Old Time Bread

Gervase Markham, The English Hous-wife, 1649

• Ready In: 6 hrs 45 mins
• Yields: 20 loaves

Ingredients

• 1  bushel white flour
• 3  pints beer
• 1⁄4 cup salt, plus
• 1  gallon milk, plus

Directions

1. Your best and principal bread is Manchet, which you shall bake in this manner.
2. First your meal being ground upon the black stones, if be possible, which makes the whitest flower, and boulted through the finest boulting cloth, you shall put it into a clean Kimnel.
3. Opening the flower hollow in the midst, put into it of the best ale-barm, the quantity of three pints to a bushell of meale and some salt to season it with.
4. Then put in your liquor reasonable warme, and kneade it very well together, with both your hands, and through the brake, or for want thereof, fould it in a cloth, and with your feete treade it a good space together.
5. Then letting it lie an houre or thereabouts to swel.
6. Take it foorth and mould it into Manchets, round, and flat, scorcht them about the wast to give it leave to rise, and prick it with your knife in the top, and so put into the oven, and bake with gentle heat.