[Bryn-gwlad] trenchers and plateware

[Stefan li Rous]

On Sep 5, 2006, at 3:42 PM, elizabeth at crouchet.com wrote:
> It's flour and water, made into a dough, spread flat and baked on  
> pan over the fire. Can be baked until hard. What is NOT
> period about it? I would guess it is more apporpirate than modern  
> focaccia. A flour tortilla is more like period pie dough, which
> was a holder and not meant to be eaten either.
>
> So what did a trencher look like? I remember they were not really  
> meant to be eaten like bread. They were utilitarian and
> disposable. They were only eaten by the poor and the pigs.
>
> Any one have a recipe and instructions for a food trencher or was  
> this so common it didn't need a recipe?
>
> Claire

There are no known period recipes for trenchers. There are in fact  
only about a dozen period bread recipes, depending upon where your  
dividing line is between a sweet bread/cake and a bread. For the  
period bread recipes you can find about half of the known ones in the  
breads-msg file in the Florilegium.

We do have some period descriptions of trenchers though. They also  
appear to be an item that changed over the centuries, especially in  
how they were cut. We have the directions on how they were cut from  
various courtesy manuals.

Yes, they were not made of the finest white flour and several  
descriptions talk about the best trenchers being several days old.   
Most descriptions also show the crusts being cut off. The big  
difference after that appears to be how the bread was cut and into  
how many pieces.

They weren't meant to be eaten by the *feasters*. At least one of the  
courtesy books specifically says not to eat the trencher, so it must  
have been done at times but those folks would have been looked down  
upon.

Yes, after the meal the trenchers were given to the staff or to the  
poor as alms. Bread including trenchers took up a substantial portion  
of a household's budget. I seem to remember a number of 20% in one  
mention although I may be mis-remembering.

Again, a lot of information on trenchers including different  
instructions on cutting them can be found in this file in the FOOD- 
BREADS section of the Florilegium:
trenchers-msg     (84K)  2/13/04    Wooden and bread trenchers. Plates.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-BREADS/trenchers-msg.html

I also know that Bear, up in northern Ansteorra, has been doing  
extensive research on trenchers and I heard at Pennsic of one other  
person, so hopefully some more comprehensive information will become  
available in the upcoming years.

You can also find in this file various examples of what other people  
have done in baking trenchers or trying to find "off the shelf"  
replacements for them. The biggest problem is that, especially  
without the crusts, most modern bread is too light and porous and  
basically of too high a quality, closer to fine manchet, to work well  
as a trencher.

Oh yes, and there is no evidence of anything like a bread bowl being  
used in period.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****