[Sca-cooks] Period Flour Query and shortbread

[Johnna Holloway]

Catherine Brown who writes about Scottish foods
has notes in her books that indicate the rice flour makes
the cake more crunchy and is used with strong flours.
The goal is to make the cake or bread more short, ie crisp or more 
easily crumbled.
Elizabeth Cleland's A New and Easy Method of Cookery from 1755 contains a
recipe labeled "To make Short Bread" but it like some in Hannah Woolley 
contain
ale barm as a rising agent.

Johnnae

Sue Clemenger wrote:
> I've always wondered about that...well, at least since I saw my first
> shortbread recipe that included rice flour, and thought WTF?
> What effect would reducing the gluten have on the shortbread? Make it more
> tender or something? When I make it, I just use regular unbleached flour,
> sugar, and unsalted butter...yumm....
> --Maire, actually thinking of making some this weekend so that she can get
> the butter out of the house before Lent starts in a couple of weeks....
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" 
>> I believe the addition of rice flour is a modern one (or more so than
>> the earliest printed shortbread recipes, anyway), designed to reduce
>> total gluten content: I think they may be simulating some of the
>> finer and more expensive pastry flours.