shredded cassava just like the Guianese. https://tinyurl.com/y3s8dt6z - https://tinyurl.com/y4233k8y -

*Ribeiro, Berta G., 1988: Dicionário do Artesanato Indígena, São Paulo, Editora Itatiaia/EDUSP – Editora da Universidade de São Paulo.

PRM Inv. nr 1919.53.1

Wrapper for Mrs. Oliver’s funeral biscuits

UK, Yorkshire 1828

Paper wrapper used to contain biscuits distributed as part of the ceremony at the funeral of Mrs Oliver who had died on November 7th 1828 at the age of 52.

The poem on the wrapper is:

Thee we adore, eternal Name,

And humbly own to thee,

How feeble is our mortal frame!

What dying worms we be.

Our waisting lives grow shorter still

As days and months increase;

And every beating pulse we tell,

Leaves but the number less

The year rolls round and steals away,

The breath that first it gave;

Whate’er we do, where’er we be

We’re travelling to the grave.

"The wrapper was found under glass in a wooden frame, to which the Museum's accession number has already been added in ink. Below appears the following text, handwritten in ink: 'Avril,- arvil- or arval-bread. Wrapper which contained biscuits eaten at a funeral in Yorkshire (Cleveland district) in 1828. The custom of distributing to the mourners at a funeral specially-prepared biscuits in wrappers sealed with black wax, was formerly widely prevalent in Great Britain. It was, probably, related to or derived from the earlier practice of "sin-eating", whereby the sins of the deceased were transferred to a person who, for a fee, consumed food & drink handed to him over the coffin. More remotely, the practice may be an altered survival of ceremonial cannibalism when the flesh of dead kinsmen was eaten by the mourners."

(Research notes: At the meeting of the OU Anthropological Society on 1 November 1917 E.S. Hartland read a paper on ''Avril bread'. The speaker took as his text a paper envelope which had contained a funeral biscuit. This and similar envelopes had been distributed at the funeral of Mrs Oliver who had died on November 7th 1828. Mr Hartland brought forward evidence to show that these funeral feasts were probably relics of a very ancient custom in various parts of the world of eating the flesh of the dead kinsman.)

PRM Inv. nr 1917.53.684. and nr. 1902.60.4 and nr. 2009.21.1

Biscuits bearing the impressof the twinsisters Elisa and Mary Chulkhurst, known as the Biddenden Maids .

Biddenden, Kent (UK) 1902, 1917 and 2009

'A souvenir 'biscuit' available each Easter Monday from The Old Workhouse in Biddenden Kent. A souvenir of the charity dole of bread and cheese and tea which is a bequest of unknown date, probably C16th by The "Biddenden Maids".

The biscuit or cake is not intended for consumption. It is made of flour and water.

The annual distribution of Bread and Cheese takes place on Easter Monday Morning from the Old Workhouse. This Custom originated with a bequest of the Biddenden Maids, Elisa and Mary Chulkhurst, the famous twin sisters, who in the year 1100 were born joined together at the hips and shoulders. These sisters lived together thus for 34 years, when one of them was seized with a fatal illness and died, the other, refusing to be separated, was so affected by her sister's death did not long survive her, dying in fact only six hours later. A poem has been found in the old Charity Documents which may show where they were buried:

'The moon on the east oriel shone

Through slender shafts of shaply [sic] stone

The silver light so pale and faint,

Shewed the twin sisters and many a saint

Whose images on the glass were dyed;

Mysterious maidens side by side

The moonbeam kissed the holy pane

And threw on the pavement a mystic stain.'

By their will they left their property to the poor of Biddenden. This property consisted of about 20 acres of land and a small holding known as the Bread and Cheese Lands. The property has since been sold and the money invested, the interest from this investment and rents from the Old Workhouse and a small plot of land enables the trustees to distribute Bread, Cheese and Tea at Easter.

To keep in remembrance the charitable pair, biscuits bearing the impress of the Twin Maids, their names, age and year of birth are given away at the same time to all who apply - Strangers and Parishioners. Since 1907 when the Charity Commissioners formed a scheme to consolidate this trust with other Biddenden Charities, the scope of the Charity has been extended to include gifts of money at Christmas.'