SC - period bread comments

[Anne-Marie Rousseau]

Hi all from Anne-Marie

It is my considered opinion that the medieval concept of perfect bread
would be WonderBread. White. Fluffy. Sans crunchy bits.

I figure this because of all the descriptions of period bread we have in
cookbooks and other places. The few recipes we have for bread specifically
state to take FINE flour. There's a recipe for bread called "pouft".
Manchets are described as being of fine clear flour. (Check out Elisabeth
Davids English Bread and Bread cookery for a good survey of the info on
bread in our period).

Treatiese on agricultures specifically state that you are bolt your flour
(the process by which germ and chaff and the like are removed) multiple
times. Once or twice is for ordinary bread. More than that, (ie whiter and
purer, most definately not whole wheat) for fine manchet for the lords
table, more yet for the Host for Mass. 

Sure the peasants might have eaten course textured bread with all kinds of
bits and stuff in the flour, but as the germ and chaff were recovered as
animal feed, I doubt that it was the norm (if you bolt it, a simple enough
procedure, not only would you get "better" flour, but your critters would
get a bit of grain in their diet.)

There's mentions of folks eating bread with pea flour and chestnut flour,
etc, but that's usually referred to as famine food, ie when theres no more
wheat. By the way, pea flour makes tasty bread :). Though it wouldnt be
appropriate to serve it at a great feast, of course. If you're that short
on supplies, what are you doing holding a feast for 150 people, anyway?? :)

I believe that the SCA convention of "medieval people didnt eat as nice of
stuff" is just that, an SCA convention. Right up there with how everyone
drinks hot wine with spices all the time. (I've only actually seen recipes
for hot wine beverages that are considered medicinal. I found a hint of a
Spanish one, but need to track it down. Hot spiced wine, however does not
seem to be as ubiquitous as SCA people make it out to be. Go figure!)

When I make bread for medieval cookery, I use unbleached white flour, as
I'm cooking for a noble house. (of course there's the whole question as to
whether or not the cook would be baking bread, but we wont go into that
here :)). I need to do some digging as to what type of wheat exactly a 15th
century Franco Flemish gal would have had access to (gluten/protien and ash
content). King Arthur Flour has all kinds of flours broken out so once I
have that info I should be able to be pretty close to right.

anyway, that's my take on it...
- --AM 

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