SC - barley

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Stefan li Rous wrote:
> 
> According to Waverly Root in "Food",
<snip>
> "Barley was the chief bread grain of continental Europe until the
> sixteenth century, as important in the European economy as is rice
> in many Asian countries today. It was first brought to America in
> 1543 by the second Spanish governor of Colombia."
> 
> "Barley lost much of its importance for breadmaking when leavened
> bread became common, for its low gluten content makes it refractory
> to the action of yeast."
<snip>
> Although if I take quotes three and four above at face value,
> it seems to be saying that leavened bread did not become common
> until just before the sixteenth century. Does this mean that much
> of the bread in period was not leavened? Or does this mean most
> of the grain was eaten as gruel and porridges rather than as bread?

The conundrum is as follows:

Aristos prior to the sixteenth century generally ate a semi-white,
leavened bread of rather fine quality (finely-ground flour). They
probably ate far more bread per capita per annum than most of us do (and
supplemented it with another notable grain product, beer).

It's been said by people like Reay Tannahill and C. Anne Wilson that
grain was probably more often eaten as a porridge by the less wealthy
classes. Reasons for this might include that you get more servings of
porridge from a pound of grain than you do bread, there being less water
in bread. (Raw dough is roughly something like 1.5 parts water to one
part grain meal, before cooking dries it out somewhat, whereas a typical
porridge starts out at around 4 parts water to one part grain.)

Another reason might be that many country people often had little or no
easy access to either commercially baked bread or to an oven, which
also, BTW, requires more fuel to cook the same amount of grain, so
porridge-y foods might appear to be the way to go.

On the other hand, as we keep having to remember, a lot of the recorded
medieval foodways we have are recipes for the wealthy/noble/royal. We
know a fair amount less about what villein or peasant Joseph of Average
ate. He may have lived almost exclusively (except maybe on holidays,
etc.) on boiled grain, and counted himself lucky, or he may also have
made flatbreads, which can be made on flat stones or in pans, without an
oven. Flatbreads also have the advantage of a longer shelf life than
most leavened breads.

I'd conclude from all this that:

A) Leavened bread was quite common, at least for certain social strata,
long before the sixteenth century.

B) Unleavened breads were as common, probably more common, _among_ the
common, prior to the sixteenth century.

C) An unknown but undoubtedly significant portion of all grain eaten in
Europe was eaten boiled as gruels and porridges.

It's tempting to say, just to illustrate the idea that not everyone ate
manchets all the time, that among Europeans in general, a third of the
grain eaten by humans was eaten as leavened bread, a third as unleavened
bread, and a third as porridge. This probably isn't accurate, but then
it's probably adequate for rough usage, and even more probably good
enough to illustrate a point made by Waverly Root, most of whose
research seems to require a grain of salt anyway, relying, as he does,
on secondary, tertiary, and quadr...qua...fourth-hand sources.    

Adamantius
Østgardr, East
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================