Historic Cookery

Here’s one of my favorite photos of a stray cat that, for more than a year, has taken up residence in my back yard. Prior to this past year, however, he/she (am still not sure) made fairly regular visits (usually at meal time), but to the front. Now, he/she seems content to live in the [...]

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I will be conducting my Fireside Feasts series of historic cooking classes again this summer out at the Wyckoff Farmhouse Museum. They will be held on four specific Thursdays during July and August. We’ll prepare, cook, and eat a variety of dishes that would’ve been typical in the early 1800s. And yes, it’s participatory! Visitors [...]

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Here’s another bread receipt I want to try. It’s from Gervase Markham’s The English Hus-wife, published in London, England, in 1615. Manchets were made of the whitest of white flour (the most preferred), and they were always leavened with either yeast or barm, and not sour dough (starter). Few written receipts exist for this bread, [...]

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I’ve happily spent about six hours during each of the past three days making several different kinds of bread. So far, it’s been challenging, tiring, exciting, informative, tiring, and fun.  Oh, and did I mention tiring?!  In general, bread is pretty basic.  It’s flour, yeast, and a little salt, all which is allowed to rise [...]

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As an open hearth cook, it’s helpful to know how to make bread.  This seemingly simple item was present, in one form or another, at nearly every meal in the early years of this country, just as it had been in Europe.    I’ve studied and experimented with baking bread, both on the hearth and [...]

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