bread-msg - 12/16/07 Medieval breads and grains. Recipes. Flour bleaching. Rising agents. Bread for feasts. NOTE: See also these files: breadmaking-msg, BNYeast-art, flour-msg, yeasts-msg, bread-stamps-msg, bread-stuffed-msg, brd-mk-flat-msg, brd-mk-sour-msg, fried-breads-msg, brd-manchets-msg, leavening-msg, trenchers-msg. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous Stefan at florilegium.org ************************************************************************ From: bloch at thor.ucsd.edu (Steve Bloch) Date: 29 Jun 90 00:15:29 GMT DEW%PSUECLC.BITNET at MITVMA.MIT.EDU (Baron Dur) writeth: >I ran an experiment this weekend! You can bake bread in a wok! I used a >standard bread recipie, a wok, and a pizza screen. I put the dough on the >screen in the wok, covered it, and baked for 40 minutes. [puns omitted] I believe Cariadoc mentioned, perhaps a month past, a dish called "rampart-bread", "muqawwara" in the original Arabic. I have made this dish at two or three Wars with reasonable success. In brief: Make a yeast-leavened bread-dough, most of the liquid being eggyolks. Let it rise. Forming it into a disk shape (say, a foot across and a handsbreadth thick), FRY it on both sides in a large frying-pan with butter. Then take it out, cut out the middle at a 45-degree angle (not breaking the bottom), crumble the stuff you cut out, mix the breadcrumbs with chopped almonds and pistachios, and sprinkle it back into the cavity in alternating layers with melted butter, honey, sugar, and a sprinkle of rosewater. I was surprised that the bread cooked through without burning on the outside. I rested the pan directly on the coals left over from breakfast; if you prefer a softer crust, you might put it a few inches above the fire. A more detailed description, with quantities and (my translation of) the original recipe, may appear in the Winter T.I. -- Stephen Bloch Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib >sca>Caid>Calafia>St.Artemas bloch at cs.ucsd.edu From: crf at pine.circa.ufl.EDU (FEINSTEIN) Date: 20 Mar 91 22:33:00 GMT BREAD: If you want "real" ale barm, talk to a homebrewer! No doubt a few dregs could be reserved. :-) As both a brewer and a cook, however, I have to offer a caution: these days, yeasts are pure strains, not the wild mix which the medievals would have used. Thus, any brew dregs wouldn't work very well or very quickly. As an alternative, you might want to try my favorite trick: substitute ale for some or all of the water in your bread recipe! Admittedly, it's not the "real thing", but it surely does work better, and it also tastes much more like the "real thing" than if you used ale dregs! Frankly, it's produced the best, and probably the most accurate-tasting, results I've obtained. Because when I've used real ale barm, I couldn't taste the ale and the bread didn't have such a good web. When substituting ale for water, the bread looks good, tastes of the ale, and smells and tastes WONDERFUL! Newsgroups: rec.org.sca From: marian at world.std.com (marian walke) Subject: Re: Medieval cooks didnt make bread Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Date: Mon, 2 May 1994 16:41:30 GMT >>In London, there were *two* guilds of bakers, the Brown Bakers and the White >>Bakers. (One baked only brown bread, the other only white bread.) >> >> Franz Joder von Joderhuebel (Michael F. Yoder) [mfy at sli.com] >Interesting indeed! Where did you find this? And were both >guilds subject to the same Assize of Loaves? (or is it Assize of >Bread?) >Michael Fenwick of Fotheringhay, O.L. (Mike Andrews) >Barony of Namron, Kingdom of Ansteorra Old Marian commenting here: (major source: C Anne Wilson, "Food and Drink in Britain" - at least, I think that's the title - my much-used paperback lost its cover a few years ago! Items in square brackets [] are my own comments.) Medieval bread was not just divided into white and brown - there were several gradations, and since the same names were not used in all places, there is some confusion about where each kind of bread was placed in the spectrum from whitest to brownest. However, quoting from Wilson: "The best white wheaten bread, made of the finest flour which had been two or three times sieved through woollen and linen bolting cloths, was in the Middle Ages called wastel bread (from the Norman French GASTEL or cake) or pandemain (probably originally from PANIS DOMINI, the sacramental bread, because that was made of the most delicate flour obtainable.... Cocket, another fine white bread, but a slightly less expensive one, was produced until about the beginning of the 16th centruy. But before that time the name manchet had begun to be applied to white bread of the finest quality. Manchets were made up as rather small loaves: in Elizabeth I's reign they were supposed to weigh 'eight ounces into the oven, and six ounces out', and forty were to be made out of the flour bolted from one bushel of corn [i.e., wheat]. Bread described as being 'of whole wheat' was of wheat flour more coarsely sieved than that used for wastel or cocket; while a still coarser and more branny wheat bread was made under the name of 'bis' or 'treet'." Wilson says all these breads were taken into account in the Assize of Bread, which was in operation (with many amendments) from 1267 (our earliest extant version) through 1815. There may be earlier versions no longer extant; it is said to date back to King John (ca 1200). In large towns there were variants of the Assize to cover local variations in bread. "In London the white bakers and the brown or TORTE bakers for a long time had separate guilds. The 'White Book' of the city of London laid down 'that a tourte baker shall not have a bolter nor make white bread'. His brown bread was to include all the husks and bran in the meal, just as it came from the mill. But he was permitted to bake the dough which people brought to him ready made up [a function bakers served for people who made their own dough, but did not have their own ovens], and to make horsebread of peas and beans. In Ipswich, on the other hand, the bakers who baked the fine white loaves...were also allowed to make treet bread from the leavings, after they had sieved their meal and removed the whitest and finest flour.... The same farthing could buy you a given amount of finest white wastel loaf, or twice as much brown or treet loaf. It bought you a loaf of cocket a little larger than the finest white wastel or a wholewheat loaf weighing half again as much as the cocket or a loaf of "other cereals" weighing twice as much as the cocket. However, the actual amount of bread you got for that farthing varied from Assize to Assize; the object was to keep the price of bread steady, and the weight of bread you got for your farthing varied according to the success of harvests and other economic factors. "The rougher breads of servants and laborourers and their families were made of of maslin [mixed rye and wheat] or the local grain: rye in Norfold, barley in northwest England, lowland Scotland, parts of Wales and Cornwall, oats in upland Wales and the Pennines and the Scottish highlands...." [So what kind of dark bread you ate depended on where you lived as well as your social status. The reason for these regional variations was that wheat demands a longer growing season and better soil than were present in the upland and rocky areas. And remember, these variations were all just for Britain, which all together is only about half the size of the state of California. Imagine the variations you get when you're looking at the whole of Europe. This is why there is no ONE "Medieval Bread"!] As for the combining of the two London guilds: According to Wilson, in 1304 there where 32 brown and 21 white bakers. In 1574 there were 36 brown and 62 white bakers. They joined in the 17th century, and the separate guild of brown bakers disappeared. [However, it should be noted that lots of craft guilds amalgamated as time went on, probably to have more clout as one large than as several small guilds. In the 16th C you start seeing combined guilds of "Carpenters and Joiners" or "Masons and Tilers" or "Weavers and Dyers" or "Cooks and Innkeepers." So joining the brown and white bakers may have reflected the temper of the times as much as the demand for brown bread in London.] --Old Marian (Marian of Edwinstowe, Carolingia, East Kingdom (marian at world.std.com) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca From: shafer at ferhino.dfrc.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) Subject: Re: bread (was Re: meadmaking help.....) Organization: NASA Dryden Flight Research Center Date: Mon, 16 Oct 1995 04:10:41 GMT Elizabeth David, in her book "English Bread and Yeast Cookery", has a chapter titled "Manchets and Mayn and Payndemayn", which includes the recipe posted about two messages back from this, plus one from Gervase Markham, "The English Hus-wife", 1615, and a modern version. (Mostly scaled down, since the posted recipe wanted half a bushel of flour and David notes that a bushel was 56 to 60 lb, which makes somewhat more bread than many of us are interested in). Scattered throughout the book are information about how bread was cut in c. 1508 (from "the Boke of Kervynge) and a number of period and near-period recipes (Kendal Oatcakes from 1698, for example). If you want to know everything to know about English bread and yeast cookery, buy this book. It's really excellent--it tells you everything from which stone to use in your mill onward. It's in print in a US version and is ISBN 0-9643600-0-4 (the original, British edition has a different ISBN). Even if you never bake a single thing from it, you'll enjoy reading it and you'll learn a lot from it. This book finally explained to me why English supermarket white bread is so dreadful (even worse than Wonder Bread)--it contains, quite legally, a great deal more water than does its US counterpart. -- Mary Shafer SR-71 Chief Engineer NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA shafer at ferhino.dfrc.nasa.gov http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/People/Shafer/mary.html Newsgroups: rec.org.sca From: shafer at spdcc.com (Mary Shafer) Subject: Re: Camp Bread, In period Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 18:16:25 GMT Kevin Riley <lindo at radix.net> wrote: >This doesn't exactly answer the question about ovens, but here's a >recipe for Bannocks that can be cooked either on a griddle (or other >flat piece of metal). If anyone can tell me what might have been used >to substitute for the baking soda... I don't know if it is period, but Spirits of Hartshorn (aka Baker's Ammonia and ammonium carbonate) was (and still is) used in northern Europe in cookies before patent baking sodas became popular in the 1800s. However, these make very crisp cookies, which isn't what anyone would want in bannocks. However, I'd suspect, based on Elizabeth David and the author of "In A Scots Kitchen", that bannocks originally weren't raised at all but were more like hoecakes or other unleavened biscuit. It's unlikely that they'd be yeast-risen, like a sourdough, because oats have no gluten at all to trap the CO2 produced by yeast. -- Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR shafer at ursa-major.spdcc.com URL http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/People/Shafer/mary.html Newsgroups: rec.org.sca From: shafer at spdcc.com (Mary Shafer) Subject: Re: Camp Bread, In period Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 18:37:02 GMT rosalyn rice <rorice at nickel.ucs.indiana.edu> wrote: >In article <3252CE4E.1513 at radix.net>, Kevin Riley <lindo at radix.net> wrote: >>TJorDan001 wrote: > >>This doesn't exactly answer the question about ovens, but here's a >>recipe for Bannocks that can be cooked either on a griddle (or other >>flat piece of metal). If anyone can tell me what might have been used >>to substitute for the baking soda... > > I just got a tanatalizing bit of information about what might >have been a period substitute for baking soda - baking soda. > > Acipius suggests cooking green vegetables with "Nitrum" so that they >keep their color. Nitrum is a form of natural soda. It is possible that >such a thing could have been used as a leavening agent, though I >seriously doubt it. It doesn't appear as an ingredient in any medieval >recipes, and commercial baking sodas/powders appear to be a 19th c. >invention. (All this from Harold McGee "On Food and Cooking") Commercial, or "patent", baking powders are a mixture of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and cream of tartar. Cream of tartar forms deposits on the outside of wine barrels, where it can be scraped off. Comprehensive cookbooks even provide formula for substitution. Nitrum, to keep vegetables green, sounds like baking soda. It's well known that a pinch of baking soda will keep vegetable a vivid, unnatural green (while destroying the vitamin content, especially vitamine C). It also gives the vegetables a chemical taste -- Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR shafer at ursa-major.spdcc.com URL http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/People/Shafer/mary.html From: ddfr at best.com (David Friedman) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Camp Bread, In period Date: 4 Oct 1996 08:06:30 GMT yehudahben at aol.com (YehudahBen) wrote: > From Lady Agnes Is it possible that they used Sourdough at least for > some of their baking ? Yes. Pretty clearly sourdough was used in period. Charles Perry, who knows quite a lot about medieval Islamic cooking, believes that it is what the recipes mean when they talk about leavening. David/Cariadoc -- ddfr at best.com From: troy at maestro.com (Philip W. Troy) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Camp Bread, In period Date: Sat, 05 Oct 1996 10:01:02 -0400 Organization: Toad Computers rorice at nickel.ucs.indiana.edu (rosalyn rice) wrote: > Kevin Riley <lindo at radix.net> wrote: > >TJorDan001 wrote: > >This doesn't exactly answer the question about ovens, but here's a > >recipe for Bannocks that can be cooked either on a griddle (or other > >flat piece of metal). If anyone can tell me what might have been used > >to substitute for the baking soda... > > I just got a tanatalizing bit of information about what might > have been a period substitute for baking soda - baking soda. > > Acipius suggests cooking green vegetables with "Nitrum" so that they > keep their color. Nitrum is a form of natural soda. It is possible that > such a thing could have been used as a leavening agent, though I > seriously doubt it. It doesn't appear as an ingredient in any medieval > recipes, and commercial baking sodas/powders appear to be a 19th c. > invention. (All this from Harold McGee "On Food and Cooking") > > Lothar It's always been my impression, probably from something in the Flowers/Rosenbaum translation of Apicius, that the Roman cooking soda was sodium carbonate, a.k.a. Washing Soda. Sodium Bicarbonate does the same thing, from a culinary standpoint, producing a bright green in vegetables no matter how badly they're overcooked by modern standards. Since they would have been cooked nearly to a puree by Roman cooks, this would have been an issue. As regards the use of eggs and/or soda in bannocks, to render them toothworthy, I believe the first thing used to lighten and tenderize them would have been fat of some kind. Modern oatcake recipes generally call for some kind of fat, either butter or lard, to be rubbed in, as in a pie crust recipe. They are, of course, rolled pretty thin, and have a cookie-like texture. The problem with using either eggs or fat is that they tend to shorten the shelf-life, a great inconvenience to soldiers on the march. Probably they would have stuck to the earliest forms of the sgian (scone) which would have been a crisp, toasted, oatmeal-and-water pancake. Otherwise, there's always hard-tack or biscuit, which is the equivalent of Melba toast, more or less. A regular yeast bread, sliced and toasted till perfectly dry, hence the term bis-cuit, or twice cooked. Sailors ate a form of it too. Of course, good bread would have been available when sacking a town, sometimes... Gideanus Tacitus Adamantius From: Deloris Booker <dbooker at freenet.calgary.ab.ca> From: pat at lalaw.lib.CA.US (Pat Lammerts) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Camp Bread, In period Date: 9 Oct 1996 20:57:22 -0400 >There is a new edition of the Ed Wood book on ancient sourdough >breadmaking techniques out. I'm not at work so I don't even know the EXACT >title, but I will post info tonight or tomorrow. He points out that >sourdough culture was THE method for leavening up until very recently. >It's a really good read and has lots of recipes. Here is the book that MtheU wrote about: Wood, Ed, 1926- World sourdoughs from antiquity / Ed Wood. -- [Rev. ed.]. -- Berkeley, Calif. : Ten Speed Press, 1996. ISBN 0898158435 $16.95 per Books in Print. Huette (pat at lalaw.lib.ca.us) From: djheydt at uclink.berkeley.edu (Dorothy J Heydt) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: 14th Century Bread Date: 10 Feb 1997 16:11:46 GMT Organization: University of California at Berkeley Morgan E. Smith <mesmith at freenet.calgary.ab.ca> wrote: >Until this century, the majority of bread was made with sour dough >cultures, not the types of commercial yeasts we have today. ... Well, that's half right. Commercial "cake" yeast is a twentieth-century invention, and commercially available granulated dried yeast is probably not much older. But it's not the case that all period yeasts were of the sourdough type that had to be kept wet in a crock. The stuff sporulates, after all, and under adverse conditions goes into offline mode till better times come back. One of the ways to keep yeast between uses was to dip a twiggy branch or bush into the yeast froth and allow it to dry. To begin a new batch of ale, you'd swish the branch through the starting liquid and infect it with yeast spores, who would then wake up, cry "Chow's on!" and get to work. A bush hung up to dry over the alehouse door was a signal that the hostess had just finished brewing. In the same way, kneading troughs used week after week for bread would become impregnated with the spores, and you had only to pour in the liquid and work the flour in to get it enough yeast to get it to rise nicely, leaving a new crop of spores in the trough in the process. (Cf. Dorothy Hartley's _Food in England._) Dorothea of Caer-Myrddin Dorothy J. Heydt Mists/Mists/West Albany, California PRO DEO ET REGE djheydt at uclink From: L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt <liontamr at postoffice.ptd.net> Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: 14th Century Bread Date: 11 Feb 1997 13:12:29 GMT Organization: ProLog - PenTeleData, Inc. dvick at crl.com (Donald E. Vick) wrote: >In article <32fbc2c3.3925262 at news.avalon.nf.ca>, >Barbara <bjluby at avalon.nf.ca> wrote: >>I, too, am curious about the ingredients used in late >>14th century (English) bread. Would the people of >>this period have had access to salt for bread-making? >> >>Can bread be made without salt? without yeast? > > From my experience, bread can be made without either of these. It >will not be as good a texture, and in the case of omitting the yeast, >it will take several times as long to rise. This comes of having to >wait for natural yeasts in the air to invade your dough, rather than >artificially introducing yeasts. >Hugh the Barefoot Good Gentles, It's true that period recipes are not as thick on the ground as other types of recipes. It was such a basic part of everyday life, at first, and then people began baking for a living (and who would willingly part with their professional secrets?). Some recipes call for adding ale barm as leavening (which, technically, probably produced a *rise* after a long period. The lees probably have more live organism content. Or so I have been corrected by a Master Brewer. Perhaps period ale yeast was acting differently---I believe Guiness' Brewery's strain may be the only continuing strain from any where near our period into the present) But I digress. Souring bread dough need not take place in the dough itself. My favorite recipe is from Colonial America, in a cookbook obtained from French Azilum, which supplies the steps for a starter so soured that the bread makes you pucker. Even so, souring agents have a rise and fall taste cycle, and so at different parts of their life they may be relatively "normal" tasting to the average modern bread eater. The method (off the top of my head) goes like this: Mix flour, a little sugar or honey and water and a little milk(because you want the milk-type yeast, which produces the souring agents) to form a batter the consistency of *pancake* batter, to make 2 pints (approx). Put this in a jug that holds about 2 qts. Put the jug, loosley covered, into a pot with 2-3 inches of lukewarm water (stockpot size will do). Cover and let stand overnight in a warm place. In the morning you should have a foamy mass that is an active yeast culture (If not, then just let the jug stand on the counter until it begins to foam. This could take an extra day if the climate won't cooperate!). Use this to make bread in the normal fashion, except: use half the mixture for your bread leavening, and put the rest back for tomorrow's bread, with more flour and liquids/sugars to bring it up to 2 pints. This will prodice enough leavening for 2 one lb. loaves. They do rise a little slower, and slightly oddly(retaining the squareness of the pan, for instance, instead or rounding like you would be used to in a modern loaf). My Husband loves this bread. Can't keep it in the house. I make a normal milk loaf with this leavening. OTOH, my kids hate it. It isn't wonderbread! I understand that period white flour was the consistency of modern biscuit flour. However, the masses would have made bread out of anything: Barley flour (I broke a mill on that one!), ground peas and beans (pulse), oatmeal, *whole* wheat or rye, or any combination of the above. Manchet bread recipes ARE available from period sources. i suppose it was considered sufficiently high-class to retain these recipes. Hope that helps. Aoife From: willow at dowco.com Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 23:07:02 -0700 Subject: SC - Leavening for Breads and Cakes Dearest Lor Mandrigal of Mu: Joy, rapture, huzza's - finally there is something I know a little about! I can finally impart some knowledge to someone else, since I have been soaking up learned discourses for the last few weeks, much like a sponge. There are a couple of ways that were used to make breads without the introduction of processed yeast. One is the use of a potato starter. I must admit, I don't know the details of this one, but I know where I can find them, so will post tomorrow. Yeast left from brewing, either ale or wine, was also used, at least in the historical books I have on English, Scot, Irish and Welsh baking in the period from the 11th to 16th century. I have no reason to think that the same procedure wasn't used in the rest of the world. I don't think that I would like to bake with the lees of brewing, though. But again, maybe that is only my taste. A sponge was also made and left to sit out for a day or two (much like sourdough) to collect wild yeasts. It works well, but again, it is much like sourdough. The French did - and still do - use something called a levain. It is a pc of dough kept from the last batch of bread and used to introduce yeast into another batch of dough. Mind you, it takes 3 days to make a loaf of bread. 1 day to culture the levain; one day to make the sponge and then, the third day to bake the bread. But what heavenly, crusty bread it is. Since I have learned to bake it, I always have levain handy. It will keep in the refrigerator for at least 2 weeks (the longest I have kept it), but it must come to room temperature before using. Enough for now. I remain, Brigid Morgan ap Crawford of Shrewsbury From: willow at dowco.com Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 08:53:26 -0700 Subject: SC - Re: sca-cooks Hello to all Hail Charles: I too am interested in bread baking in the old manner, though I seem to have specialized in the English, Scotch, Irish branches of the craft, with some French and Italian thrown in for good measure. I have had a hard time translating (Middle and Olde English seems like a foriegn language sometimes!) as well as adapting the recipes. Breaking down the flower from a bushel or peck to a manageable level is difficult at the best of times. Some -or I might say most - 12th century recipes use the left-overs from ale making to leven bread, though that practice seemed to have lessened with the advent of manchet and white flours. I think I have finally mastered trenchers - they have to be made with whole meal flour and left to harden for four days before using. I have tried to use them fresh with disasterous results and much leaking of the juices from vegs and meat. I am having an Elizabethan feast for a few friends on the Queen's birthday, so I will have a chance to test my theories. I would delight in exchanging views and recipes with you, either through SCA or privately. I am very new to SCA - a half-dozen weeks, maybe, but I have always had an abiding interest in all things ancient and that includes food and -mostly - breads and cakes, which were usually nearly the same, less yeast. Yours in service to the dream, I remain Lady Bridgid Morgan ap Crawford of Shrewsbury willow at dowco.com From: "Philip W. Troy" <troy at asan.com> Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 14:46:54 -0400 Subject: Re: SC - Scottish Recipes Sue Wensel wrote: > The most difficult thing about a quintessentially Scottish feast is the amount > of baking soda called for in everything we think is Scottish. Unfortunately, > to the best of my knowledge, baking soda and baking powder aren't period > (please, somebody tell me I'm wrong!!) Interestingly enough, I have read that the standard period substitute for baking soda was generally: nothing. The theory goes that most baked goods contained some kind of fat for shortening, and the farmwives, or whoever did the baking, had very "light" hands. The trick was to work a dough JUST enough to get it to hold together, and no more. So no excess gluten development. In addition, most European bakers in period used a softer wheat flour than we are used to - both because of the extent to which the meal was processed, but also because of the variety of wheat used. So, breads were probably considerably heavier than we are used to, but not as tough as we might expect them to be under the circumstances. Almost as interesting is the fact that the Romans used what we now call washing soda for cooking, but not for baking. Adamantius From: Deloris Booker <dbooker at freenet.calgary.ab.ca> Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 15:20:15 -0600 (MDT) Subject: SC - Re: sca-cooks Greetings Re Yeast in period, May I refer one and all to two books: English bread and yeast cookery : Elizabeth David Food in England : Huxley (long oout of print, but now available again in a vastly overpriced edition from Little Brown) Both books spend a lot of time on yeast in english cookery. Aldreada of the lakes From: allilyn at juno.com (LYN M PARKINSON) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 20:32:37 EDT Subject: Re: SC - Leavening for Breads and Cakes On Tue, 15 Apr 1997 00:06:15 -0700 dragon7777 at juno.com (Susan A Allen) writes: >As I recall there was a National Geographic or some such >that talked about the Egyptian beer and bread process, >and in fact re-created bread, baked in something that look >a lot like a clay flower pot, these were large loafs >I think 5 or 8 pounds, my memory is vague, >The people there all ate the bread, chewy and good. > >Susan The article was "Bake Like an Egyptian" in Modern Maturity, Sept./Oct. 1996. The author was Ed Wood, who raises wild sourdough cultures on his Idaho ranch and is the author of _World Sourdoughs From Antiquity_, Ten Speed Press, 1996. He and archaeologist Mark Lehner, working with the National Geographic Society, recreated how the ancient Egyptians baked bread. Lehner discovered the ruins of two bakery rooms dating to around 2500 B.C. near the Giza pyramids. There's a recipe for Pita Bread and suggestions on how to make your own sourdough starter. He puts 1 C. bread flour and 1 C. room temp. water--probably a good idea to use distilled water, or something that would not have all the fluorides, et al, that come out of our taps--in a medium bowl. Cover with cheesecloth to keep out 'visitors' he says. Weather should be 70 degrees at least. Not a problem in Trimaris. ;-) Every 12 hours he feeds his starter 1 C. bread flour and 3/4 C. room temp water. Stir several times between feedings. Repeat process for 3-5 days or until a layer of foam forms, 1" thick. The starter should be uniform in appearance with no evidence of mold and should have a pleasing odor. Otherwise, throw it all out and start over in a different part of the yard. Allison From: Mark Schuldenfrei <schuldy at abel.MATH.HARVARD.EDU> Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 14:25:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: SC - New subscriber > I am now looking for references about leavening for breads and cakes during > our Period. Run, do not walk, and acquire Elizabeth David's book on bread cookery. Tibor From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> Date: Mon, 05 May 1997 17:19:17 -0400 Subject: Re: SC - lutefish gypsy1 wrote: Lefse is an unleavened pancake made from a soft dough, rather than from a batter. Depending on what grain or other starch they are made from (nowadays they are sometimes made from potatoes, which makes them more properly lompe rather than lefse) they are either eaten fresh, and quite flexible they are, too, or dried to a matzoh-like consistency, and then reconstituted by wrapping in a damp towel for a couple of hours before eating (HINT, HINT: are you getting this, Joshua?) > Ok...but what's Flex Mazoh??? > Rita the Ignorant 8-) (=large goofy grin) > > On Thu, 1 May 1997, david friedman wrote: > > > At 4:47 PM -0500 5/1/97, Mark Harris wrote: > > > > >What's "lefsa"? > > > > Flex Mazoh. Eaten with butter and sugar. > > > > David/Cariadoc Also eaten with butter and cloudberry or lingonberry jam. Some eat them with butter and cranberry sauce, in a pinch. Adamantius From: Gretchen M Beck <grm+ at andrew.cmu.edu> Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 12:10:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: SC - Mushrooms! -Reply Excerpts from internet.listserv.sca-cooks: 6-May-97 Re: SC - Mushrooms! - -Reply by LYN M PARKINSON at juno.com > Some of my German recipes call for 'hartshorn' as an ingredient. Do we > have any animal chemists on the list to know if deer antlers contain > cream of tartar or something like baking powder or soda? If so, it may > be a leavening in period. Nope, they contain ammonia, which was used as a rising agent in period. toodles, margaret From: Mark Schuldenfrei <schuldy at abel.MATH.HARVARD.EDU> Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 13:36:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: SC - Mushrooms! -Reply > Some of my German recipes call for 'hartshorn' as an ingredient. Do we > have any animal chemists on the list to know if deer antlers contain > cream of tartar or something like baking powder or soda? If so, it may > be a leavening in period. Nope, they contain ammonia, which was used as a rising agent in period. I'm not sure that this is right. It was discussed (some years ago) on the rec.food.historic list. I found a bunch of the relevant articles with http://www.dejanews.com/ searching that newsgroup for "ammonia". Hartshorn is a mixture of ammonimum bi-carbonate and ammonimum carbonate, and is still used in Europe today. Cream of Tartar is tartaric acid, and baking powders and sodas are primarily sodium bi-carbonate. The physical action of ammonium carbonate when it becomes CO2 and ammonia is slightly different, and I gather the textures are noticably different to the connoiseur. Hartshorn is also volatile, and spoils, and there appear to be "chemistry issues" when it is mixed into sour foods. Some of the posters thought that baking powder and soda could be used as a substitute, but would give a soapy flavor. Others thought that hartshorn gave an ammoniacal flavor. I dunno. Tibor From: Uduido at aol.com Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 22:23:33 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: SC - butter << Lord Ras, is it possible that the sources you have been looking at are primarily just for the upper class and thus would miss the use of butter by other classes in/on food? Yes, this is not only possible but accurate. Since SCA personas are "noble" theoretically I tend to avoid/ignore sources that do not pertain to that class. <<I remember some arguments in previous years on whether "honey butter" was period at all. If even "herb butter" and butter were not period, what was eaten on bread? Anything? >> It is my "belief" that olive oil was used as a bread spread when anything was used at all. My research indicates that the majority of time bread was not eaten as is but rather was used as sops or dipped into the liquid portions of meals or consumed dry without additional additives. The "period" style bread recipes that I have personally redacted tend to be rather heavy in texture and are not unpalatible when eaten by theirselves. This is really rather interesting and I would be grateful for others input as this particular question (the way bread was normally consumed during period) has been an object of deep interest to me for several years. Perhaps Adamantius or His Excellency, Duke Coriadoc could shed some further light on this intriguing question. Yours in service to the Dream, Lord Ras al Zib, AoA, OSyc (Uduido at aol.com) From: gfrose at cotton.vislab.olemiss.edu (Terry Nutter) Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 11:44:53 -0500 Subject: Re: SC - Butter-oops Hi, Katerine here. Lord Ras writes: >It is also my contention that bread was >almost universally dipped in broths,etc. (e.g. "sops") thus negating the >widespread use of any spread being necessary. I would welcome any further >thoughts or info in this area. Period serving manuals indicate that tables were set with large amounts of bread completely apart from trenchers, and that bread was always on the table with cheese and fruit before the first course arrived. This would tend to go against your contention. There are recipes for sops, but they are not all that common; and while it is highly probable that bread was dipped in other broths and sauces, we have no evidence that it was *only* used so, and considerable reason to doubt it. On the other hand, the same serving manuals make no mention of putting butter on the table (or olive oil); which suggests that neither was it spread with substances of that kind, at least much of the time. Cheers, - -- Katerine/Terry From: L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt <liontamr at postoffice.ptd.net> Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 07:40:44 -0500 (CDT) Subject: SC - Sugar, Flour and Bread (Longwinded;) Warning: Longwinded Post to follow! Berengaria wrote: >Also, we were talking about bleaching flour earlier. My >understanding is that much modern bleached flour comes about because >of chemical bleaching, not storage methods. I have also been going >for the unbleached white flour, which is still fine and white, and >using that in my SCA cooking attempts. Any thoughts on this? I have listened to the flour debate quite a bit. The latest "in" arguement I have heard was that only modern "biscuit" flour had the appropriate texture and color to resemble period fine white bread. These "statements of unmaleable fact" make me nervous. Others insist that a percentage of whole wheat and/or rye must be added to the mixture to get an accurate representation of "real" period flour (various errant grains having been reaped with the wheat, y'see, or partions of bran remaining in the flour). I feel that the truth is somewhat less sweeping. For many of us, we have to use what is available. Add to that factor the "scientific hypothesis" about Biscuit flour, and what you get is this: We don't know for sure. However, from SCA baking experience and source reading it is possiible to draw some conclusions: Period European White Bread (Manchet) was very similar to our modern dense home-made white loaves, at least from written descriptions. It is possible to duplicate the few period bread recipes with good results. You can be confident that you are arriving close to the reality if you use unbleached white flour (or biscuit flour). Mostly these recipes have been guarded by baking guilds who, naturally, were loath to part with their secrets, and thus did not write them down. Just as now, all sorts of breads were available in period, made from many types of grains. Pulse, for instance, was a flour made of at least a portion of pea- or bean-meal. Add in other factors: colder climates with poorer soils and little imports used more oats or other hearty grains. Warmer, more accessible, soil-rich areas preferred wheat, but barley, Rye, etc. were common and had wide usage. In general, the higher in society one went, the lower the proportion of unleavened/whole grains that were included in the "daily bread". At least in Russia, bread and other food was used as a form of monetary exchange for servants and vassals. A weekly portion was alloted for each servant in the form of a huge loaf (or a half-loaf). This was supposed to last for the week, so it must have been very large indeed (see the Domostroi). The French brought over to the colonies a tradition for Miches, or large, round loaves of "commom" bread, which weighed sufficient to last for several days without going stale. My source says that they could weight up to 16 lbs. (English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David, Viking Press, NY 1980--but I'm quoting second hand). Not all breads were leavened. Some breads were leavened by captured yeast (a/k/a spontaneous leaven), some by "starters" or "mothers" or "trees" (portion of the dough reserved for the next batch). Some breads were leavend with brewing yeast borrowed from the scum (for top-brewing strains more common in period) or the lees (sediment leftover). So, although we have a great deal of information, we once again are stuck with the fact that, not having eaten bread in period, we can only make educated guesses about texture, flour quality, leavening and grain content. But as far as I'm concerned, that's the fun part. Now, I have a question for the other bread-lovers out there: I have seen recipes for "plain" bread, and rich bread with fruit included (called Diet Bread!?!). Has anyone out there seen recipes for what we'd call "herb" bread, or bread incorporating any other ingredients like cheese? Just curious. I've seen nary a one(well, a few cheese-fritter recipes, but I'm looking for loaf-bread recipes here). That doesn't mean they weren't consumed, however, in period. I tend to have a rather narrow focus, not looking much past central Europe unless an autocrat hands me a different theme for the feast. Cheers, Aoife Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 07:42:51 -0400 From: Margo Lynn Hablutzel <Hablutzel at compuserve.com> To: A&S List <sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu> Subject: Bread Recipes The only recipe I have dedacted "to make a fine brede" is actually angelfood cake, so that's not much help. I have one book with some bread recipes, but I think these are mostly adapted ones because since it was such a simple thing, not many bread recipes survived until pretty late in cooking history. One of my hobbies is collecting old cookbook, you can be amazed and amused at the contents! And we're not even talking 20th Century. In "The Medieval Cookbook" by Maggie Black, she notes that no recipes have survived but gives two recipes based upon her reading of many references. One is White Bread and one is Barley Bread. I checked several other cookbooks and while some refer to bread already made, none have recipes for it. Be careful, as with modern British english, 'biskit' or 'biskit brede' is more often a cookie than what we refer to as bread nowadays. ---D Morgan Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 10:24:55 From: Luznicky <we4 at widomaker.com> To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu Subject: Re: bread recipe needed At 10:26 PM 5/25/97 -0500, you wrote: >Does anyone know of a simple period bread recipe that uses all-purpose >flour? Most of the recipes I have found have onions or lots of spices, >etc. It is to be served at a feast, so I would like to find a recipe >that most people would find tasty. > >Maggie Many recipes (as in _English bread and yeast cookery_) use packaged yeast. Not period. You will need a sour dough recipe to be close to any that would have been made in period(many did use the barm from beer.) A couple of suggested sources are 1) the Desem bread recipe in _Laurel's Bread Book_ and 2) any fo the whole grain recipes in _Breads from La Brea_ by Nancy Silverton. Good Luck! Mikhail the Armorer Tarkhan Khanate Bright Hawk Great Household of the Dark Horde PLMPLA we4 at widomaker.com From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com> Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 11:16:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: SC - Sugar, Flour and Bread (Longwinded;) Aoife discussed flours and bread recipes. What we have found so far for bread recipes includes: 1. Rastons, from Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books (English): yeast bread made with eggs and sugar in the dough; after baking, cut off top crust, crumble inside to crumbs, mix butter in with crumbs, put top crust back on and bake again briefly. 2. Platina's description of how to make bread (15th c. Italian): wheat flour with salt, flour, and "leaven", which I believe to be sourdough, baked the day after the dough is made. 3. Chapatis, from a 16th-century Indian book, with no directions but with quantities by weight of flour, milk, ghee (clarified butter), and salt. So far, that is it for recipes. Anne Wilson (_Food and Drink in Britain_; a very good secondary source) discusses breads and flours, going from household accounts and bakers' regulations; according to her, higher wheat content and whiter flours increase both up the social scale at any given time and through time during our period. Elizabeth of Dendermonde/Betty Cook From: Stephen Bloch <sbloch at adl15.adelphi.edu> Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 11:14:59 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: SC - Sugar, Flour and Bread (Longwinded;) Elizabeth of Dendermonde/Betty Cook wrote: > What we have found so far for bread recipes includes: > > 1. Rastons, from Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books (English).... > > 2. Platina's description of how to make bread (15th c. Italian).... > > 3. Chapatis, from a 16th-century Indian book.... > > So far, that is it for recipes.... If we're going far enough afield to include both rastons and chapatis, I think we can include some other yeast-raised recipes from the Andalusian sources. Cariadoc/David posted a few of these, notably the famous "pile of pancakes bread" (whose Arabic name I've forgotten). I would point out also the dish "muqawwara", which is a yeast-raised bread dough, of either semolina or ordinary flour, moistened with milk and egg yolks (IIRC, the 13c. original recipe says 15 egg yolks per pound of flour), which is shaped into a disk and pan-fried on both sides. Of course, it is then further abused in a manner reminiscent of Rastons: you cut out the middle, crumble the crumbs, mix them with chopped almonds and pistachios, and refill the cavity with crumbs in alternating layers with sugar and melted butter. It's in my T.I. article, which is on Greg Lindahl's SCA cookery page as well as at "http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/sca/cooking/". mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib Stephen Bloch sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/ Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University From: gfrose at cotton.vislab.olemiss.edu (Terry Nutter) Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 13:26:16 -0500 Subject: Re: SC - Period Recipes Hi, Katerine Rountre here. Just a quick footnote. Lord Ras writes: >This holds true for other New World foods such as corn which can be >documented as being grown in LATE period but it's documented use was strictly >for animal feed. Human consumption is not documented per se and certainly was >not readily accepted in noble circles. Actually, I have documented corn as used for human consumption. The class isn't clear. But only in the form of bread, and not modern (baking soda leavened) corn bread. For details, see http://www.watervalley.net/users/jtn/Articles/maize.html But it's a *very* narrow window of time and place, and we don't know in any detail what sort of bread anyhow. Should people serve corn at feasts, based on this information? Who the heck knows what "should" means in this context? All I hope for, is that those who choose to do so will make some attempt to avoid false impressions of what we actually know of the record ("Of course it's okay! S/He's documented corn up one side and down the other!"). Cheers, - -- Katerine/Terry From: Par Leijonhufvud <parlei at ki.se> Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 12:56:37 +0200 (METDST) Subject: Campfire bread (was: SC - camping recipes) On Mon, 16 Jun 1997 linneah at erols.com wrote: > I've always been partial to bread dough wrapped around a clean green stick and > held over the fire until golden - sort of like roasting a marshmallow. Eat it > plain or brush it with butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. May not > be period, but it is tasty. If you do it on a flat iron "skillet" (the type found i several viking digs) it is period as a cooking method. Not sure about the alternative of using a flat rock, but I would tend to assume that was done in early period "field expedient cooking" as well. If you want to keep it period you should also give some thought to the grains you use in the bread (and stay away from baking powder). For great results mix in some peas (boiled and mashed) in the dough, as well as mixing several different grains. This was done in several of the breads (or porridges; it is often hard to tell the difference 1000 years later) found in the viking age archaeological material. /UlfR - -- Par Leijonhufvud par.leijonhufvud at labtek.ki.se From: Stephen Bloch <sbloch at adl15.adelphi.edu> Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 12:15:36 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: SC - Building ovens > Erin Kenny wrote: > > I have thought about this, but not yet tested the design. My > thoughts go as follows. > > ... [detailed construction discussion omitted] Thom Leonard's _The Bread Book_ includes a 17-page chapter on constructing and using a brick oven. He says, among other things, "An oven built of a single thickness of brick will work well, but the extra mass and strength gained by a simply applied 2-inch layer of concrete makes all the difference." Concrete, of course, puts it way OOP, but a layer of clay on the outside of the bricks should serve the same purpose, adding heat-retaining mass. I've wanted to build such a thing for several years now... in fact, I was considering building a mobile one, either on a wheelbarrow (as appears in at least one late medieval woodcut) or on a car trailer. If you're curious about the book, which also discusses baking bread from levain (semisolid sourdough starter), grinding your own flour, and even growing your own wheat, ask your local natural-foods store; it's published by East-West Health Books, copyright 1990, ISBN 0-936184-09-4. mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib Stephen Bloch sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/ Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 18:57:55 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> Subject: Re: SC - Bread Sue Wensel wrote: > >I've used unsliced commercial whole grain loaves, the market calls > >them "Peasant style." They're often round or oval instead of > >Wonder Bread shaped. Sometimes I use bread dough from the > >supermarket, but baked on site that day (and if I could get dough > >other than plain white, I'd do it more often). > > Why do you not use plain white? I understand the loaf shape, though I don't > know what evidence we have for it. Bread pan shaped loaves strike us as too > modern. Is that part of your reason for not using white bread? > > >Caitlin Davies > > Derdriu Well, the evidence suggests that white bread as we know it today probably didn't exist until around the 18th-19th centuries. White bread in period would have been made from whole wheat flour with much of the larger particles of bran sifted out. That still leaves the particles too small to be caught in the bolting cloth. Even if you allow for some natural bleaching of the flour to occur, as, say, it sits in a not-quite-airtight container between grinding and use, I suspect it still wouldn't have been likely to get any lighter in color than the lighter commercial whole-wheat breads such as Roman Meal. Period European breads would also have been heavier in texture, since through most of Europe the wheat grown and eaten was much softer (read lower in gluten) than what we are accustomed to today. Adamantius Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 23:12:27 -0400 (EDT) From: Uduido at aol.com Subject: Re: SC - Bread << I use bread dough from the supermarket, but baked on site that day >> I also use frozen white bread dough from the market. I unthaw the loaves and divide each loaf into 4 pcs. I then roll it into a ball and roll it in oatmeal. I grease a sheet pan and lay then on it 4 by 6 thus getting 24 loaves to a pan. I let it rise til double and bake. It is quick, easy, and tasty. The oatmeal gives it a rustic look and each person gets there own individual loaf of bread. :-) Lord Ras Date: 23 Jul 1997 11:21:57 -0500 From: "Sue Wensel" <swensel at brandegee.lm.com> Subject: Re(2): SC - Bread >Well, the evidence suggests that white bread as we know it today >probably didn't exist until around the 18th-19th centuries. White bread >in period would have been made from whole wheat flour with much of the >larger particles of bran sifted out. That still leaves the particles too >small to be caught in the bolting cloth. Even if you allow for some >natural bleaching of the flour to occur, as, say, it sits in a >not-quite-airtight container between grinding and use, I suspect it >still wouldn't have been likely to get any lighter in color than the >lighter commercial whole-wheat breads such as Roman Meal. I don't concur on this. Markham has several recipes calling for "fine white flour." I don't think our whole wheat flours will fit that bill. I think they were able to get rather fine flour by bolting several times and I suspect they had some fairly fine bolting cloths. Unfortunately, I don't have any sources with me (at work) and the ones I have read are currently in the local library. >Period European breads would also have been heavier in texture, since >through most of Europe the wheat grown and eaten was much softer (read >lower in gluten) than what we are accustomed to today. The wheat I don't know much about. What is your recommended reading on this? >Adamantius Derdriu swensel at brandegee.lm.com Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 11:49:02 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> Subject: Re: Re(2): SC - Bread Sue Wensel wrote: > >Well, the evidence suggests that white bread as we know it today > >probably didn't exist until around the 18th-19th centuries. White bread > >in period would have been made from whole wheat flour with much of the > >larger particles of bran sifted out. That still leaves the particles too > >small to be caught in the bolting cloth. Even if you allow for some > >natural bleaching of the flour to occur, as, say, it sits in a > >not-quite-airtight container between grinding and use, I suspect it > >still wouldn't have been likely to get any lighter in color than the > >lighter commercial whole-wheat breads such as Roman Meal. > > I don't concur on this. Markham has several recipes calling for "fine white > flour." I don't think our whole wheat flours will fit that bill. I think > they were able to get rather fine flour by bolting several times and I suspect > they had some fairly fine bolting cloths. Unfortunately, I don't have any > sources with me (at work) and the ones I have read are currently in the local > library. "White" appears often to have been a relative term, as in white marmalade of quinces, which is reddish amber in color, white puddings, which are usually pale beige. My family are all fair-complected and fairly pale, with brown eyes and hair, and the lady next door, born in Dublin, calls me "Blackie", because we aren't blonde or redhaired. As for flour, I'm sure that by repeated boltings (and I have done the whole Little Red Hen thing myself, starting from a single ear of wheat and ending up with bread) you can get it much finer and paler than pure, fresh, stone-ground whole wheat flour, but you still won't get the kind of flour your baker or a bread factory uses to make white bread, and you won't get that kind of bread, either, unless the baker makes a bread from mixed white and whole wheat flour. > The wheat I don't know much about. What is your recommended reading on this? I believe both "Food in History" (Reay Tannahill) and "Food and Drink In Britain" (C. Anne Wilson) go into the issue of period bread. For the hard science of it, see Harold McGee's "On Food And Cooking" and "The Curious Cook". Probably also Margaret Visser's "Much Depends On Dinner". I used to have a book called "The Staffs of Life", which went into this pretty well also, but I don't remember the author or where the book is. Adamantius Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 13:10:57 -0400 (EDT) From: Gretchen M Beck <grm+ at andrew.cmu.edu> Subject: Re: SC - Bread Excerpts from internet.listserv.sca-cooks: 22-Jul-97 Re: SC - Bread by Philip & Susan Troy at asan > Well, the evidence suggests that white bread as we know it today > probably didn't exist until around the 18th-19th centuries. White bread > in period would have been made from whole wheat flour with much of the > larger particles of bran sifted out. That still leaves the particles too > small to be caught in the bolting cloth. Even if you allow for some > natural bleaching of the flour to occur, as, say, it sits in a > not-quite-airtight container between grinding and use, I suspect it > still wouldn't have been likely to get any lighter in color than the > lighter commercial whole-wheat breads such as Roman Meal. That depends on where you are. Sicily, for example, was known in period for it's white bread--a description I can't imagine coming from anything close to Roman Meal colored. I think golden is more what you're looking for, as most of the natural oil in the wheat (which is removed in modern milled wheat) remained--this is the color you get from semolina, for example. toodles, margaret Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 13:57:31 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> Subject: Re: SC - Bread Gretchen M Beck wrote: > That depends on where you are. Sicily, for example, was known in period > for it's white bread--a description I can't imagine coming from anything > close to Roman Meal colored. I think golden is more what you're looking > for, as most of the natural oil in the wheat (which is removed in modern > milled wheat) remained--this is the color you get from semolina, for > example. You're right; I shouldn't make generalizations. The color I was referring to, though, is a pale beige, like cafe au lait. Just a bit paler than Wonder Whole Wheat. I was thinking in terms of the "white" bread of Northern Europe through most of period. Possibly the wheat oils have something to do with it. However, semolina is made from several varieties of wheat, some of which are whiter/yellower than others. Certainly the yellow color was considered a sign of quality. I remember reading somewhere that it was dyed with saffron or some other herbal derivative. It is today, I know. Adamantius Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 13:12:24 -0500 (CDT) From: nweders at mail.utexas.edu (ND Wederstrandt) Subject: Re: SC - Bread I also read somewhere that wheat was a more generic term as well, and that medieval bread was sometimes made with spelt, rye and other grains. While the upper classes ate more what we consider wheat middle and lower classes ate a more mixed grain. These were denser and chewier. I am sure that a great [deal] of our breads would be a surprise to them. Do you think that "Essene bread" was eaten? I've alwys been curious about the use of sprouted wheat used as bread. I have Elizabeth David's book on bread, and can check on what she says. Clare St. John Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 19:25:59 +0000 From: "ysabeau" <ysabeau at mail.interquest.de> Subject: Re: SC - Bread Adamantius wrote: You're right; I shouldn't make generalizations. The color I was referring to, though, is a pale beige, like cafe au lait. Just a bit paler than Wonder Whole Wheat. I was thinking in terms of the "white" bread of Northern Europe through most of period. Possibly the wheat oils have something to do with it. However, semolina is made from several varieties of wheat, some of which are whiter/yellower than others. Certainly the yellow color was considered a sign of quality. I remember reading somewhere that it was dyed with saffron or some other herbal derivative. It is today, I know. ______________________________________ They are still baking breads here (Germany) in what I believe is the age old tradition with the exception of using steam injection ovens instead of brick. Most of the breads here vary in shades of brown. The only "white" bread I have seen is kartoffeln brot (potato bread) and that is an off-white color. They consider American white bread to be like a cake. The breads are sold in round and oblong loaves, you can buy half a loaf if you want. I am still exploring and trying new things and bread is one of my favorite. Fresh bread is still such an important commodity that the only things open on Sundays are the bread shops- but only for an hour. Ysabeau of Prague Lisa Sawyer Ysabeau at interquest.de Baumholder,Germany From: Gunnora Hallakarva <gunnora at bga.com> To: ansteorra at Ansteorra.ORG Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 09:53:08 -0500 Subject: ANST - Sifters and Sieves The discussion on baking, ovens and bread asked about period sifters/sieves. I don't know what anyone else was using, but I can tell you what the Vikings used (and in fact, Swedes in the countryside still use even today)... they used a round, cup-shaped sieve made by naalbinding, utilizing horsehair fiber. Such sieves were used for sifting flour, and for straining milk. Milk straining is how most seem to be used in the present day, but archaeological examples have been found with ground grain trapped in the fibers. Gunnora Hallakarva Herskerinde Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 14:25:08 -0500 From: gfrose at cotton.vislab.olemiss.edu (Terry Nutter) Subject: Re: SC - Re: Lombardy Custard Hi, Katerine here. Linneah asks: >How often were the crusts made NOT to be eaten? When I did my research >for a paper on food, I understood that it was frequent that the crust >was only the vessel and not intended for eating. Is this just when it >calls for a coffin? This is a complex question, and I'm not sure anyone knows the answer. On the one hand, period serving manuals clearly indicate that in some cases (especially meats baked in crusts), the crust itself was not served. Instead it was opened, the meat (and possibly sauce) removed, the meat carved, and the contents served. On the other hand, medieval recipes frequently call for ingredients in crusts (like sugar) that do not particularly affect their appearance, but to affect their flavor. We also see references to tender crusts. So equally clearly, crusts are at least sometimes intended to be eaten. It's tempting to hypothesize that most sweet pies are intended to be eaten crust and all, as are most custard ones (whether with or without meat), while meats (and fish, of course) baked in a crust are intended to be lifted out; but I don't know of anywhere one could look to give a clear answer. - -- Katerine/Terry Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 15:59:02 -0400 (EDT) From: Stephen Bloch <sbloch at adl15.adelphi.edu> Subject: Re: SC - Smoking Questions > Recently, I have become very interested in how cooking related > fire works. In the last 3 years, I have built two beehive style ovens at > the Pennsic War and have also undertaken building one in the back yard, as > a means to study both their use and maintenance. > > Anyone who could send/direct me to good resources for recipes and related > information(in modern english, please) would be very appreciated. We bought a book on building brick ovens at Pennsic this year, but we haven't finished unpacking all the stuff from Pennsic so I'm not sure where the book is. However, I can also recommend _The Bread Book_, by Thom Leonard, pub. East-West Health Books 1990, ISBN 0-936184-09-4. This book discusses how to make traditional "levain"-raised bread and maintain the culture for the next batch, how to grind flour for bread (with commentary on different makes of grinders), what sorts of wheat are best for bread, how to grow them in your back yard, and how to build and use a brick oven. mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib Stephen Bloch sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 21:16:28 -0500 From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US> Subject: RE: SC - Plum Pudding To get back on subject, the penny loaf was the price of a loaf of bread under the Assize of Bread established in 1266. There were three qualities of flour listed and three different weights of loaf. In terms of 17th and 18th century recipes, what is usually meant is the penny white loaf (a manchet) which weighed between 6 and 8 ounces. A wheat or brown loaf would weigh 12 to 16 ounces. Elizabeth David recommends using 81 to 85 percent extraction wheat meal with a small proportion of unbleached white flour enriched with milk and eggs to approximate Jacobean or Georgian manchets. So, my guess at a 1 lb. loaf is half off. Bear Date: Mon, 13 Oct 1997 10:58:26 -0500 From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US> Subject: RE: Re[2]: SC - beer bread recipe (was re: small feasts) > have a quetion about using homerew in cooking. One of the men in our shire >makes a fairly good home brew (so I 'm told). His beer generally has a layer >of stuff in the bottom of the bottle. When drinking they just pour the beer >off gently and then dispose of the sediment. Would you want to keep that >sediment wh