Northern Foods was Re: SV: SC - Introducing Myself

[Decker, Terry D.]

> I also wondered why on earth these people, who obviously had a fire
> burning 
> on the hearth every day of the winter, went to such extremes to bake all 
> their bread at once in the fall and subsist on staler and staler bread as 
> the year passed by.  The growing season is short and all the grain won't
> be 
> all ripe when harvest time comes.  Bread stores better than green grain, 
> hence, massive amounts of baking the fall and flat, wheel shaped loaves
> with 
> holes in the middle so the piles of loaves can be stored up in the rafters
> 
> hanging on a pole.
> 
> 
> Bonne
> 
The growning season is short, but the days are long.  Between May and
October, the days will be effectively 15 to 20 hours long.  The grain will
ripen.

Considering this is the extreme northern latitudes, I would expect more rye
than wheat.  An uncut dense rye bread takes a long time to go stale.  Wheat
on the other hand goes stale very quickly, unless double baked.  So any
bread meant for long storage was probably rye.

I'm not knowledgeable about Scandinavian baking practices, but if they baked
large wheels of bread, it was probably because the oven was housed in
separate building.  A cold northern winter likely would steal the heat from
the oven before it could bake the bread.  I've baked in -25 F weather in
cast iron and it takes a good hot bed of coals replenished from a constantly
burning fire.  I wonder whether you could get a mass heat oven to
temperature in truly inclement weather.

I believe northern steadings were commonly inhabited by extended familys.
At an average 2 pounds of bread per person per day, I doubt enough bread
could be effectively baked in the hearth to feed them.  In my opinion, bread
would have been baked in the hearth, but it would have been small loaves of
wheat or oats meant as a change from a steady diet of rye.

And now that I have developed a set of opinions I need to find out if the
facts will support them or whether I need a new set of speculations.  Thanks
for the interesting problem. 

Bear
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