Goddisgoode Bread
Strange Tales
In England in the 1468 - 9 Brewers Book of Norwich, the name for barm was goddisgoode because it was made by the blessing of God. In the absence of understanding, God was invoked as the great provider.
In the 17th Century, the Paris Faculty of Medicine spent months debating whether bakers should be allowed to use beer barm for their bread. They eventually decided that it would be injurious to health, based on the fact that St Paul, in I Corinthians v, 7 signified that it was a corrupt substance. They banned it. Nobody seems to have taken much notice and bakers continued to use barm for the fine light bread that the gentry demanded. Bread made using the ancient sourdough methods remained the staple food of the masses.
Until the early years of the 19th Century, British cookery books included instructions for brewing, as well as baking, as a matter of course. Beer-making was the sole reliable source of baking yeast. The barm from wine-making tends to be very bitter and therefore rarely used for baking. Housekeepers were urged to ensure that the beer barm that they used to leaven their bread was not bitter, stale or too strongly flavoured with hops. Washing it was crucial. The quantities and quality of beer barm varied from one batch to the next, so the cookery books were unable to be specific about either. It was down to the experience of the cook to produce both a good beer and an acceptable loaf of bread.
An excerpt from https://h2g2.com/entry/A2663110
Thanks for posting that. Not a lot of difference between making beer and bread. If I ever get too broke in my retirement, I know I can always afford to make beer and bake bread.
I believe that because many houses brewed beer which, from the article suggests, was done for bread baking as well this is how public houses was born. Or the pub as we know it.
Also kinda makes you wonder what all those monks were up to!
"It's for bread baking, honest"!
"and for the ladies" (I think hops was/is recommended for nursing mothers) -- more useless miscellania stashed on the hard drive…
Throughout history, ever since man discovered that barm is where the yeast was to make bread, sourdough has always taken a seat way in the back of the bus when it came to bread making. Beer was the drink of the masses and the upper crust elite drank wine. The masses ate bread almost entirely made with barm - not sourdough. The elite ate white bread and masses ate darker bread but both were made with barm. There were exceptions like rye bread made in Russia, Germany and Scandinavian countries or where there wasn't beer being made. But like today, almost all bread was made with barm. The reason was simple. Barm was cheap and easy to get just about everywhere, it was way more predictable and took way less time and effort to make but those were not the main reason. The main reason, like today, most people do not like sour bread and prefer their bread not to be sour.
A very good case can be made that today is the Golden Age of Sourdough bread making and we are at the forefront of this golden age taking sourdough to places never seen before. But even today, like always, almost all bread made is not sourdough.
But my limited knowledge of bread in Britain fits into what you said about barm bread. That's why many homes brewed their own beer. Meant you had ready to go yeast handy. A scoop of goddisgoode, flour and salt... etc.
I like to think this site has helped ushur in the golden age of sourdough.
why bakeries were found right next to a brewery - even from ancient times. The latest example is then the Romans were colonizing the southern coast of France they left behind a recently dug up Roman ruin where the bakery was inside the brewery itself.
Hmmm...what a way to maintain a starter. Scoop up the barm and then, instead of discarding half your starter you drink all your beer. Them ol'-timers shore knowed their stuff. "Hey Harry, I'm powerful thirsty. Lets bake us a loaf."
of beer where the yeast has not been killed off in the beer making process, pour a glass trying to get a hood head, scrape off the head and use that to make a poolish for bread. It is the way most bread was made for thousands of years.
Now that I'm through being silly I'd like to ask a serious question or two. Where did barm come from? Was it originally cultured for each batch from the grain used for the beer or was it maintained separately through time by the brewery? If it was maintained through time by the brewery how does it differ from a sourdough starter maintained by a baker?
I'm interested too so I hope someone can answer. I think if starting this as a new forum topic gets it noticed more then you should do so.