This is an excerpt from a recollection of bread in the 1840s, when
the potato crop failed and bread was at 1 shilling and 6p a loaf when
wages were at 1 shilling and fourpence a WEEK. This memoir describes
a problem with the bread of that era that is very widely reported:
"We mostly lived on bread, but it wasn't bread like ee get now; twas
that heavy and doughy ee could pull long strings of it out of your
mouth. They called it gravy bread."
Other memoirs relate the failure of the bread to 'set up' to the fact
that the corn [wheat] had sprouted while in store.
Does anyone have any clue why this particular kind of bread failure
might be? I had tentatively thought that the flour might not be
properly oxidized, since people used to gather the corn in the
fields, mill it and then immediately eat the results. But does this
work? And if not, any other ideas?
Many thanks!