Bisket Bread

Introduction
This entry is a re-creation of a recipe from The Accomplish'd Lady's Delight in Preserving, Physick, Beautifying, and Cookery (England, 1675), entitled "To make Bisket-bread".

This is a long bread roll with aniseeds and coriander in it.



The Source Recipe
The original text of the recipe is as follows:

To make Bisket-bread. Take half a peck of Flower fine, two Ounces of Anniseeds, two Ounces of Coriander-seed, the whites of six Eggs, a pint of Ale-Yeast, with as much warm-water, as will make it up into a Paste, so bake it in a long Roul; when it is two days Old, pare it, and slice it, then Sugar it, and dry it in an Oven, and so keep it all the Year. (The Accomplish'd Lady's Delight)

Related Recipes
While interpreting this recipe, I also considered the following recipes that appear to be related:


      "To make biscuit bread" from The English Housewife: Containing the Inward and Outward         Virtues Which Ought to Be in a Complete Woman, by Gervase Markham (England, 1615):

To make biscuit bread. To make biscuit bread, take a pound of fine flour, and a pound of sugar finely beaten and searced, and mix them together; then take eight eggs and put four yolks and beat them very well together; then strew in your flour and sugar as you are beating of it, by a little at once; it will take very near an hour’s beating: then take half an ounce of aniseeds, coriander seeds, and let them be dried and rubbed very clean, and put them in; then rub your biscuit pans with cold sweet butter as thin as you can, and so put it in and bake it in an oven: but if you would have thin cakes, then take fruit dishes and rub them in like sort with butter, and so bake your cakes on them, and when they are almost baked, turn them and thrust them down close with your hand. Some to this biscuit bread will add a little cream, and it is not amiss, but excellent good also.



     "To Make fine Bisket Bread" from The Good Housewife's Jewell (England, 1596)

To make fine bisket bread. Take a pound of fine flowre, and a pound of suger, and mingle it together, a quarter of a pound of Annis seedes, foure eggs, two or three spoonfuls of Rosewater put all these into an earthen panne. And with a slyce of Wood beate it the space of twoo houres, then fill your moulds halfe full: your mouldes must be of Tinne, and then lette it into the ouen, your ouen, beeing so whot as it were for cheat bread, and let it stande one houre and an halfe: your must annoint your moulds with butter before you put it your stuffe, and when you will occupie of it, slice it thinne and drie it in the ouen, your ouen beeing no whotter then you may abide your hand in the bottome.



Materials
The original recipe calls for the following ingredients:

flour
egg whites
aniseeds
coriander
water
yeast
sugar

I chose to use a Kitchenaid mixer because my persona is a courtier of the court. Someone else in the kitchen would have been mixing the bread dough to make the bread for me.

The original recipe calls for the dough to be rolled long, like biscotti. However, I chose to use bread pans instead, as I am testing to see if this recipe will work for a future project.

The recipe calls for half a peck of Flower fine. "In most English recipes prior to 1800 (and even later) a peck of wheat flour is an understood weight of 14 pounds." (Couchman) So, half a peck would be 7 pounds. To keep things simple, I decided to go with a basic bread recipe of 6 cups of flour with 2 cups of water.

Procedure

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Create the yeast. Next, combine all of the ingredients. Roll the dough out into a long roll, or split the dough for two shorter rolls. Sprinkle sugar on top. Bake for about 45 minutes. Yield: 1-2 loaves.

Ingredient measurements:
6 cups of flour
4 Tbsp aniseeds
4 Tbsp coriander
6 egg whites
yeast
2 cups of water
sugar (to sprinkle on top)

Here is a video of the bread being made.

Bibliography

Couchman, Paul. "What is a Peck of Flour?" http://www.paulcouchman.co.uk/what-is-a-peck-of-flour/. 31 October 2019.

De Courcy, Tomas, "Sponge Cake." https://www.bakerspeel.com/sponge-cake/. 28 October 2019.

Matterer, James L. "To make Bisket-bread." The Accomplish'd Lady's Delight. http://www.godecookery.com/engrec/engrec134.html. 28 October 2019.

Myers, Daniel. "To Make fine Bisket Bread." http://medievalcookery.com/search/display.html?goodh:60. 1 November 2019.

Pollack, Stef. "This Seventeenth Century Cake is the Ancestor of the Cakes We Love Today." Cupcake Project.  https://www.cupcakeproject.com/this-seventeenth-century-cake-is-the-ancestor-of-the-cakes-we-love-today/. 28 October 2019.