Fort York - For Baking, Not Battles!
The bake oven at Fort York. Once the flames subside and the coals have heated the oven until its domed roof turns white, the coals are raked out and the floor of the oven given a wash with hot water. Then the oven is ready for bread and pies - baked goods that require a high heat. Cakes and cookies such as macaroons follow as the oven begins to cool down.
So, there was considerable allure when Mya Sangster, herself a volunteer historic cook at Fort York, but one with enormous experience, knowledge and generosity, offered to tutor volunteers with a day-lonh bake-oven workshop in the Officers' Mess Kitchen at the Fort.
- Mya Sangster, volunteer historic cook extraordinaire, tips a Sally Lunn loaf out onto a period-perfect wooden rack to cool. For our day at the Fort, most of the prep work was done on these long wooden tables in the the Officers' Mess Kitchen as it would have been back in the 1820s when cooks laboured daily over a hot fire preparing dinner for officers. The kitchen, furbished with period cooking equipment, and most days the scene for historic cooking, is a highlight for visitors to Fort York.
The deal was for us to learn how to fire up the oven, and when it was hot enough (tested by holding your arm into the oven - 10 seconds is about 400°F/200°C), to bake the various dishes Mya had chosen from late 18th or early 19th century cookbooks. Her list was long, and ambitious, involving a pork and apple pie, a turned-out apple and potato pie, soft gingerbread, seed cake, a tart with tamarind balls tucked into the custard filling, two kinds of bread, macaroons, bread pudding and baked apples - all from cookbooks true to the period. The principal source was the 18th century cookbook The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by the esteemed Hannah Glasse. The cooks were eager.
We learned about the bake-kettle. Cooks of the period often used a stand-alone bake kettle, raised up on trivet, and heated from below with coals raked out of the fire onto the brick extension in front of the hearth. The bake kettle was a convenience when "putting on the oven" required hours more work than turning the dial or pressing to select temperature and time. The kettle was a convenience as well when the bake oven was already full of bread, cakes and pies, as was ours that day of historic baking bee.
Coals below and coals above ensure even heat all round the item being baked. The lid, like the bottom of an oval box, fits into the kettle, and is deep enough to hold a generous layer of coals. Our apples, made according to a recipe called "Black Caps" baked up golden brown - no burnt apples for the volunteers under the tutelage of Mya Sanster.
Although modest, the Black Caps, back left, are a good example of a dessert made in a bake kettle. The recipe comes from an early 19th century British cookbook, widely used on Canada, "A New System of Domestic Cookery" by Maria Eliza Rundell. It reads: "Halve and core some fine large apples, put them in a shallow pan, strew white sugar over, and bake them. Boil a glass of wine, the same of water, and sweeten as for sauce."
Volunteer Daphne Hart and I had the privilege of making a pudding with appeal that reaches across the centuries. Its origins as a thrifty way to use up bread - Bread Pudding has a homey comforting appeal, especially when served with a pouring custard or cream. The original recipe from Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Simple was based on a 6 penny loaf (about 6 oz/185 g), this 2009 version, is based on a loaf of best quality sandwich bread with a tight crumb and honest flavour of wheat. No spongy air-head bread for this pudding. The loaf can weigh anywhere between 12 oz (375 g) and 1 lb (500 g) with the heavier loaf leaving leftover slices for toast ... or sandwiches. Ace Bakery makes such a loaf, as does Cobbs, the Australian bakery recently arrived in Canada. If you can get an unsliced loaf, do use it as you can slice it thinner than presliced bread. The recipe below is adapted from the original.
Bread Pudding
12 thin slices white sandwich bread
1/2 cup (50 mL) soft butter
1/2 cup (125 mL) currants
5 large eggs
1/2 cup (125 mL) granulated sugar
1 tsp (5 mL) freshly grated nutmeg
Pinch salt
3 cups (750 mL) milk
. Butter a 13- x 9-inch (3 L) glass baking dish or shallow ovenproof dish of similar volume; set aside.
. Stack bread on cutting board; trim thin layer of crust of all edges. Cut crosswise into triangle. Lightly butter all triangles.
. Arrange half of the triangles neatly over the bottom of the baking dish. Sprinkle with half of the currants. Cover with a second layer of bread and butter trianges, and a sprinkle of currants. (Note that for the photos taken at Fort York, Daphne Hart and I overlapped whole bread slices to fit an oval dish.) Set aside.
. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs with the sugar, nutmeg and salt. Whisk in the milk. (Hannah Glasse suggests you can put in 2 spoonfuls of rose water, a widely available flavouring before vanilla took over in the mid 19th century.) Pour evenly over the prepared bread in the baking dish. Let stand for 30 minutes or until the bread has soaked up almost all of the egg mixture.
. Bake in centre of 375°F (190°C) until domed and golden, and a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean, about 40 minutes.
. Let stand for 5 minutes before serving. Makes 8 servings.
Bread Pudding - Sounds so ordinary. But it touches an inner soft spot whenever it comes out of the oven, golden and puffy, with all the flavours of Mom and love.
For more information about historic buildings and their kitchens, check out www.toronto. ca/culture/museums.htm
Tags: Does your family make a recipe that goes back to the 19th century?
May 19th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
I've made Sally Lunn bread in my bread machine, it didn't look as fine as that great loaf you have pictured but the egg in the mix sure does produce a lovely, rich bread. Speaking of bread, I want bread pudding now
I prefer cinnamon to nutmeg but cooks preference and sultana to currants but totally doing the rest of the ingredients LOL:D I can't imagine trying to regulate, let alone bake with a wood oven, pizzas sure, but bread and pies and cookies... I bow to you and your friends of the museum. Must be hot, sweaty work. At least you get to eat the goodies too 
May 19th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
I have made bread pudding with the bread from Ace bakery. It is devine! The texture is perfect...not soggy, but cake like once cooked. What a joy it must be to be able to understand cooking so well, that one can tell when the oven is ready by how long you can keep your arm it it! That is when cooking becomes a true art!