Name: An Improvement in the Manufacture of Bread, Biscuits, Cakes and the Like
Ingredients: ½ pound linseed (seed or meal); 1 gallon cold or tepid water; flour; yeast

An Improvement in the Manufacture of Bread, Biscuits, Cakes and the Like

Ingredients

½ pound linseed (seed or meal)
1 gallon cold or tepid water
flour
yeast

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mucilage

Soak the linseed in 1 gallon of water for several hours.
Decant and strain the water to collect the mucilage.

Make and bake the bread

Mix the mucilage with flour and yeast.
Knead the mixture into dough.
Bake the dough in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Linseed: Its soaked mucilage forms a thick, slippery gel that adds moisture and binds the dough.
Flour: Provides the starch and gluten-forming proteins that give the baked crumb its structure.
Yeast: Ferments sugars in the dough, producing gas that makes the bread rise.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.