Bread: Overview: American White Bread

Though bread was also made from rye, barley, oats, rice, and buckwheat—even potatoes and pumpkin—the preferred grain was always wheat. Bakers arrived early on; in 1621, Jamestown’s statutes regulated them. But for a long time most bread was homemade, sometimes in pans, on the hearth, or in Dutch ovens, later in brick ovens and, by the mid-nineteenth century, stoves. One result was that bread was often served hot. The English had used the barm (yeast) from ale as a leaven; in America, others included sourdough, homemade yeast from malt, potatoes, or hops and, as it became available, compressed yeast. Many Americans, like the English (and the Dutch), disliked the hard crust prized by the French and others; cookbooks described how to obtain a soft one. Milk, reserved in Europe for luxury breads, was often used instead of water. Otherwise, until late in the nineteenth century, American bread did not differ radically from European bread.