Barmy army

While continental European bakers largely continued their traditions of sourdough bread making, British bakers long saw any hint of sourness as a fault. Instead, they turned to brewers for the copious amounts of yeast-rich foam, known as barm, produced during beer making. Even though a commercial yeast process had been developed in Austria-Hungary in the late 1840s, British bakers continued with barm for much longer – references to “pints of yeast” in bakers’ manuals can be found into the 20th century. While this book doesn’t have a barm bread recipe, it does have one using trub, the yeast at the bottom of a brewing vessel.