SC - Trenchers Oh my!

[Decker, Terry D.]

Brown hockey pucks sounds about right.  Trenchers are supposed to be dense
and flat.

Please understand that a trencher is not a bowl.  It is not intended to be
used as a bowl.  Think of it as a plate with the crust as the upper surface.

In 15th Century England, the pantler would prepare the trenchers by squaring
the edges (cutting the circular loaf into a square) then spliting the loaf
between the upper and lower crust to form two plates, crust up, cut face
down.  The upper crust was presented to those of higher rank, while the
bottom crust, which may have been burnt or have ashes on it, were given to
persons of lower rank.  According to some texts, the pantler had a set of
three knives specifically for the task of preparing the trenchers, but I
have yet to see a picture of one of these sets.

The fact the English trimmed and split trenchers does not eliminate the
possibility that other regions used trenchers intact  or split and not
trimmed.

To my knowledge, "scotching" around the middle was not done on trencher
loaves.  The manchet recipes, being short rise, use the scotching to
increase the expansion from the oven spring to help make the crumb lighter
on the palate.

Bear

> 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!  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!).
> 
> Kiri