As we look back more than 250 years of American history, certainly nobody thinks about the history of bread, certainly not Colonial bread.
I’d think most people realize the spongier type of bread manufactured today is not the same bread as yesteryear, let alone centuries ago. Expanding on my initial thought, it becomes even more interesting when one realizes that our forefather’s wives baked bread only once a week (Friday), and did not have plastic wrappers of today to keep it fresh. Most quizzical to me is how did they ship bread from the Colonial port of Philadelphia across the Atlantic Ocean and still have it palatable?!
It’s reasonable to assume that pies were stored in the various surviving pie-safes, some made with beautiful pierced tin designs and hung from cellar ceilings. So where was the bread kept then; in the cellar as well? But to store a whole week’s supply of bread would be a considerable amount for a large family and to keep it as from as possible, how? No worries, this pondering I have has yet to be solved, only speculated upon, and obviously not by the masses. But changing to other edible treats, as discussed further in an earlier article this month by our Institute concerns our important apple culture our ancestors had.
Among the Pennsylvania Dutch there existed the practice of storing apple butter in an open gallon crock, and then sealing it tightly by tying newspaper down over the top of the crock. It was then placed in the attic to be stored for months. When opening such a crock of stored apple butter, after several months, it would have formed a thick hard crust. The hardest part of this crust was then cut away, and the remaining portion was placed in a pot and heated, while adding a small amount of water and sugar. In a short time the thick mass again becomes a smooth and tasty treat as it was before, and with no refrigeration or freezing needed. Quite a trick was Grandma’s folk knowledge of preparing food and storing it and has become a lost art, as well. Well, people still can and can made their own wine and that M…. drink.
But many Pennsylvania Dutch farmsteads in our area (East Penn and Oley Valleys) had a variety of apple orchards that provided domesticated food dishes for these ethnic natives, including sweet cider, or “cider twice” (hard cider), which was transported to the port of Philadelphia by Conestoga wagons where farmers made a significant profit, as much of it purchased by wealthy sea captains who exported their cargo to distant lands. They were also a number of farmers who sold household vinegar at the Port as well. Many fair-sized farms had sizable one or two-screw cider presses upon which apple mulch was squeezed into barrels of cider, then stored in a giant vaulted cellar until it was shipped to Philadelphia or processed into vinegar.
One of the fascinating stories our Director (Dick Shaner) had told me over years concerned this subject and on the estate of John Lesher’s Oley Forge operation. Among the cargos Colonel Lesher sent to Philadelphia was a substance he ambiguously called, “Cider Twice” that most likely was his nickname for hard cider that was popular among the native peasants in Colonial days. But the fact that there were so many (Oley) farmers with large wooden cider presses leads me to the conclusion that a variety of mixtures could’ve been prevalent that made people intoxicated! Obviously, apple pies were a universally loved popular desert shared by everyone, and homemade apple butter was used to spread on a number of meats and dishes (even with crushed native walnuts).
But perhaps life in the “good old days” and before in Colonial times was made a little easier by this Cider twice; or not quite as harsh as some historians would have us believe, although it seems incomprehensible to think otherwise. There are still early ledgers (very early 1800’s) in private hands I have had the luxury of knowing about that list the day to day work life at the furnace that may have been compromised with this beverage treat, perhaps likened to Apple jack of New Jersey. Maybe more credit should be given to fellow Ironmaster and Revolutionary War hero, Daniel Udree, for banning spirits from workers on his forge, but that’s another story…column in this case!
Richard L.T. Orth is assistant director of the American Folklife Institute in Kutztown.
