georgebaker wrote:Hi
I know
* we use Strong Flour from North America to make bread loaves
* there were oat cakes, barley and rye breads
But what
* did we do before the Americas were invented
Remember that the light, fluffy white loaf is a relatively new invention. According to Elizabeth David's book English Bread and Yeast Cookery we started importing North American wheat towards the end of the eighteenth century. At that time bakers started using it because it yielded more bread per pound of flour.
But what David also mentions is that it was also only in the eighteenth century that techniques for refining flour were developed to the degree that they could produce very white flour free of bran particles. Before that all flour was slightly grey, even after sifting. The bran would have kept the bread from ever becoming a light, fluffy loaf, even if it had had the extra gluten of strong flour. So in a sense, using strong flour would have been pointless.