Subject: SC - OT kitty training

[THLRenata@aol.com]

> I've been wondering that myself.  I'm curious as to what their flours were
> like and what grains were used most often.  I have been experimenting with
> different types (whole wheat, rye, barley, oat, rice, buckwheat, soy), and
> have achieved a wide range of textures, flavors and densities.  What would
> there wheat flour have been like, would peasants be using something like
> our
> whole wheat?  How finely ground were their flours?  I assume they used
> some
> kind of starter for yeast, would their bread have had a more sourdough
> flavor?
> 
> Faoiltighearna
> Torvald's Hird
> Canton of Ravenhill, BBM, East
> 
Barley, rye and oats produce more grain per acre than wheat, so wheat was
the expensive grain to produce.  Rye and oats will grow where barley and
wheat won't, so they are more common the farther north you go.  Buckwheat is
not as popular as the other grains.  Soy is unknown.  Rice is of limited use
until late in period.

Flours could run the range from coarse meal to very fine.  Meals are used
primarily in cooked grain dishes.  Finer flours are used to make bread.

Peasants would be more likely to use rye, barley, oats and buckwheat than
wheat, but where economic conditions permitted, wheat moved down the
economic ladder.  The choicest breads were made from wheat and it was wheat
which was the standard grain of a noble house.  Mixed grains in porridge and
flour are also fairly common.  A little wheat flour provides gluten to help
a heavy bread rise. 

Medieval mills could grind flour as fine as our standard flours.  The chief
difference is the amount of flour that could be extracted.  Medieval mills
can convert about 85 percent of the grain to flour.  Modern mills can
produce 90 to 95 percent extraction.  Modern roller mills separate the wheat
germ from the from the grain, something that did not occur in medieval
milling.  

Flour was sieved through cloth (boulted) to remove bran and large particles
and to seperate the finer flour from the coarser flour.  The average quality
loaf would likely come from twice-boulted flour.  The fine white loaf would
most likely be made with thrice-boulted flour.  For practical purposes,
using a standard unbleached flour will approximately equal medieval fine
flour excepting the gluten content.  

The most common wheat in the middle ages was emmer (Triticum dicoccum).
This produces a low gluten flour similar to cake flour although perhaps not
as fine..

The other common wheat was spelt (Triticum spelta).  Spelt had a a higher
gluten content and produced a coarser flour.  It was used primarily in
breads.

In the matter of yeast vs. sourdough, English recipes call for yeast or ale
barm.  This was dipped out of the active ale pot and used to leaven the
bread.  The yeast in this case is Saccharomyces cerevisiae.  A variant of
this yeast is what is commonly used in dry active or compressed yeast today.

On the otherhand, the French discouraged the use of yeast barm and forced
bakers to use a levain.  Platina's bread recipe is of this sort.
Originally, the levain was a lump of dough reserved from the previous baking
and added to the next batch as a starter.  Modern French bakers feed their
levains and pinch dough off of them to be the starter.  A levain tends to be
stiff ball of dough while most sourdough starters are semi-liquid, but they
perform the same function.

If you are interested in more information, try Stefan's Florilegium at:

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/rialto/idxfood.html

Read over the sections on bread, bread-making, flours and yeasts.  There is
a lot of good information and recipes there.

Bon Chance

Bear
============================================================================

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".

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