Although seafood was the highlight of most of our meals in Newfoundland, I was equally impressed with the homemade breads. When we toured the Colony of Avalon archeological site in Ferryland, the kitchen docent even offered each visitor a piece of bread made from a 17th century recipe. It was as tasty as today’s homemade loaves.
As in many Northern countries and states in America, homemade yeast bread is a staple at any meal in Newfoundland. As renown chef James Beard says, “Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.”
While I make cornbread and banana nut bread, I’ve never tempted to make homemade bread calling for yeast. It always seemed more complicated than I wanted to try.
As we were served slice after slice of bread with our meals, I was reminded of two old tales in Margaret Applegarth’s Moment by Moment. In the first selection, she tells the story of a chemist imprisoned in a Japanese camp during WWII. The prisoners were fed a bare minimum of scraps. The chemist began to make yeast by exposing a solution of sugar to air. Trapping a few cells, he cultured them with more putrid food. Each cell multiplied its own weight 2,000 times every 24 hours. The prisoners fed the yeast the rotten food and ended up with a vitamin enriched substance to make them feel human again.
The second story occurred following WWII after the orphans had been gathered from European streets and provided housing and food. During the day, the children began to lose the fear and terror that had gripped them while living on the streets. But at night, they cried themselves to sleep. Then one worker had an idea. Each child was given a slice of bread to take to bed with him/her. From the start, the idea worked. Knowing that they had food for tomorrow, the children easily drifted off to sleep.
Ida J. Gillard in her Northern Newfoundland Cooking writes, “Many people shudder at the thought of making bread. They imagine it to be a long-drawn-out process and that one needs a special skill. In Newfoundland, bread wasn’t available from a bakery and one learned at an early age that making it was very easy.”
An old fashioned treat still popular in Newfoundland is Toutons. After bread dough has risen, the cook tears off egg size pieces of the dough and fries them. Served with butter and hot molasses, it is considered a favorite breakfast dish for children. We were served some in a restaurant.
Bread is called the staff of life because it is a very basic food that “supports” life. And we pray…”Give us this day our daily bread…”
2018
Comments