boulting-msg - 4/15/07
Sieving meal to get various grades of flour.
NOTE: See also the files: flour-msg, grains-msg, bread-msg, polenta-msg, rice-msg, leavening-msg, querns-msg, mortar-pestle-msg, strainers-msg, ovens-msg.
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Stefan at florilegium.org
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Date: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 09:59:17 -0600
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: RE: SC - Sharpening Fine Points or Will Adamantius Tell All?
>2. What modern flours most closely correspond to the sorts of flours
>referred to in period sources?
Here's a little lecturey commentary on what I've tried.
Bear
The Wheat
The original European wheat was emmer and has been used since Antiquity.
This was later joined by German wheat (spelt), which appears to have
been popular in Rome and was spread across Europe by the Vandals. These
were displaced by club wheat. There are now some 30,000 varieties of
wheat developed from these basic stocks.
Medieval wheats were white-skinned and soft (low in gluten). Modern
wheats, especially those grown in North America are red, amber or
yellow-skinned and are hard (high in gluten). Spelt was popular in
bread making because it was harder than the other wheat available at the
time.
Modern flours tend to be mixtures of flours with all-purpose or bread
flour being high in gluten and cake flour being low in gluten.
In practice, I ignore the difference between hard and soft flours and
use what is readily available. Unless you can get it through a bakery
supply, soft flour tends to come in small packages with a very high
price.
The Milling
Medieval flour was stone milled. Most modern flour is roller milled, a
process developed in the 19th Century.
Roller milling breaks the wheat germ loose from the endosperm early in
the milling process, yielding wheat germ and bran as a salable products
and high extraction flour. Because of the minimal wheat germ, roller
milled flour has an indefinite storage life and is drier than a
comparable stone milled flour. The germ is used to make semolina and
other wheat germ products.
In Medieval milling, the fineness of the meal depended on the quality of
the stones. Wheat would normally have been ground on the hardest,
closest tolerance stones available to achieve the finest average meal.
Stone ground wheat comes very close to the fineness of roller milling.
The chief difference is in the level of extraction. Stone grinding
reaches a maximum of about 80% extraction. Roller milling goes above
90% extraction.
There are 4 layers of skin on a wheat berry. This is the bran.
Apparently in parts of England, the coarser fragments of the skin were
referred to as bran and the finer fragments were referred to as chisel.
After milling, flour was boulted (sieved) through fabric to remove the
bran and establish the fineness of the flour. The bran removed during
the boulting would be used by the miller to feed his livestock or be
sold to others as feed.
Boulting cloths were made of linen, canvas, or wool, being joined by
silk in the mid-18th Century.
The lowest grade of flour would be that straight from the mill. A
prudent farmer might take his meal this way to ensure the maximum return
and boult the flour immediately before use.
Once boulted flour would remove the largest pieces of the bran, but
there would still be pieces of bran and chisel and a fairly coarse
flour. This flour would be used for rough breads, possibly trenchers.
I've used a Hodgson Mill 50/50 Wheat and White Flour, which I believe
would fall between once boulted and twice boulted flour.
Twice boulted flour is called for in The Good Huswife's Handmaide for
the Kitchen (1594) for the making of fine manchet. This flour is used
for making fine breads and general pastries. To approximate it, I use a
stone ground whole wheat flour with graham and unbleached white flour
mixed between 1:1 and 2:1. This is probably the flour called for when a
recipe speaks of "fine flour" or "fair flour".
I've seen finer flour mentioned, but I can't remember the reference. In
this circumstance, I would use a whole wheat pastry flour I am able to
purchase in bulk or a 1:1 mix of the pastry flour and unbleached white
flour. This particular whole wheat flour is about the same color as the
unbleached white flour and may be what is being referred to by "finest
white flour".
Some Thoughts
Modern high extraction flour has a lower moisture content than its
Medieval counter part. It will probably require more liquid than called
for in a recipe.
While recipes call for "white" flour, they say nothing about the color
of the end product. Some of the manchets I made with a 1:1 mix of whole
wheat pastry flour and unbleached white flour produced a lovely golden
brown loaf, whose color resembles that of the breads in Medieval
paintings.
Would a 1:1 mix of HM 50/50 and whole wheat pastry flour be closer to a
Medieval twice boulted flour than what I currently use?
Did a miller user different kinds of cloth for different boultings?
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2007 07:41:09 -0600
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Period Flour Query
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Bolting or boulting is done by sieving meal through progressively finer
weaves of cloth which regulate the fineness of the flour, as you suggest.
Bolting clothes were commonly linen, but canvas and silk have also been used
and they weren't standardized. Today we use wire mesh in the sieving
process.
Whether the cloths were stretched on frames or not, I don't know. From a
little experimentation, I don't think they would have been stretched taut as
meal would have been bouncing over the sides.
While there was no regulation on flour, IIRC, the highest quality bread, and
therefore the most expensive, was required to be made from thrice bolted
flour. Since I am unsure in my memory, check the assize of bread if you
plan to quote me.
Bear
> We have talked before some about milling, but not that much about
> boulting. I like to hear more about this sometime. Was this done
> with particular weaves of cloth stretched between frames? Using
> similar cloth in sacks? Was the size of the weave, and hence the
> fineness of the flour regulated? in the assizes of grain, perhaps?
>
> Stefan
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2007 19:45:53 -0800 (PST)
From: Carole Smith <renaissancespirit2 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Period Flour Query
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
If you look in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the
section on kitchen implements, there is a line drawing of a tamis or
drum sieve. According to my 90-year-old mom that is what she used as
a young woman when learning to cook. Today's drum sieve - with metal
mesh - can sometimes be found in Oriental markets.
Apparently in the SCA period the tamis had a fabric bottom, most
likely linen but could be silk.
Cordelia Toser
Terry Decker <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
Bolting or boulting is done by sieving meal through progressively finer
weaves of cloth which regulate the fineness of the flour, as you suggest.
Bolting clothes were commonly linen, but canvas and silk have also been used
and they weren't standardized. Today we use wire mesh in the sieving
process.
Whether the cloths were stretched on frames or not, I don't know. From a
little experimentation, I don't think they would have been stretched taut as
meal would have been bouncing over the sides.
While there was no regulation on flour, IIRC, the highest quality bread, and
therefore the most expensive, was required to be made from thrice bolted
flour. Since I am unsure in my memory, check the assize of bread if you
plan to quote me.
Bear
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2007 23:32:54 -0500
From: Johnna Holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Tamas was Period Flour Query
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
I own a tamis. Paid less than $30 for one back in 2004 from
Bridge Kitchenware Corp. New York, NY
http://www.bridgekitchenware.com/
Product #: BTMS-3020
http://www.bridgekitchenware.com/moreinfo.cfm?Product_ID=977
"Made entirely by hand in France, these wood trimmed drum sieves (Tamis)
are used for large quantities of sauces, purees, pates or to remove
lumps from sugar, flour, spices, etc. On the sizes listed, the first
number represents the weave count (per centimeter) of the mesh; the
second number is the diameter, also in centimeters."
Johnnae
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:35:18 -0600
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Period Flour Query
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Tamis is a derivative of the Old English temse, which means sieve. A little
checking suggest that the small drum sieve is primarily a home appliance. A
larger version was used in some small mills, but the drum sieve is not
designed for producing a high volume of flour. I've come across a couple of
descriptions that describe bolting by forming a bag from the bolting cloth,
which was then filled with meal and beaten to produce flour. And I've also
encountered a description of a tubular cloth bolter worked by two men. Just
for fun, here is an essay on grist milling that contains a description of an
18th Century automated bolter:
http://www.engr.psu.edu/mtah/essays/histbeth/gristmilling.html .
Bear
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 08:33:37 -0500
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius1 at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Tamas was Period Flour Query
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
On Feb 22, 2007, at 11:32 PM, Johnna Holloway wrote:
> I own a tamis. Paid less than $30 for one back in 2004 from
> Bridge Kitchenware Corp. New York, NY
> http://www.bridgekitchenware.com/
>
> Product #: BTMS-3020
> http://www.bridgekitchenware.com/moreinfo.cfm?Product_ID=977
>
> "Made entirely by hand in France, these wood trimmed drum sieves (Tamis)
> are used for large quantities of sauces, purees, pates or to remove
> lumps from sugar, flour, spices, etc. On the sizes listed, the first
> number represents the weave count (per centimeter) of the mesh; the
> second number is the diameter, also in centimeters."
>
> Johnnae
I've also got one from a Chinese grocery, but I've used large
aluminum-sided ones in professional kitchens.
This makes me wonder about bolting-cloth and how it was used, since
it's evident that, from the similar term, tammy-cloth, there is no
tammy/tamis without the cloth or other mesh; the round thing is just
there to enable use of the mesh which is the actual tamis. Is bolting-
cloth similarly attached to a hoop of some sort?
Adamantius
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 10:14:23 -0500
From: "Elaine Koogler" <kiridono at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Period Flour Query
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
For anyone who lives near a Restaurant Depot and can get in, I found drum
sieves there...looked kind of interesting, considered purchasing one, but
quite frankly didn't see any need for one...and my kitchen is already
overloaded with "toys."
Kiri
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