Dear Master Breadmakers,
A couple of years ago I started a project and asked members of this list
for some help. They were kind and helpful. Well, my computer crashed, I
lost everything, got a new job, and put the project off. I now have
convinced myself to finish it and again am enlisting help.
Some years ago, my Grandmother died and I got her recipe box. She was a
caterer in Savannah, Georgia for 50+ years (she lived 1 block from the now
infamous Mercer House where the murder in Midnight in the Garden of Good
and Evil took place). She did parties for much of Savannah's 'society', and
I think it would makea good cookbook.
Grandmother Sallie was born in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. Her
mother and grandmother lived on rice plantations in and around Beufort and
Blufton. She came into her mother's hanwritten cookbook, which undoubtedly
came also from her grandmother. These receipts probalbly date from the
1840's to the 1880's and are written in the 'old style'. It is my intention
to try and combine these two resources (the old cookbook and her receipt
box) into a "Four Generations of Southern Cooking" (my mother was also a
part time caterer in Raleigh, NC and am going to include some of her
classics for the Fouth Generation).
My problem is the old receipts. I, my wife, and my mother are not not
bakers. And there are about 25 breads that were obviously cooked by the
slaves on the plantations on wood stoves. No cooking times, and many times
no directions. It is my intention to treat these as historical documents,
publish them as they were written, and also to translate them for the
modern cook so that they could try them if they would like to. For example
breads made in these new-fangled bread making machines as well as in the
oven. This is where I would like to enlist yall's help. If anyone would
care to test and modernize any of these receipts, I would be greatly
appreciative and when this thing gets published--and I am confident that it
will-- would of course give credit for the tranlation. Having many
different people modernize them might lead to some inconsistency in style,
but I think it would just add to the overall concept.
If anyone would like to give them a try, drop me a note.
Sincerely
Tommy Armstrong
PS. there are also cakes ,deserts, preserves, candies, pickles,catsups, and
soups.