Considered one of the most fertile colonies of the 13 original, Pennsylvania Germans, French, Swiss (PA Dutch) and English immigrants turned the East Penn Valley into America’s “Garden of Eden” by the turn of the 19th Century. In 1809, energetic John Knabb built an imposing huge gristmill in the lower Oley Valley following in the expensive Georgian architectural design of Philadelphia by implementing an elegant pedimented doorway unheard of in the milling trade. Ephraim Bieber, the last miller to operate this water-powered mill, used a snail water wheel for power as late as the 1990s.
Farmers with Rhineland ancestry clung to planting by the phases of the moon (Zodiac), but cultural interaction in the Market Fairs of Philadelphia educated PA Dutch, as well, and the 1785 Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture was joined by local farmer intellectuals who witnessed its educational benefit. The self-sufficient Pennsylvania Dutch families of the past, often distant from civilization, did not attempt to flirt with misfortune and compiled a large number of folk proverbs over the generations. The following proverbs were popular among these people, as they pertained to the most vital of all life’s needs, bread:
1. If you sweep the kitchen on baking day, the bread will not rise.
2. When starting yeast, add the names of three capable women.
3. Funnel cakes should be made after all grain has been threshed; else the flour made of that grain will not bake.
4. Do not lay a loaf of bread on its round side; it makes the angels weep.
5. If you overturn a loaf of bread in the oven, you will have a death in the house.
6. If the crust of a loaf of bread cracks in the middle, it forebodes a death in the family.
7. Bread baked on Ascension Day will not get moldy.
8. If a cow has lost its appetite, feed it some stolen bread.
9. If you accidently place a loaf of bread on its head, you will have a quarrel that day.
10. If the bake oven sings, it is an omen of death.
11. A woman should not plant peas or beans on the day that she does her baking.
12. A woman who cuts thick slices of bread will make a good stepmother.
The kitchen, still the most important room in the house, was now a bakery and part-time dining hall to feed the numerous family members and farm help who milked the cows, harvested crops and made hay; all sat down to eat together at the large farm kitchen table at the sound of the dinner bell. And soon, the huge walk-in fireplace was replaced by 19th century cast iron kitchen wood stoves. With its modern facility to have an ongoing fire box heat the oven, it continuously enabled many a “pie-crazed” cook to fill her tin pie safe with all types of goods (still baked on Friday) with bread for the week ahead.
The old bake-oven, usually located near the vegetable garden where its ashes did the most good as fertilizer, was still used, but to dry vegetables such as corn and Schnitz in wooden racks, they were custom made for its large hearth. Many students locally, nowhere near as much in recent years, had a summer job as a hired farm worker, especially at harvest time. I’d imagine many felt their wages did not equal the hard work, however, most of the boys who worked for the older traditional farm families would admit that part of their compensation was the privilege to still eat home cooked, mouth watering PA Dutch cuisine at the farmer’s table for lunch and sometimes dinner.
This culinary experience made up for the hard work, and everyone was appreciative. There are few culinary treats in life that can compare with the aroma and mouth-watering taste of oven-fresh baked bread spread with butter, a weekly chore of yesteryear. Bread was once baked by the score on Pennsylvania Dutch homesteads and filled entire pantries as it cooled before storing. The sheer sight of its delectable quantity weakened the most miserly of appetites.
Richard L.T. Orth is assistant director of the American Folklife Institute in Kutztown.