The Poor Man's Bread
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- Опубліковано 14 жов 2024
- Bread was extremely important to folks in this time period. It was very regulated, and at times difficult to obtain and quite expensive. You wouldn’t find many folks in the 18th century willing to go without bread if they were able to get their hands on it at all. This is the poor man’s bread.
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Good vid
As old as the song.
Patty cake patty cake ...bakers man! 🤣
Ironically horse bread sounds like one of the most nutritious dished of the day when compared to the likes of ships biscuit.
Horse bread had a lot of bran.
Well, Ship's biscuit was really more designed to last a long time and not for nutritional value.
That's not at all ironic.
But it is so bitter that I would not be able to eat it.
I laughed when you mentioned horse bread. My old man was born in the Netherlands in the early 1900s and he mentioned he and the other kids in the family would nibble on the horse bread when they tagged along with my grandfather in their delivery wagon. My grandfather would keep loaves of horse bread in the back of the wagon to feed the team in the event the delivery route was a long one. My dad mentioned that there were beans in the bread. It wasn't tasty, but they would eat it anyway just because they were kids and didn't care it tasted terrible.
It would seem to me that bean bread (or a bean/pea mixture) would actually be better for survival than just plain wheat bread. Beans have more protein, fiber, and other nutrients that wheat doesn’t have. Add in peas and you get even more nutrients like vitamin C, potassium, and iron.
vitamin C doesn't survive heat, it has to be eaten raw
I was wondering this. I think you’re right, considering. Though I do imagine that it might have been easy to get it wrong and end up with something a little bitter, or something that upsets the stomach too. All in all, though, the people making this knew what they were doing and wouldn’t make the same mistakes I probably would have made!
Antinutrients like phytic acid in the beans would inhibit nutrient absorption unless the bean paste was thoroughly fermented. Subsisting on it as most of caloric intake like many would have had to do in times of scarcity would not be advisable for this reason.
@@273-e1kBy how much would this antinutrients actually inhibit, 100% or like, 0.005%? I keep seeing this anti-nutrients show up but nobody can tell any factual statements or give me some reliable sources as to what it actually means.
@@273-e1kwhich is why I now want to try cooking up a mix of legumes (I'm thinking Pintos, Garbanzos and Lentils) and mashing (okay, I'm lazy and will probably use the blender) the cooked beans then adding the dry equivalent of that paste to an equal mass of wheat flour. If that works well, maybe I'll try replacing a portion of the wheat with corn.
Sounds like a fun experiment and would be a very inexpensive yet nutritious meal for hard times.
In Finland (and I think in many other countries as well) the primary grain as rye. Wheat was used mostly for sweet products like buns. In times of strife people would replace some or even all of rye flour with wood flour making "pettulepä". Wood flour was made of the phloem layer of pinetree, the soft layer under the bark that contains some sugars. It was dried up and ground as flour. It doesn't contain much nutrients and is hard to digest. Large amounts are also pretty harmful for kidneys.
Here in Estonia there are actually different words for rye bread ("leib") and wheat bread ("sai"), and the distinction is pretty much the same as what you describe. Rye bread is the staple food that you would actually eat for nutrition, whereas wheat bread is more like a luxury item, almost. Something that's good for a snack but isn't really proper bread.
Good rye bread is great, though. I'm not well-travelled but as much as I have been in other countries, I've never seen a good slice of rye bread. I think people in other countries are really missing out.
@wurfyy did you know leib is cognate to the English word loaf?
@@seronymus I did not. That's interesting, thank you.
Never even occurred to me that there's a similarity there, let alone that they might be related.
In Sweden it's called "barkbröd", bark bread
Townsend is such a pleasant and thorough teacher, he could teach me about paint drying and I wouldn't be able to look away.
Ikr
18th Century paint video? I would watch that lol.
@@peggedyourdad9560 you win UA-cam award for best name lol
I dont even like to eat bread, and i cant help but watch.
😂 me too
I recommend the book Cherokee Cooklore. While it was printed in 1951, it discusses traditional Cherokee foodways. One recipe is bean bread and it's very different to this recipe. Highly recommend!
Yes, it's very close to the mexican tamalitos or venezuelian hallaquitas, boiled wrapped in the husks.
Not sure which tribe it was, but oddly native and Americans used acorns a ton. A Korean lady who lives here in Ohio made some for friends a few years back, it was pretty impressive.
Any nation that had oak trees in its area ate acorns. Highly nutritious, keeps all winter, and can be cooked in a variety of ways. I'm a little Lakota(Sioux) and a little Cherokee. Was taught that on both sides of the family.
The horse bread reminds me of some fancy health food bread they’d sell at a bougie grocery store these days. They’d probably market it as “gluten free, high protein, paleo bread alternative 😌✨” and charge twice as much as regular wheat bread.
Just like how lobster went from the food of the poor to expensive fancy food.
@@stormshamanI never knew lobster was for poor people, it is probably expensive now because of something called *overfishing* and bycatch
@@CoolTreeHouseMan112it was cheap because everyone lived near the east coast but now it’s expensive on everything besides the east coast
@@stormshamanor how oxtails went from being given away to being charged 4-6$ a pound
HAHA bettt
Being born and raised in Florida I would occasionally hear about the native Americans making a bread from coontie plants. Coontie is a weird plant that is a gymnosperm (so relative of pine trees, juniper, and sago palms). Apparently the now extinct Native American tribes would process the coontie cones to detoxify it and render it into a flour to make bread. I haven't come across anyone on youtube that's tried to make it. I don't know if it's a lost recipe or if we kinda sort of know how they did it. But I've always been curious about it.
I wanna see a Townsend video about this
Apparently, it's named Seminole Bread and comes from the Seminole tribe of Florida.
Floridian here, Tampa area. I never knew anything about this.
I learned something new today
In Finland in times of strife people would replace some or even all grain flour with wood flour making "pettulepä". Wood flour was made of the phloem layer of pinetree, the soft layer under the bark that contains some sugars. It was dried up and ground as flour. It doesn't contain much nutrients and is hard to digest. Large amounts are also pretty harmful for kidneys. I wonder of Seminole bread might be made in a similar way. Coontie may be more nutritious than plain pine tree.
The kumeyaay of california would do something similar for to make flour from acorns
This shows how farmers can be taken for granted. Then, and now, if crops fail, this can create a problem. Without farmers, we can't eat. There has to be a substitute if grain crops fail. I'm originally from a very large farm, so I know that there is no guarantee of a good harvest. Cheers!
Settled civilization didn't come around until our ancestors first started cultivating crops ~12-13,000 years ago. Everything about the modern world is built on the back of agriculture and farming.
@@kylegonewild These city Kids Nowadays with their chocky-milk, candy and cookies know nothing of the struggles of the past.
People from farms and the country side seem more aware.
The globalists will soon remind us what happens when farmers fail
@@kylegonewild True about most of the modern world, but there's evidence of settlements before farming. Much more recently, the Pacifc Northwest had settled cultures without farming, living on the ecological richness of the region, especially the salmon runs. Jane Jacobs even speculated that it was early "cities" that invented farming.
@@lexbrightraven8049 Translation: EVIL FARMERS WON'T LET ME EAT MY WEF-APPROVED RATION OF SOLDIER FLY LARVAE PASTE REEEEEE
"I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger" was not an accidental metaphor
Bread that was given to soldiers serving in the yemeni army what is made of wheat, potato lentil garbanzo, fava beans, and sweet pea flour. We ate it for all three meals. It was nutritious and filling.
How did it taste?
@@elrondsoukup29 really good,I miss it
Wow you ate it every day, 3 times a day, while you were in the army - that must have been some amazing bread !!
@@cnam1258no choice. This is a third world army
@@Mossad901 Yes so even though you were forced to eat it, you loved it...!
I spent a lot of time once soaking the tannic acid out of shelled acorns. The hardest part was shelling the acorns from my pin oak. Big tree, tiny acorns with thick skins that will make your fingers bleed. I soaked the shelled acorns in a 5 gallon bucket of water for two days, poured off the water, replaced it with fresh, let it soak, and did that process a couple more times. I let them dry in the sun and then ground the meat in a coffee grinder and mixed it with whole wheat flour and made a pan of small muffins out of all that work. Very tasty, but not worth it unless you had nothing else.
I want to make acorn bread this year.
While in Boy Scouts an eon past, I accepted a merit badge challenge from the leader, to make some acorn bread. He'd found an ancient recipe somewhere, and gave me that to work with. I gathered up several gallons of acorns, knocking off the caps by hand. Then I put them in a large pot, and boiled them for a long time, changing out the water a number of times. The cooked acorns became more like a mush, but I managed to scrape enough out, and spread it over several cooking sheets to dry out in the sun. It took a number of days to dry out that mess, and a good bit of stirring and turning. Even dry, the acorn mess was fairly soft, unfit to go through the hand mill that was available to me, so it all got placed into a mortar and pestle rig, and pounded as close to flour as I was able, At that point, I was two weeks into the project, and still had no bread! Finally, I mixed up the dough, adding in some wheat flour to bind it all together, along with some salt, and several dissolved packets of yeast. I set it aside to rise. Hours later, there was no visible increase in that dough, but it had darkened considerably. I kneaded it up some more, put it into a different pot, and took it inside my warm house, and placed it right next to the furnace vent. After several hours, it had dried out some, but had also raised up a bit. I took it, formed it into small loaves, and let them rise in the same warm location. The following day, the loaves had smoothed out a bit, dried some, and grown a bit as well, but nothing like I'd expect from wheat. Back outside, I loaded these loaves into a dutch over to bake under/over the coals. When finally I decided both batches were done, I let them cool, and couldn't wait to see how they tasted. I had a large amount of softened butter, some jam, and a big glass of milk to wash 'em all down.
I buttered up several tough slices, and bit into them. They were so bitter, it was like I'd taken a spoon full of alum! The texture was more rock like than bread, and the bitterness spread quickly in the mouth, assuring anyone that swallowing this crap would be a major health violation. This was a massive failure on my part, and I'd invested so damned much time and effort into the project. The Troop leader saw to it that I got the merit badge anyhow, it was about the process not the results. Several of the loaves were archived on a shelf at the local Scout meeting house, and for all I know, they're still there, nearly fifty years later!
Ooh I made coffee once out of acorns
@@GlassArtist07super baked bread? Sounds like you made hard tack by accident. They can last for a really long time.
A Korean lady made dorotrimuk which is a acorn gelatin like tofu. Was pretty great, and looking at the calorie density, pretty amazing
I absolutely love the rustic atmosphere of these videos.
My parents and grandparents lived through the Great Depression in the U.S. I remember a saying that they had - “Crying poor with a loaf of bread under your arm”. In other words, there were times when things were so bad that you’d be doing alright if you actually had a load of bread to eat.
It sounds more like asking for help or sympathy when you need none. "Crying poor with a loaf of bread under your arm" translates to "feed me, but I secretly have food"
I read an excerpt of a story where some missionaries went to some horribly impoverished area and they would give a slice of bread for the orphans to sleep with. The idea was that no matter what happened to them the next day, they’d still have a slice of bread to eat in the morning. I could see needing some stability that badly.
I remember reading discworld a while back where they mention Horsebread in one of them! Basically made from non-wheat grains, legumes, and vegetable scraps!
Which diskworld book?
@@joanhuffman2166 Monsterous Regiment.
@@covishen Is that the one where the joke is the whole crew are women but they all have been trying to keep it secret from everyone including each other?
@@kylegonewild yes
Omg. I was thinking the same thing! “ I know I just read a book that mentioned horse bread.”🤔 and I never looked up what it was. I just assumed it was some other European thing that didn’t translate to American English☺️ And then John spring this on us🥰
I always learn something here. Usually, it is about how much food knowledge has been lost over the years. Never would have thought of this method, but it looks like it may solve the major complaints that I have heard about bean flour... being bitter and grainy. Thank you for always providing some fascinating food for thought.
Years ago, my sister was cutting out wheat from her family's diet. She found all kinds of substitutes for various recipes, but the one that I can remember the clearest is the cake that was made from beans... it was pretty good, actually.
(I'm so glad I found this channel, by the way. This kind of stuff has always fascinated me.)
I make a garbanzo bean banana bread that's really good, and black bean brownies. Neither has flour.
Lots of Thai desserts use bean paste
In the novel "Pillars of the Earth", the diet mandated by the Abbot to his monks included horse bread, olive oil, and garlic
And the only monk that remained adhesive to those teachings was Philip. Bc he was a nonce. 😂
except for the olive oil they all where pretty standart
a nut oil or poppy oil or lard would have made WAY more sence (speaking from a historical point)
@@baronbrummbar8691depends where it’s set. If it’s in southern Europe (or an equivalent climate in a fictional universe), then olive oil would be plentiful. Somewhere like northern England? Definitely not. You can eat the olives off of a Russian olive, and it is cold hardy (zone 3a), but the yield is probably going to be lower than that of a southern olive variety.
My (late) maternal great grandmother, worked in a bakery in Prague, before she came to North America, in 1900. It is interesting to see what types of bread they had back then, and how they compare to modern bread. Cheers!
In Poland and Eastern Europe Rye Bread was and is still consumed.
Fun fact: In Sweden, where the staple crops were rye, barley and oats (and potatoes from about the middle of the 18th century), wheat bread was mostly seen as a festive food. Traces of this still remains in the language today as "vetebröd" (literaly "wheat-bread") is used as a categoric term for sweet breads or cakes such as cinnamon buns, semlor and saffron buns.
I've used this concept in my worldbuilding writing for a fantasy setting before, the idea of it being the norm to mix cereals and legumes in one form or another. Needing to soak the flour seems like it might logically be a hindrance to this practice being widespread, especially since I've written it as being used by soldiers and adventurers who pack their own flour (or dry grain plus a quern in the baggage train as a possible option for the former).
That said, from what I've been looking into, it seems like this problem is less common with lentils compared to other types of bean, which were a common legume in medieval Europe and was one I settled on as a common choice in said writing.
Of course, with a fantasy setting with completely different evolution, and plants being whatever you want them to be (from mixing and matching Old World and New World crops, to thinking up entirely fictional flora and deciding how that might affect agriculture), one could handwave it away as just the quirks of selective breeding leading down a different path than in history. But it is interesting to think about nonetheless.
Here in Germany rye bread is very popular. We call it "Graubrot" (Grey Bread) if it was made from 50%-90% made from rye flour. Or "Schwarzbrot" (Black Bread) if it was made from >90% of rye flour.
Rye was always easy to cultyvate since it is a hardy Grain which also grows on poor soil. It is resistant to cold and drought, so it offers more consistent harvests. The only downside is, that the yield per square meter is a little bit lower.
And the taste of rye bread made with sourdough very hearty. It keeps you full for a long time thanks to alot of fiber, and it is very easily digestible while having a high nutrirtional value especially on the minerals' side.
So rye also is a great alternative to wheat.
Du hast Recht, ciao aus Amerika.
Rye bread was voted as the national food of Finland in 2016. We have two very separate rye bread cultures: In the east the bread is like a thick and heavy loaf and in the west it's like a disc or vinyl record and it was also traditionally dried up against the ceiling. Several discs with a pole attached through them.
And a very pequliar Finnish dish is made of rye malt: mämmi.
That's really interesting, thank you! How do people eat the disks of rye? Do they soak them in sour milk first? @@66hss
@@ifyouloveChristyouwillobeyhim No need for moistening. It's not totally dry like crispbread is. Just swipe some butter on top and nowadays all slice of cheese/meat products and lettuce and voila!
Thanks, it's super cool to learn about your food! @@66hss
The sheer variety and quality of the b-footage in this video is really, really well done.
You define if we are not on tv we are way popular on UA-cam better to have quality rather than quantity..a handful of people that really resonate and enjoy what you do..than people who watch you as they don't have anything else to watch ..most loved channel on UA-cam..John Townsend is a class apart!!!
I go to our local brewer, and get a canning jar of barm. I works out really well to make whats called "Beer Bread" as the barm already has yeast in it. I've even used a Dutch Oven to make a crude bread when camping out in the wilderness. I really love my Dutch Oven. The last time I went camping I used my Dutch Oven to make a cake for someone who was celebrating a birthday.
Sounds like fun
What's your crude bread recipe, I''d love to try that. I saw a video where someone made fireloaves by just placing the flour straight on campfire coals and now I'm intrigued by camping breads
In Finland they also used ground pine bark as an ingredient for bread when wheat/rye was scarce. Certainly not good for you, but it did the trick.
Ezekiel flour/bread contains beans/lentils plus wheat/grains, which is very nutritious. Also sprouting the beans/lentils maybe a good alternative to soaking!
Great video John. Looks like people will need this information in the very near future.
Thanks for sharing with us Jon. That was interesting how folks worked that out so many years ago and now we can be thankful for the bakeries we have today. Stay safe and keep up the good work. Fred.
The bean plus whole wheat is a classic combination of grain plus legume makes a complete protein. Each of those ingredients provides about half the amino acids needed for humans to build and maintain muscles and organs, so bean bread is more nutritious than regular wheat bread. They both contribute significant amounts of a lot of vitamins and minerals as well, so as long as someone can find a source of vitamin C to prevent scurvy, you can survive quite well. For enough vitamin C many fresh greens have significant amounts, and most of them have at least some as long as they area eaten raw. Watercress is great for Vitamin C and raw cabbage in coleslaw, especially red cabbage is also quite good.
This combining for "complete protein" thing is an old myth. All plant foods have complete protein. You would have zero issues if all your protein came from grain or legumes alone. There is no need to combine them.
@@peterscott2662 This is correct in a modern context. The issue would be that, on a diet that was low in caloric intake (aka, poor people in ye’ olden rays), the amount of “complete” protein in any one given food may not be enough to sustain you. These days we have such a caloric surplus that it would be very difficult for someone in a westernized country to experience protein starvation even if they really did eat almost exclusively one food item. When folks were eating a single meal, though, there was a true need to get an efficient distribution of amino acids from the foods they ate. If you have 1000 calories worth of food and it won’t give you sufficient concentrations of a given nutrient essential to survival until you’ve had 2000 calories worth of said food: you will experience symptoms of malnutrition.
@@Doct0rLekter If you only have a 1000 calories, that's just starvation.
@@peterscott2662 I mean, yes, that’s half of my point. Namely that, in the context of poverty in the 1800s, people would not have many calories available to them in the first place. Therefore, efficient consumption of essential nutrients was critical at that time, but in today’s world would be completely meaningless thanks to a surplus of available calories. My selection of 1000 calories for my statement was mostly arbitrary, but was loosely based on a statement claiming a UCLA study showed 1,000 calories per day (plus or minus) was essentially the absolute floor of calories without literally starving to death. The veracity of that statement means nothing to my point, though, as I was merely picking 2 numbers to illustrate a point. If you have to eat at least x amount of a food to get the minimum nutrients for survival but you only have access to y amount, where y is less than x, then you would need to eat a food or combination of foods that could provide the necessary minimum nutrients while only eating y amount.
@@Doct0rLekterThere are still places in the world that don't have the abundance of food available in the US and there are low income people in the US and other countries who don't have the resources to buy much food, particularly meat, to get their needed nutrients. That's where using the most economical and convenient method of getting all the needed amino acids in adequate quantities is still important. Plus, a lot of those combinations are traditional because they work to keep people in at least moderately good health and they taste great. With the way food prices have, and still are, skyrocketing, more people are winding up needing to use foods other than meat to maximize nutrition while having less and less ability to buy food. It's not just back in the 18th and 19th that poorer people struggled to buy food, it's happening now right in the US, the UK, and other countries. The news about food price inflation outpacing people's ability to pay for food is disheartening to say the least.
And now wheat substitutes making an expensive return in today’s gluten-free market. I’m always fascinated by how today’s fancy food was poor food 2 centuries ago. I frequently blow people’s minds with the thing you mentioned in the fried lobster episode about prisoners complaining about being fed too much lobster.
I've been intrigued by "Amish flour." Flours made with squash and squash seeds are mixed with regular flour to reduce the cost of a loaf. Are there mentions of squash flour in any of your old texts?
That is intriguing and I'll be curious to hear too. Guess I know what baking experiments to try this winter! I'd think using squash and their seeds would make the bread far more nutritious than wheat alone too.
You mean like zucchini bread n pumpkin bread?
I love bread, especially hardy peasant bread (like a dense Italian loaf)!
I find it ironic that dense multi-grain bread (commonly associated with poor people and the lower class) are the types of artisan breads that are expensive today 😂
I've never heard of horse bread (or bean breads in general). So I learned something new today.
Thanks again! 🍞🍞🍞
"Run of the mill flour"
I love realizing things about idioms that I never thought about.
This channel is not only informative and interesting but ridiculously relaxing. Thanks
In France's most remote areas, buckwheat and chestnut flour were used, they aren't substitutes per se, but allow great bread and pancake recipes.
Buckwheat pancakes are wonderful.
Chestnuts were the staple of the Cevennes in southern France and chestnut flour was the peasant standard. Today it is very expensive.
Where I live, people used to put potatoes, and acorn (flour) into the flour they made the bread with, when they didn't have enough grain.
Watching this while eating bread.
Commented on your post while eating bread. 🍞🥐🥖
Dave’s good seed bread. Well toasted with a good spread of butter and a little bagel seasoning. Mmm!
Makes it more fun!
A bit off topic but still interesting I think:
here in Italy, especially in the Appennines, we used to have a lot of chestnut cultivation (many nowadays are abandoned, and the ones that are sell to us are mostly exported) It was a big component of poor people and farmers's diet. They would make flour, and with that bread, Tortelli alla lastra (traditionally filled with potatoes and pumkin and cooked on a slabs), Castagnaccio, and of course tosted "alla brace" or boiled chestnuts. Oh, and also soups and honey!
It kinda hurts knowing that the trees that fed our ancestors are know forgotten and completely tossed apart by imported chestnut. Many Italians don't even know the importance that this tree had in our history.
When I was at my poorest I lived a couple weeks on cream of wheat with dried figs cooked in (delicious) and a flatbread I’d make mixing flour and water with a little salt and frying pretty flat like a pita thickness. It wasn’t bad at all. I also had pickles and peanut butter I’d eat together. I got to where I was actually craving it all after work.
I wish you a great life full of wealth and health
Figs. Sounds tasty. Cooked with milk or water?
@@angelaparker4110 I did with water but I’m sure either way would be good 😊
@@Samdroid_ thank you so much and I wish the same for you ❤️
I love the natural lighting. I know that really limits when you can film. But, i do appreciate the added effort.
The interesting part about this alternative lies with the beans as they are high in protein, so essentially the lower classes were getting a protein-rich bread. Not only did the half wheat bread flour fill them up, but they also took in essential nutrients from the beans which made them healthier and stronger allowing them to carrying out their daily tasks being satisfied.
and a veggie
Hey they need it.
The local lord probably had a standing order for horse bread which in turn made it abundant on the manor. When the workers were hungry and had no food they could probably sneak into the horse bread storage area and take a loaf now and then. Over years a taste was acquired and people wanted it for themselves.
Love this channel, great content, well produced, with interesting and useful facts
what a wonderfully informative channel, thank you, from NYC👍
I have a wheat allergy. I soak great northern beans, rince them, then dry them in a dehydrator. Then grind them into flour. I rince quinoa (rice would work as well but I can't tolerate that either) and dry it. I mix the 2 flours. I find it to be a very versatile flour.
almond bread is my favorite w/ celiac, tons of proteinm good texture, and easy to grow assuming you have mature trees
i agree bean and quiona bread are good too though
Im gonna have to try this, not because of digeative issues but because it actually sounds good
@@NyasahiOxalic acid.....
@@dwwolf4636 I'll look that up.
My grocery store sells a bread that's mostly peas and seeds (and a little wheat). I quite like it, sadly my family doesn't.
I'm guess that would be gluten free.
Freeze it and enjoy a slice at a time. Let the family have what they like. 💖🌞🌵😷
@@Lazydaisy646, if it has a little wheat, it's not gluten free. 💖🌞🌵😷
Is it a flatbread? Yeast or soda risen?
@@adajanetta1 it's a regular loaf of dark sourdough bread with seeds i think, grocery stores in central europe always have a variety of those. Although I'm not sure what exactly the difference between regular yeast and that dry sourdough thing they use in modern breads is.
It's being sold as a protein bread though, not as a pea bread. It mostly tastes like regular bread, they just use the peas for their higher protein content.
I still make my own bread. Often with half wheat flour, half oats. I live in Sweden now (where every commercial loaf has canola oil in it and we don't want to eat that stuff) but I also grow my own rye, barley and oats on a garden scale, and have a small hand grinder. Back in the Orkney Isles, Barley bread (bere bread) is still made and sold. It's delicious, though more like a kind of bannock than loaf.
I suspect that "white peas" are chickpeas, or what you call garbanzo beans in the USA. They can be ground to a flour which is still widely used in the cooking of bread in the cuisines of the Indian subcontinent and called gram flour or "besan" in Hindi.
Makes sense 👍
While this certainly isn’t impossible, it’s entirely likely that they were referring to an actual white cultivar of pisum sativum, of which many varieties exist. It could also refer to what we call today navy peas or navy beans, which are sometimes confused with chickpeas. I’m sure if there was a clear answer, John and his team would have found it, so we’re not likely to ever know for sure what precise crop was being referred to.
Absolutely love your videos. I learn something every time I watch.
i have to repeat this over and over: this channel is a gem!
My grandmother's depression era bean biscuits: soak a pound of navy beans for soup, separate one cup beans and cook in plain water, separate from the soup, mash to a paste, and add to your biscuit dough, add extra baking powder if you can afford it, bake as usual, and keep cooked biscuits in your pocket for lunch so no one knows you're having something "extra". Really good for farm work when stopping for lunches is hard with all the work that needs done.
gem of a youtube channel i came across today
You know the day is good when Townsends uploads a new video.
I sure wish this channel went outside of food more often. I just love this kinda history telling so much. Townsend and his boys are so good
I like beans and have survived an entire Wynter on homemade baked beans twice a day.
I don't even like cooking and I don't eat gluten, but watching Townsends videos makes me happy.
Didn't know about horse bread in this detail. Might have to try that now with some of mine. I wonder how much a horse would eat in a day?
This channel is more interesting than the History channel.... Love this stuff.
There's a Finnish poem in which after a crop failure a man says to his wife "pane leipään puoli petäjätä" which translates to "put half pine into the bread" meaning to make pettu, a bark bread made by adding treated and ground up pine bark into rye flour. It was readily made in times of famine in Finland. It would be interesting to see you make and try it.
Fascinating ... well done!
Informative, supremely intelligent, superbly researched, professionally presented, decent and wholsome. Keep doing what you're doing, Jon.
I'm already eating the poor man's bread I got it from Dollar Tree
Where I'm from a pretty common substitute was pine tree bark added to bread during food shortages.
Even 18th century poor man’s bread would a lot more nutritious than 21st century poor man’s bread.
Yeah now the cheap stuff is processed white bread and whole wheat bread or bread made from other things is More expensive even if it is less processed than white.
@harrysatchel Modern breads are vitamin fortified though
@harrysatchel Foods can be fortified above their natural levels + they can be fortified with things the food doesn't naturally have. For example, folic acid and iodine in bread.
@@Mandragarasynthetic vitamins are of very little value, it just looks good on the package
@@wtglb Citation needed
White pea bread may have been made with either navy beans or chickpeas. It's hard to tell because they do look fairly similar and unfortunately in the 1700s it was common for them to both be called white peas.
Pease bread was often made with different kinds of ground dried peas/beans used with other grain flour to stretch the more expensive grain flour into more food.
Garbanzo bean bread is more likely what they were making, Socca is French chickpea-flour bread that is likely being referenced here.
Made some gonnoci the other day. Basically potato dumplings. Half flour half boiled potato bit of salt. Add some yeast and bake it you got potato bread.
beans makes good poridges so why even bother using them like wheat. poridges needs way less processing time anyway.
Wow extremely informative. Thanks for this Jon
Ezekiel bread is a mixture of many grains and it is a complete protein too. In the bible it talks about solely, barley, lentils, millet, kidney, pinto beans. I've seen recipes with different types of grains and beans but I don't think they soak the flour.
...and if you read further, you will note that he was to only eat that "bread" while laying on his side for 390 days and it had to be baked using human poop as fuel.
That's not much different from from other cultures that use dried animal poop for fuel.
Not the flour, but you have to soak the grains and beans. It's a sprouted bread. I have it on my list of new things to attempt this winter.
@@sharondesfor5151Interested to know how it'll go.
Your enthusiasm is awesome dude, love your work 🙂
The "poor man's bread" sounds like the best and most interesting kind
Whenever I bake bread, I always add in a bit of what I have on hand, as I'm not too much of a fan of pure wheat bread. Oats are great, just pour in some regular oatmeal, this works wonders for pie crusts as well, makes the crust more brittle and easier to cut. Barley and rye are good too, but not in too large a quantity, it gives a tougher, chewier bread but the taste of barley can be a bit of an oddity for some. Yesterday's leftover boiled rice is ideal, and something I discovered recently, just scoop it into the mix. Cans of beans (yes, even in tomato sauce) work well too, the beans are soft enough to get smushed up and a bit of tomatoes in bread is nothing odd.
What interesting ideas. Beans are way better tasting when wheat - and the idea of using them never came to me before... I don't see the problem or need to soak bean flour, I just mash some cooked beans just like I use mashed potato in some of my bread type baked items. What could possibly go wrong? :D But I probably could make split peas powder...
I bake bread every week (using a piece of my last one, it helps the taste and I need less yeast). Not a pure wheat bread, that would be boring and not tasty enough ;) I normally don't use oats but it's a very natural idea. But beans, that will be new... Maybe next time, I have just made my usual bread! ;)
I usually add oily seeds, they are quite tasty and more satiating for me than grains. There are zillion walnut trees (almost every garden has one or two, big ones) and lots of sunflowers in my country, they may be the cheapest additions for some.
Ha, I was just wondering that myself...using leftover cooked beans mashed.
Hmm. Once, I was served brownies made from chickpea flour. The usual issue with beans, and all the worse for being a surprise.
Nowadays, beans/peas are replaced with nuts. You do not need to soak them, they are not bitter and they do not cause bloating.
@@tatianaes3354 beans and others high fiber vegetables only cause bloating in people that don't eat enough fiber. i'm a vegetarian and i've literally never had gas or such issues from beans no matter how many i eat.
@@stellarfox5869 you are a lucky one. Most people do not produce ferments to process beans/peas, so gut bacteria end up eating them, what causes bloating. It is similar to intolerance to dairy products, which happens because people lose ferments to process lactose, thus leaving it to be eaten by bacteria that release gases as byproduct.
You never know what’ll happen in life. It’s good to know these kinds of things!
Your quality of production is so much better than PBS ever was, and your agenda really is simply understanding the past. Excellent!
Cattail pollen is high in protein and can be added to stretch flour.
Great video, always interesting to see what has changed and what has stayed the same in cooking.
Thank you James Mister Townsend for your further education your viewers. I had no idea there was such thing was horse bread. Hope to see you at the gun and knife or living history Expo in Kalamazoo Michigan soon.
Huh...I wonder if using beans would lead to a more active fermentation than flour alone since yeast *does* need more than just carbs to keep them fermenting. I also wonder if the bacteria in a sourdough starter wouldn't be happier w/ some amount of soaked, mashed up beans in the dough.
I do believe this calls for experimentation!
Love this channel!
"I'm hungry, father!"
"All we have is horse bread, do you want some?"
"Neigh, father, neigh..."
^-^
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
6:20 I'd never heard "run of the mill" applied literally before!
If you did, the beans like lentles or split peas, could the bread be seasoned like a soup?
Making almost a soup bread?
Just a crazy thought.
Or could the bean flower be used better in a quick bread like biscuits?
I like a lot of the information, and i LOVE the videography and film being shown, high-quality! --- I wish you EL5 "Explain like I'm 5." for making bread. --- But this is more like a documentary/informational video about different types of plants that make bread, which is great! - 8:40 is what I'm looking for, thanks!
Were leftover cooked beans ever used? I would think that you could mash the leftovers so that you would cook a pot of beans once and bake a batch of bread once.
When you're hungry there usually aren't any leftovers.
@@robertgt1858 You make an excellent point, however, I was considering that the person would be grinding and soaking the bean flour anyway, so why not just cook them with your bean dinner?
Thanks for sharing 🙏
Interesting video, I have also heard about nuts being used for bread in the Middle Ages, such as chestnuts. I wonder how nuts and also lentils would be for making bread?
Townsends in the morning feels good :)
The best bread to my taste is the one, which is baked of 100% rye, salt & water. Obviously, nowadays companies which produce the bread know that too, because good ryebread is much more expensive, than standard wheat bread.
Do you have a favorite recipe/ratio? Sounds great!
In Poland and Eastern Europe Rye Bread was and is still consumed.
@@kamilpotato3764 In Nordics too!
This is lovely. Chickpea flour is another type, but not sure how popular / readily available it was way back. Another great thing about bean and lentil based breads is that they're packed with plant based protein. Zero bad cholesterol and vile trans fats like animal based proteins have too, so you can eat a lot of it and no worries. As with other breads, just as versatile too, goes with pretty much anything, lush 😋😊
I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this and there's probably something obvious I'm missing, but doesn't it make more sense to soak the beans whole and then make a meal and mix that into the flour or bread mixture? That's a fairly common practice today.
He mentioned that, saying you'd have to let the beans dry out again before grinding.
It seems you haven't read my comment. I said make a meal, not grind.
Wow the thought of wheat bread in and of itself being a luxury is pretty horrific
Could easily make the bean flour into tortilla style flat bread. Herbs could be added for flavor.
The typical bread I make is from that which I can grow on my homestead. Wheat is not an option. I use Rye, Dent Corn ( nixtified and ground ), and ground or whole oats. This I set to ferment in salt and water for 4 days. Next I mix in more of the flours as well as 2 eggs, molasses, more salt; NextI form it into loaves which I let rise overnight. Then I cook in the oven at 375 for 55 minutes in standard loaf pans..( I don't measure anything so most times I end up with 2 standard loaves and a 10" cast iron pan full. When I do this in the Winter my oven because it is a wood cook stove is often hotter I put the bread in and check it starting at 40 minutes. This makes a dense bread. I would like to try this with the field peas which grow well here as do dry beans such as Rockwells, Orcas, or Abenaki skunk beans...
Sounds very interesting! Thank you.
@@AlasBabylon1 I am posting parched corn bread video later today..and then in a week or two my normal gf bread. My challenge is Sukey the frugal Frau. I also enjoy the woodland escape channel as well as Townsends.
@@sukeyfrugalfrau I will check it. Thank you.
I think Horse Bread goes back much further in history... Dark Ages, Medieval, Renaissance... Does anyone perhaps know this to also be historically true?
I had a specialty bakery bake up a similie of Horse Bread loaves to serve at a Renaussance Feast I hosted at a church. I explained it was what the lower classes ate and was also the most nutritious while the wealthy dined on white bread.
Well, he was a bit vague with "hundreds of years even in the 18th century" but if you go back ~500 years from the 18th century you're right in the middle of the Dark Age (Medieval refers to the Middle Ages which is when the Dark Age occurred) and the renaissance would pop off by the 15th century so it's pretty safe to assume this horse bread, even if not in the same form by this time, had been around for a while in cultures who used equines for travel.
@@kylegonewild thanks for your great response!
In Poland and Eastern Europe Rye Bread was and is still consumed.
My Grandma's mother ate bark bread as a child. The Civil War was a time of scarcity and famine. Can't imagine replacing 50% of the flour in bread with bark.
The bark part is doable with one tree I know of; the pine tree(certain species)is entirely edible, everything from the needles to the seeds and bark can be used for some medicinal purposes and for food.
@@kindelderson9838 alot of common coniferous trees (like pine) are edible. They are usually grounded to a fine saw dust and added to meals such as granola bars and bread for extra fiber and vitamins. Thats also how some companies make "fiber enriched" products
@@trulyidkman thanks for the additional info, didn’t know about the enrichment process they do with them.
@@kindelderson9838The edable part is called phloem. It is edable, but it has the following health risks:
- Dangerous expansion of the stomach
- Salt/water ratio is easily disrupted.
It has considerably high quantities of Al, Fe, Zn, and Co. It also has about 25% of the energy consetration of rye.
@@Tommuli_Haudankaivaja true there are some risk, but it’s still worth staving in a SHTF scenario.
I would think to get around the bean flour wetting issue, they would soak/boil the beans till soft and mash them. The use the mash to replace some of the wheat & water. It would be similar to adding apple sauce to sweet bread, tea bread, muffin or cookie recipes for flavor and sugar replacement.
A slice of tavern ham some onion and a spicy mustard maybe a bit of cheese and poof ! it's suddenly a poor man's feast 😋😊 love me some fresh baked bread 🍞❤