Welsh Bread and Cake Recipes from 1867

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From Good Cookery Illustrated by Augusta Llanover, 1867.

The Hermit's Rock Cakes

Four ounces fresh butter, six ounces fine sugar, six yolks of eggs, and one pound of flour; beat the butter to a cream, then add the eggs, the sugar, and the flour; mix into a stifle paste, and add four whites of eggs and beat all together well for a whole hour; add previously caraway seeds, or currants well plumped to the flour. Drop the mixture on the baking-tin in rough pieces about the size of a large walnut and the shape of little rocks. Bake in a quick oven for twenty minutes.

N.B.—Two persons are required to beat these cakes by turns for an hour. They keep well in tin boxes.

The Hermit’s Rice Bread

Six pounds of flour and one pound boiled cold rice well mixed through the flour; then add a quarter of a pint of barm; leave it to rise for half an hour then knead it with the water in which the rice was boiled, and in half an hour it is ready for baking, if the barm is good. Bake for an hour in a moderate oven.

Rice Bread (Another Sort)

Boil a quarter of a pound of rice till quite soft, put it on a sieve to drain, when cold mix it well with three-quarters of a pound of flour and a spoonful of barm; let it stand for three hours to rise, then knead it up, and roll it in about a handful of flour so as to make it dry enough to put in the oven; about an hour and a quarter will bake it. It should not be cut till a day or two old, and then looks like a honey-comb.

Apple Bread

Boil twelve apples till soft; core and peel them, break them up, and pulp through a sieve; put sugar to taste, and mix them with twice its weight of dough, and bake them in a very slow oven.

Good Family Bread (White)

Five pounds of fine bran to 8 pounds of flour.

Good Brown Bread

Two pounds of bran to four pounds of flour.

N.B. —The brown bread, or household bread of old times, is now hardly to be met with, and is rare even in Wales, the reason being that the millers do not grind and prepare the flour in the same way as formerly, when the pure corn, having been sent to be ground, was returned by the miller with the bran and flour altogether; and in every house there was a good-wife or widow, who sifted the flour required for each baking, removing only the large flake bran. Bread thus made is very superior in flavour to the bread now generally used, but where the above plan cannot be followed, it is best to mix fresh sifted bran with the flour. The flavour of bread is in the bran, and in the absence of bran it is flavourless, much less wholesome, and not at all more nourishing.

Welsh Pan or Pot Bread

Take three pounds and a half of brown flour (flour which has only had the coarser bran taken out of it), put it to rise with about two tablespoonfuls of barm, and, when risen, mix it and knead it in the usual manner; then put it into an iron pot or a thick earthen pan, and turn it topsy-turvy on a flat stone, which should be placed on the ground in the middle of a heap of hot embers, made by burning wood, peat, or turf; cover the pot or pan entirely over with hot embers, leave it to bake, and when the ashes are cold take it out. This mode of baking produces most excellent bread, but of course it cannot be practised economically except where such rural. operations are carried on as provide the necessary quantity of hot embers for other purposes within a convenient distance of the house.

Oatmeal Cakes

Make a stiff paste with oatmeal and water or skim milk; then form it into balls with the hand about the size of small eggs; then shape with the hand round and round to the size of a small cheese-plate or large saucer; when one oat-cake is formed the right shape and thickness, turn it and shake dry oatmeal all over it; then take another, put it in the middle of the oat-cake you have made and form that in the same manner upon the first made; when well tempered, turn it, and shake dry oatmeal all over it, and proceed in the same way until you have got eighteen oat-cakes one on the other, remembering that each must be turned, and that dry oatmeal must be put between every one, and they must be turned and returned, and shaped with the hand, until they are all of the same texture, as thin as is possible without breaking.

When dry enough to put on the bake-stone (heated to the required point which practice alone can teach), bake them one at a time; have a clean cloth folded to the proper shape, and press the cake down flat on the bake-stone, where it should remain until it is of a nice light brown colour.

The upper side of the cake is to be glazed before it is taken off the bake-stone; the glaze is made with egg and milk, and a little sugar is generally added, but that is only a matter of taste; some persons like a little sugar mixed with the oatmeal of which the cakes are made. As each cake is taken off the bake-stone it is laid across the rolling-pin that it may dry in a hollow shape; and as each cake becomes hard and crisp, they are again put one on the other, and are always served and kept in a pile.

The rolling-pin must not be used in making these cakes, all must be done with the hand, and they must be flattened and worked round and round with the hand until they are almost as thin as a wafer. Great skill and dexterity, as well as practice, are necessary to make these cakes well, which when once attained, the process is very quickly executed. The thin Welsh-oat cake is particularly wholesome, and often agrees with invalids of weak digestion better than bread; they are sometimes eaten with cold butter or cheese, or eaten dry with milk or tea.

Thick Welsh Barley Cakes

Take fine barley meal and make into a stiff dough with skim milk; roll out to the size of a small bake-stone, about three-quarters of an inch thick, and bake. It is eaten with cold butter.

Thin Welsh Barley Cake

Mix fine barley meal and milk together to the consistency of batter, and pour slowly on the bake-stone out of a jug until it has formed a circle the size of a small plate, then let it bake slowly. It ought to be very thin but soft, like a pancake or a pikelate; it is likewise eaten with cold butter.

Cil Gover Buns

One pound of flour, two ounces of currants well plumped, quarter of an ounce of sugar, and a tablespoonful of barm. Melt an ounce of butter in a quarter of a pint of milk; glaze with the yolk or white of an egg. The above quantity will make twelve buns.

Mix the barm into the flour with a little warm milk, and leave it to rise for half an hour; then knead, and let the dough rise for one hour before baking. Bake twenty minutes in a moderate oven.

Teisen Frau Gwent a Morganwg (Short Cakes of Gwent and Morganwg)

One pound of flour, three ounces of currants well picked and washed, a little sugar (and spice if liked); mix into a thick batter with one pint of sheep's milk-cream, butter the tin of a Dutch oven and drop it in and bake before the fire. Care must be taken in turning; It can be cut in any shape. Cream of cows'-milk may be used, but sheep's-milk cream Is best for these cakes. A variety of the Teisen Frau are made by rubbing six ounces of butter in one pound of flour and two teaspoonfuls of sugar made into a stiff dough with new milk, or sheep's-milk cream; roll it out half an inch thick, and cut to size required; bake on a bake-stone, or before the fire in a Dutch oven.

Llanover, Augusta. Good Cookery Illustrated and Recipes Communicated by the Welsh Hermit of the Cell of St. Gover, with Various Remarks on Many Things Past and Present. Richard Bentley, 1867.

Augusta Llanover

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