Bread for soldiers in 1821 manual

General Regulations for the Army included instructions for quartermasters to inspect the bakery and officers were to read articles on "Baking" in encyclopaedias. Printed in Phila.

Thanks to all those in the military and veterans.


Today: 11/11/11 - WWI Ceasefire at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month (Nov) - Armistice Day, Remembrance Day (UK), Veteran's Day (US)

1. Bread and soup are the great items of a soldier's diet in every situation: to make them well is, therefore, an essential part of his instruction. Those great scourges of a camp life, the scurvy and diarrhoea, more frequently result from a want of skill in cooking, than from the Sadness of the ration, or from any other cause whatever. Officers in command, and more immediately regimental officers, will therefore give a strict attention to this vital branch of interior economy, with a view to which, as well as to multiply their resources in time of siege or scarcity, they will do well to read the articles "Baking," and "Bread," in the different Encyclopaedias.

2. The colonel will frequently cause the quartermaster or quartermaster sergeant to visit the bakery, and to inspect all the materials of which the soldiers' bread is made. It is also prudent to send occasionally a well qualified man to watch over the process of kneading, to guard against the mixing of cheap but deleterious substances with the dough, as damaged flour, &c.

3. No quartermaster or quartermaster sergeant can be deemed instructed in his duties, until he has followed up, once at least, the whole process of converting a barrel of flour into good bread.

4. A barrel, or 196 pounds of flour, when in dough, holds about 11 gallons, or 90 pounds of water, 2 gallons yeast, and 3 pounds salt, making a mass of 305 pounds, which evaporates in kneading, baking and cooling, about 40 pounds, leaving in bread weighed, when stale, about 265 pounds.

5. The weight and quality of bread will be frequently and carefully verified. Its quality will be judged by colour, smell, and still more, by taste.

6. Bread ought not to be burnt, but baked to an equal brown colour. The crust ought not to be detached from the crum. On opening it, when fresh, one ought to smell a sweet and balsamic odour.

7. In making biscuits or hard bread, the evaporation is about fifty-four pounds, so that the barrel of flour yields but one hundred and eighty-two pounds of biscuits. Double baked bread loses, in like manner, about ninety-five pounds, and keeps much longer than that which is singly baked.

8. The troops ought not to be allowed to eat soft bread fresh from the oven, without first toasting it. This process renders it nearly as wholesome and nutritious as stak bread.

13. The choice of water for bread, soup, or for boiling vegetables, is essential. As far as practicable, limpid water, without scent or peculiar taste, and which dissolves soap freely, only will be used. River or rain water is preferable to that of springs, wells or ponds. Hard or dry vegetables, as pulse and rice, cannot be well cooked in water that rests on, or passes over, calcareous earths.

18. The difference between bread and flour being about 33 1/3 per centum on flour, the troops will bake their own bread as often as practicable, and the saving operated thereby carried to the debit of the post or regimental fund.

Source: General Regulations for the Army: Or, Military Institutes. Philadelphia: M. Carey and Sons, 1821. p44-47

Image: "Baking bread for the fighters in the trenches." 1919 stereograph by Keystone View Company. Library of Congress

UPCOMING TALKS - deleted


CALENDAR OF VIRTUAL FOOD HISTORY TALKS HERE

©2024 Patricia Bixler Reber
Researching Food History HOME