Tim W wrote:
> This interesting recipe caught my eye:
>
> http://www.mrsbeeton.com/35-chapter35.html (and scroll down) or
>
> Common Seed-Cake
> 1775. INGREDIENTS - 1/2 quartern of dough, 1/4 lb. of good dripping, 6 oz.
> of moist sugar, 1/2 oz. of caraway seeds, 1 egg.
>
> Mode.-If the dough is sent in from the baker's, put it in a basin covered
> with a cloth, and set it in a warm place to rise. Then with a wooden spoon
> beat the dripping to a liquid; add it, with the other ingredients, to the
> dough, and beat it until everything is very thoroughly mixed. Put it into a
> buttered tin, and bake the cake for rather more than 2 hours.
>
> Time.-Rather more than 2 hours.
>
> Average cost, 8d.
>
> Seasonable at any time.
>
>
>
> We baked this at the weekend. It's one of several recipes she has for making
> a cake from bread dough.
>
> A 'quatern' is 4 lb of dough, so 500g flour, 350g water, salt and yeast
> makes nearly 2lb, kneaded and left for a couple of hours. I didn't think I
> could enjoy a cake made with rendered animal fat so sadly abandoned
> authenticity and replaced the dripping with butter. I would imagine hard
> work to combine butter and sugar with dough by hand but easy in a mixer. My
> dough was 70% hydration and possibly a little wet once the extra ingredients
> were added. It was liquid enough to pour into the tin and we left it 30mins
> to rest before baking with extra seeds on top.
>
> 2hrs seems like a long time to bake a cake.After 1.5 hrs a skewer was coming
> out dry so we removed the cake and detinned it to cool. The outside was
> slightly overdone and the inside slightly underdone, so I guess 2hrs would
> be right but you would have to reduce the temp and maybe protect the top
> with foil if it was in the oven that long.
>
> A cake of pleasing appearance with a cracked copper crust on top. Too crusty
> to cut like a cake (radially) so better in a square loaf tin. Unusual in
> taste. Seed Cake must have been common enough in 1860 but you never see it
> now. A nice flavour from the Caraway seeds and the crust. Not too sweet, in
> fact by modern standards very low in sugar and fat (for a cake). Might well
> do it again.
>
> Tim W
>
>
That IS interesting. I have run across cakes made from bread
dough before but haven't tried them.

--
Jean B.