SC - non-member submission - re - must

[Decker, Terry D.]

> > I tend to agree with you on this one. Since yeasts used in bread making
> are 
> > for the most part strains developed from ale yeasts I don't see flavor
> as the 
> > issue. At least some, if not all, commercial bakeries during the middle
> ages 
> > were attached to ale breweries.
> 
> I need more technical information before I will agree with this
> classification. Bear says that the difference between an ale yeast and a
> beer yeast is that ale yeast is top fermenting? 
> 
Early on brewing, baking and milling were all connected, however one needs
to differentiate between commerce and manor.  Commercial bakeries were
separated from the mills to prevent collusion between the baker and the
miller.  In many of the English manor houses, the brewery and the bakery
were closely relate, but had different staffs.  I may have some quotes about
the relationships between the breweries and the bakeries in a Flemish town,
but I will have to find them.  In any event, by the late 13th Century,
brewing and baking in the towns were separate "mysteries" and separate
establishments. 

Southern European bakeries tend to use a continuous starter, probably due to
limited ale production.

What I am addressing with the yeasts are the fermentation differences
between S. cerivisae and S. carlbergensis.  S. cerivisae is the yeast used
to produce top fermented brown ale and leavened bread for over two
millennia.  S. carlbergensis  is the basic yeast of the German style beers
which seems to have come into use about the middle of the SCA period.  Of
course, the organisms were not differentiated until Pasteur.

Some of the breweries have been creating variants of the two yeasts with
different fermentation characteristics, so they may no longer be
characterized as completely top or bottom fermenting.

> So could someone point me to a resource that gives more detail on this
> topic? Specifically, the difference between ale and beer in period, and
> getting yeast out of a fermentaion process to use for more fermentation or
> leavening?
>  -- 
> Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      
> 
Pliny "Natural Histories" is the earliest I know to describe the process of
taking ale from the ale pot to use as a leaven.  The earliest period bread
recipe for rastons simply calls for fresh barm, which due to the age would
be ale barm.  The manchet recipe simply calls for a pint of barm.

There are some 18th and 19th Century sources which describe cleaning barm in
water, dipping broomstraw into the barm to coat it with yeast to dry and
save, and pouring the barm onto a plate to let the liquid evaporate and the
yeast to dry to be stored and used later.

Bear