SC - Wafer recipes

[Stefan li Rous]

Drake replied to my reply to his original message :-):
> >I would love to see your recipe. Maybe I can make this version work
> >after all. Did you vary the sugar/flour proportions? I think the one
> >in the book was about 1:1 while the others that worked had a smaller
> >proportion of sugar.
> 
> I used about 3/4 rice flour, 1/4 sugar and made up the rest of the ingredients
> until I got the right consistancy.  I'm not that happy yet with the saffron
> wafers recipe.

That is not anything like the proportions in the Polish book as far as I
remember it. Rice flour??? I wasn't aware of rice flour being used in period
as a large constituent of anything like a bread or pancake dish.
Although I'm
sure someone can correct me if I'm wrong. I think the book used a wheat
flour. Since rice flour is also used as a thickener, I wonder if that would
help make wafers that stayed together better.
 
> >> I also found that no matter how little a dollop I put in the middle, I also
> got
> >> mixture squirting out the side and I noticed that there are two ways of
> cooking
> >> the wafer.
> >
> >Yes, I sometimes had that problem. I thought I could become expert enough
> >to drop just the exact size dollop of batter in just the exact spot on
> >the wafer iron to prevent the overflow. I never did.
> 
> Must be some secret ninja technique to it.  As the knight's have there "13
> secret Knight Shots", I'm sure there are 13 secret cooking laurel techniques. 
> Maybe have X ml of the dough loaded into a syringe and apply it to the direct
> center (measured with some secret quantum device) might work...

Maybe. However, you can get good a breaking off the excess to leave nice
symmetric wafers. And these scraps taste good! But for a large feast I don't
think I would be as picky about the symmetry as for the smaller Royalty
luncheon I did them for.

Oh, and I don't think you want the blob in the exact center anyway. At least
not on my iron, which is hinged on one side. The hinges cause an asymmetric
preasure and force the blob to one side.
 
> >I never got the savory recipe to work either. If anyone has a recipe for a
> >savory (ie: with cheese) wafer recipe that has worked for them, I'd like to
> >get it.
> 
> I'm gonna work on the cheese and red wine wafer recipe till I get it right... 

Please do and please send me or post the redaction. My savory wafers
tasted 
somewhat stale and wouldn't get stiff. And they tasted rather bland. Perhaps
the flour was stale? I need to try them again sometime with a different
sack of flour and a different cheese.

Some period recipes talk more like the savory wafer is two wafers with
cheese in between. I have found out that I can open my wafer iron out
flat. Perhaps I should put batter on both sides of the iron (4 blobs),
let it cook some, then put some cheese on one side and close the iron.
If the wafer isn't cooked enough this could get quite messy though.

Some recipes have the cheese mixed into the batter. I think this is what
I was doing.

> >Very nice. I'm afraid such moments have been rather rare for me in the
> >SCA for awhile, too.
> 
> O, I dunno.  You're a bit of a legend here in Lochac.  I must know at least
> 30-40 in Lochac personally who use the floregium regularly.  It's a very
> profound service you offer there.

Thank you. Such comments do mean a lot to me. I still don't have things
set up to get very good statistics from the site. So I really don't
know how much people are using the site or which files are of the most
interest. Or how they are using it. With more feedback I could put
more emphasis on the things that folks find the most useful.

It does appear that the interest in the Florilegium increases 
proportionally the further you get away from Ansteorra. And Lochac's
about as far away as you can get. :-)

Maybe it's because you are further away from me and see me only by
Internet. My local group is the only place I have had outright 
opposition to the Florilegium and efforts to prevent distribution 
of the filelist and information about the files. When they throw
a stack of filelist printouts (costing >$1 each to print) in with the
chicken bones and food scraps, you stop putting them out at the
gate at baronial events. I've never had a problem putting out a
stack at any other event.

- -- 
Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****