Yorkshire Pudding Recipe | TAKE 2!

According to legend, Yorkshire Pudding has been around since the 15th century with the War of the Roses. 

 

 

 

However, the earliest written receipt for Yorkshire Pudding that I could find was from the 18th Century: 

 

Hannah Glasse's recipe from 1747: 

     "A Yorkshire Pudding. Take a quart of milk, four eggs, and a little salt, make it up into a thick batter with flour, like pancake batter. You must have a good piece of meat at the fire; take a stew-pan and put some dripping in, set it on the fire; when it boils, pour in your pudding; let it bake on the fire till you think it is nigh enough, then turn a plate upside down in the dripping-pan, that the dripping may not be blacked; set your stew-pan on it under your meat, and let the dripping drop on the pudding, and the heat of the fire come to it, to make it of a fine brown. When your meat is done and sent to table, drain all the fat from your pudding, and set it on the fire again to dry a little; then slide it as dry as you can into a dish; melt some butter, and pour it into a cup, and set it in the middle of the pudding. It is an excellent good pudding; the gravy of athe meat eats well with it." 

My Modern Interpretation of this Recipe: 

3 eggs 

3/4 cup milk 

3/4 cup flour 

3/4 tsp salt 

1/4 cup beef or pork fat, or melted butter, or canola or olive oil 

 

Instructions: 

Mix ingredients together. Preheat oven to 400ºF. Let the batter sit for at least 30 minutes to an hour. Put the animal fat / melted butter / oil in the pans. Bake for 5 minutes. Then, put the batter in the pans and bake for 10-15 minutes. Enjoy!

 

 

Picture credits: 

- Yorkshire Comfort: https://www.whitecap.ca/Yorkshire-Com... 

- The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art...

 

 

 

 

Bara Planc: Bakestone Bread

 

 

 Introduction

 

In English, bara planc translates as bakestone bread (bara = bread and planc = bakestone). Bara planc is a round flat loaf with a crusty top and base with soft sides. However, it can be notoriously tricky to get it to rise evenly. It is a traditional Welsh yeasted griddle bread. Historically, Welsh breads were commonly cooked on a griddle wherever bread ovens were not available. The bara planc, or griddle bread, was baked on an iron plate over a fire. It was part of the everyday diet in Wales until the 19^th century.

 

The Source Recipe

 Planc Bread with Yeast: Bara planc

2 lbs. four

1 oz yeast

1 oz lard

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

1 breakfast cupful milk and water

Warm the flour and put into a large bowl, which should have been warmed. Rub the lard into the flour.  Put the yeast into a jug with the sugar, and mix with the milk and water, which must be just tepid.

Make a well in the center of the flour and pour in the liquid.  Make a soft dough, cover with a warm cloth and leave it to rise for 1 hour in a warm place, out of the draught.  Mould into a large flat cake, kneading and pressing with the hands towards the sides.  When shaped it should not be more than 1 inch or 1 ¼ inches thick.  Leave to rise for 15 minutes.

Place carefully on the planc, which should not be too hot. Bake for 20 minutes on one side, then turn over and bake for another 20 minutes on the other side.

(Freeman)

 

Related Recipes

 ** From Mistress Charis Accipiter, a 12^th Century Welsh noble woman of the East Kingdom

To try to approximate a more period bread I substituted out honey for sugar as sugar would have only been used for more elaborate dishes, and I added oat flour and oat bran.  The oat flour was the more common flour and the oat bran to give the bread more texture as modern flour is more finely ground than that of stone milled four.  This recipe went through several iterations before it was both flavorful and workable. Though I started with straight oat flours in the end I added spelt flour, a period wheat four which would have been available in a noble household or manor, for cohesion.

 

Redaction of Freeman’s recipe:

½ cup Oat bran

1 ½ cup oat flour

2 cups spelt flour

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons yeast

¾ cup milk

¾ cup water

2 tablespoon honey

2 tablespoons butter

Mix dry ingredients.  In a small pot warm milk, water, honey and butter until tepid. 

Add liquids to dry mix and knead until dough is slightly sticky and elastic.  Place dough in a large bowl coated with oil, roll dough so that all sides are oiled, cover with damp cloth and put in a warm place to rise for one hour.  When dough has doubled in size, knead dough gently and shape into two flat disks about 1 inch thick.  Cook on warmed bakestone or griddle over a low flame for 20 minutes, flip over and cook second side an additional 20 minutes. 

 

(Freeman)

 

 

Materials

4 ½ cup Einkorn flour

1 tsp salt

yeast

¾ cup milk

¾ cup water

2 Tbsp honey

2 Tbsp butter

I did not specifically have spelt or oat flour on hand, as recommended by Mistress Charis’s recipe. However, I did have Einkorn flour available, which was also a historically used flour.

“Medieval wheat was a winter crop, and was bred from ancestral wheats such as einkorn, emmer, and spelt.” (Piebakere) Einkorn wheat “is known in taxonomy as either Triticum boeoticum (wild wheat)” and “is the oldest wheat known to scientists…the first domestication of wild einkorn was recorded approximately around 7500 BC.”. (“The History of Einkorn”)

 

Procedure

Combine dry ingredients together with instant yeast in a large bowl. In a small pot, combine milk, water, honey, and butter until tepid. Add liquid mixture to dry mixture. Knead until the dough is slightly sticky and elastic. Cover the bowl with a cloth for 1 hour. When the dough has doubled in size, knead the dough gently on a floured board. Shape the dough into 2 flat disks about 1 inch thick each. Cook on a warmed bakestone or griddle on low heat for about 20 minutes. Then, flip the bread over and bake the other side for an additional 20 minutes.

 

Results

My house smelled wonderful of fresh baked bread! Two sides of one loaf are a golden brown. However, the 2^nd flip side (originally the top, but now the bottom side) of the other loaf started to burn as it hit the 20-minute mark. I immediately removed both from the heat to plate and let them cool overnight. I tested both with a toothpick to make sure that no dough came up. So, fingers crossed that it’s baked all the way through! This bread will be cut into at a friend’s vigil.

 

 

 

 

Buy a $3 Coffee to Help Support My Channel at Ko-Fi

 

Works Cited

 

Accipiter, Charis. “Ffesty pen – End of Harvest Feast.” May 2002.

 

“Crumpet.” The History Search. https://thtsearch.com/content/Crumpet/.

 

Freeman, Bobby. First Catch Your Peacock. 1996.

 

“The History of Einkorn.” Einkorn.com. 2015. https://www.einkorn.com/einkorn-history/.

15 January 2020.

 

Piebakere, Eulalia. “All About Medieval English Grains.” 28 May 2015.

https://medievalyork.com/2015/05/28/all-about-medieval-english-grains/?fbclid=IwAR0MA4v3kFS6r8LX9qsYiG4dvj46s98m3BJ6i-UPJiljuPxV-6hYcvyHjt4. 15 January 2020.