Bread of Rice: A fresh look at an old standard

Dr. David Shields

In preparation for the rice bread contest that will highlight the Carolina Gold Rice Symposium in August it might be worthwhile to look back to its origins and the original method of its making. Chapter 7 of Karen Hess’s celebrated The Carolina Rice Kitchen is devoted to Rice Breads of various sorts. There are three brief recipes from the late 18 th and early 19 th centuries, but sparse instructions on the method of preparation and baking from original sources. Recently I unexpectedly came across a heretofore unknown and thorough description of the method dating 1803, translated from a French source, and derived from “the natives of America.” The account confirms a number of Hess’s canny suppositions about the character of the first leavened pure rice breads. Here for you hearth and brick oven cooks, is a complete and exact method for “Bread of Rice”

Bread of rice might occasionally be of great use in many countries during a scarcity of wheat; but the method of making it is not generally known. It is indeed impossible to make bread from the flour of rice, which is harsh and dry like sand or ashes, by treating it in the manner in which wheat flour is generally treated; and therefore it has been proposed to mix it with an equal quantity of the flour of rye. But this method of using the flour of rice is a very uncertain remedy in time of want; since we can have no rice bread if we have not rye. We are taught, however, in the Journal des Sciences, des Lettres, and des Arts, how to make excellent bread from rice alone, by a method which the author of the memoir says he learned from the natives of America.

According to this method of making the wished-for bread, the first thing to be done to the rice is to reduce it to flour by grinding it in a mill, or, if we have not a mill it may be done in the following manner: Let a certain quantity of water be heated in a saucepan or cauldron; when the water is near boiling, let the rice we mean to reduce to flour be thrown into it; the vessel is then to be taken off the fire, and the rice left to soak till the next morning. It will then be found at the bottom of the water, which is to be poured off, and the rice put to drain on a table in an inclined position. When it is dry, it must be beat to a powder, and passed through the finest sieve that can be procured.

When we have brought the rice into flour, we must take as much of it as may be thought necessary, and put it in the kneading-trough in which bread is generally made. At the same time we must heat some water in a saucepan or other vessel, and, having thrown into it some handfuls of rice, we must let them boil together for some time; the quantity of rice must be such as to render the water very thick and glutinous. When the glutinous matter is little cooled, it must be poured upon the rice-flour, and the whole must be well kneaded together, adding thereto a little salt, and a proper quantity of leaven. We are then to cover the dough with warm cloths, and to let it stand that it may rise. During the fermentation, this paste (which, when kneaded, must have such a proportion of flour as to render it pretty firm) becomes so soft and liquid that it seems impossible that it should be formed into bread. It is now to be treated as follows:

When the dough is rising, the oven must be heated; and, when it is of a proper degree of heat, we must take a stewpan of tin, or copper tinned, to which is fixed a handle of sufficient length to reach the end of the oven. A little water must be put into this stewpan, which must then be filled with the fermented paste, and covered with cabbage or any other large leaves, or with a sheet of paper. When this is done, the stewpan is to be put into the oven and pushed forward to the part where it is intended the bread will be heated; it must then be quickly turned upside down. The heat of the oven acts upon the paste in such a way as to prevent its spreading, and keeps it in the form the stewpan has given it.

In this manner pure rice bread may be made; it comes out of the over of a fine yellow color, like pastry which has yolk of eggs over it. It is as agreeable to the taste as to the sight; and may be made use of, like what-bread, to be put into broth, &c. It must, however, be observed, that it loses its goodness very much as it becomes stale.

It may be here remarked, that the manner in which Indian corn is used in some countries, for making bread, can only produce (and does in fact produce) very bad dough, and of course very bad bread. To employ it advantageously, it should be treated like rice; and it may then be used, not only for making bread, but also for pastry.

Supplement to the Enclyclopedia or Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1803). Vol. 1: 146-147.

David S. Shields, Ph.D., is Professor of English and History and the McClintock Professor of Southern Letters at the University of South Carolina.