Bread FAQs

Hang on, dried yeast?!

Yes, dried yeast was invented in the 1820s, but not commercialised until the next century. It was still quite new in the 1950s, but widely available.

That looks like a very modern bag of flour.

Well, yes, we used the flour milled on site and sold in The Food Museum’s shop. We were going to put it in a period-appropriate bag, but we are quite proud of it, and wanted to show it off.

Tell me more about the watermill.

Our working watermill comes from Alton, also in Suffolk. It was dismantled in 1971, each part carefully labelled and stored, and moved to The Food Museum (then the Museum of East Anglian Life) in 1973, so that the original site could be flooded for a nee reservoir. We received a Heritage Lottery Fund Grant in 2020 which enabled us to restore it to full working order.

That is a lot of salt!

No, it isn’t. A 500g loaf of bread takes 10g of salt, otherwise it won't work properly and will taste bland.

Did she just say you could add lard to make the crust soft?

Yes, if you add 25g/1oz of lard (or butter) to the dough, it’ll soften the crust and enrich the dough.

For this recipe, you will knead.

The more work Kathy Hipperson gets, the more time I will spend watching it!

"Nobody really wants a sour dough." Oh, Mrs. Wilding is starting to show a strangely familiar form of shade that fans of historical cooking videos have grown to know and love.

Kathy Hipperson, whether as Mrs Wilding or Mrs Crocombe, is such a delight to watch!

me watching this as my whole wheat sourdough is rising  🤭

I love the subtle details like the Readers Digest on the table like someone was reading it and the extra dishtowels on the trolley. Makes everything seem very real.

My grandma, born 1899, worked 6 days a week as a cotton weaver, No time for making bread, so it was bought from the baker on the corner who sold the fresh loaves wrapped in white tissue paper. Fresh bread would tear when it was buttered so my grandma would cut the crust off one end, butter the end of the loaf, then cut the buttered slice off the loaf before buttering the end again and slicing that one off. She managed to butter fresh bread without the slices tearing. I love the smell of bread baking!! Nice video. Thank you!

A day/night is blessed when Kathy shows up on the Youtube feed!

Kathy Hipperson is soothing to watch, makes me forget myself for a few.

I hope, someday, her neighbor "Maryanne" makes a cameo.  😂😂😂😂

“You might be wondering about my yeast”. No ma’m, we would  NEVER question the yeast of so fierce a lady!  
Hipperson does such a good job portraying these women you’d never know she started out with a math degree not a history degree.

I'm quite pleased with this new persona. Now we get to see our cook enjoy her creations too.

This was great. Interesting to learn you could still buy directly from the mill even after WWII. I liked seeing her visit there and the way you recreated the photos.

I'm a simple person. I see Kathy Hipperson, I click on a video

Re: 3:08... "made them windy".  The shade lives on!!!  😂😂😂😂

My Mom's family is from Nova Scotia.  What they call 'brown bread' is made with oatmeal and molasses.

"Nobody really wants a sour dough"... I feel so poor now. She still has that effect. 😅

Love how I was finishing my sandwich on homemade sourdough bread when she was discussing yeasts and mentioned sourdough and commented that no one wanted that! Ha!

As a Californian enjoying my sour dough bread, you just need the Correct Wild Yeast. Yum.
It is easier to keep a yeast pot these days with refrigeration to slow down the yeast.
Still using a fresh ground whole wheat will make an excellent bread, no matter the yeast. Glad you could rescue and rebuild that beautiful old mill. What a treat.