SC - Trenchers Oh my!

[Stefan li Rous]

Kiri said:
> Regarding the trenchers, he did bring them along, and they looked and felt a lot
> like large brown hockey pucks.  I suspect it would have been difficult even to
> cut them in half to form a bowl!  

Why do you bring up the idea of cutting them in half to form a bowl? It is
my understanding, from the trencher cutting directions posted here from
period books, that trencher loaves were cut into slices after the crust
was removed. I don't remember any directions to create bowls out of them,
just flat, squareish slices.

> I wonder if what Bear is suggesting above
> (slashing around the middle to allow them to expand as they bake) might have
> made them more useable (notice I didn't say edible!).  However, we did feed them
> to the poor upon completion of the meal (our dogs...who thought they were fancy
> dog biscuits!).

So were these served with the crust on, or cut off? And how well did they
work as plates? Did the sauces/juices soak through them?

I guess you might want the trenchers to soak up some of the juices. If
they were totally impervious, the juice would run off the edges onto
the table and you would have a mess.
- -- 
THL  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 ****