Although pies, puddings and pottages make up the majority of the recipes for this site, it would be foolish to ignore those foods that were griddled or baked, especially bread, which was probably the most important staple in the British diet. In the Iron Age bread was, on the whole, griddled over an open fire and was unleavened. The only means of leavening bread was to infuse the flour and water with yeasts from the air – sourdough. From Anglo Saxon times the yeast for leavening bread, known as ‘barm’, was a by-product of the ale and beer making process. By the beginning of the nineteenth century it was possible to filter the ‘barm’ and press it into blocks and this is what is used for bread making to this day. Cake-making, as we now know it, only began to be possible in the early nineteenth century with the introduction of baking powder. Cakes were fundamentally breads, risen with yeast and sweetened with fruit, honey and later sugar. In the eighteenth century other methods of creating a sponge cake began to be introduced. The combination of bicarbonate of soda and acids such as vinegar or buttermilk was sometimes used but another method, which resulted in a more delicate consistency, was to beat egg whites, thus trapping air in tiny bubbles which were then mixed in with the egg yolks, sugar and flour and similar to a genoise sponge. With the invention of baking powder by Alfred Bird in 1843, creating a light and airy sponge cake became much more straight forward and is a method that continues to be used today.
