Table of Contents

HCR: Bisket Bread

Name: Sophie Macomber and Ingrid Romero

Date and Time: 

2021.May.4, 08:00 pm

Location: Home Kitchen

Subject: Bisket Bread Selection and Interpretation

We selected our recipe, thinking that it would be something that would taste good. We then attempted to transcribe our recipe, using both our eyes and other transcriptions available. Interestingly, these transcripts differed in their interpretations of what the writing actually said. We picked out our own interpretation of the quantities, ingredients, and techniques based on the text, others previously done recreations, and knowledge we could find on historical cooking. I also found where to order the ingredients I didn’t have on Amazon. We decided to quarter the recipe because it seemed like a very large quantity.

Name: Sophie Macomber and Ingrid Romero

Date and Time: 

2021.May.10, 04:00pm

Location: Home Kitchen

Subject: Bisket Bread Recreation

I set the oven to 475 to replicate the hot temperatures of the historical ovens and greased a cake pan with butter. I first measured out four cups of flour and put it into a large bowl. I then beat two eggs until they were very foamy and frothy, and I poured that into the flour. This dried up very quickly and I couldn’t mix all the flour together with such a small quantity of eggs. I then mixed a quarter cup of rose water and a cup of Muscato wine in a separate bowl. I could not find musk that was edible, so I did not include it although it was in the original recipe. Moscato wine is very sweet, so it should give it some sweetness that might have been missing as this recipe, unlike other bisket bread recipes, did not have sugar. When I mixed it into the flour, it was still fairly dry, more like a dough than a cake batter, which one of our sources mentioned it should be like. I realized that I might not have put enough wine in. I put another cup of wine into the mixture, and this gave me a more cake batter like consistency. At this point, I should have mixed in the aniseed, but I forgot to mix it in at this point. I then poured the mixture into the pan and placed it in the oven. I then turned off the oven so it could bake in the residual heat.

I let it bake in the oven for twenty five minutes, but when I checked it, it still hadn’t cooked all the way through. I set the oven to 350 as this would have been the temperature of many historical ovens when cooking. I then let it bake for ten minutes. It appeared cooked, but not golden brown. I then let it bake for another ten minutes. When I checked it, it was still pale white, but I decided to check it with a toothpick because I felt that it had been baking for a long time. It was very hard. I believe since there was no sugar in the cake outside of the wine, it did not caramelize like I had anticipated to give it a golden brown color. I then let it cool. As it cooled I put ¾ cup of rosewater and about a cup of sugar into a small saucepan on medium heat. I brought this up to a boil, and I added the aniseed that I had forgotten to add to the cake earlier so that it could at least have some that flavor. The rosewater seemed to be boiling off and not turning into a syrup. I added more sugar until the water was cloudy. It still did not thicken, but I realized that it would thicken as it cooled. I poked some holes into the cake to get the syrup into the cake and poured the syrup over the cake, which I had flipped out onto a pan. I then put this back in the oven as directed by the recipe. After about five minutes, I took it back out of the oven because I didn’t want to overcook it. I let it cool on a plate. The syrup did cool into a thicker syrupy consistency and some of it crystalized.

        The bisket bread was very difficult to cut into. The inside was more like a paste than a crumb structure that I would expect from a cake or cookie, which made it very difficult and unpleasant to eat. The flavor of the cake itself wasn’t too bad, and it mostly had the flavor of the wine. The syrup tasted disgusting, almost medicinal or rancid, I couldn’t really describe it. I think I put too much rosewater in it and that the aniseed was not a good addition.

Name: (Also the name of your working partner)

Date and Time: 

2021.[Month].[Day], [hh]:[mm][am/pm]

Location:

Subject:

Name: (Also the name of your working partner)

Date and Time: 

2021.[Month].[Day], [hh]:[mm][am/pm]

Location:

Subject: