SC - So-Called "Oil from the Spleen"

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

> it occurs to me that you could make these with wheat flour (I 
> buy whole
> wheat organic bread flour at my health food store in bulk), 
> add a little
> gluten to compensate, 

Why worry about gluten?  Trenchers aren't to be eaten, and whole wheat flour
should have enough gluten.  Add a little yeast if you want more rise,
although you don't want too much rise or the upper crust will slope to the
edges (a no-no for trenchers).  If you use whole wheat flour with the graham
still in it, you'll have a rough equivalent to the flour used to make
wastel.

put them into an 8x8 square pan instead 
> of the 8 inch
> round the recipe calls for and haver very presentable 
> peri-oid trenchers...

An 8 inch round, makes a square just under 6 inches on a side.  If you could
get a 10x10, you could cut the loaf into quarters and make 8 trenchers at a
time.

My personal cheat is coffee can bread sliced about 1 inch thick.

> In the days when I was active in the SCA, these were 
> perfectly acceptable
> for everyday use.  Would they be o.k. to use now-a-days.  
> (Yes, Your Grace,
> I understood your point earlier and I recognize that it would 
> be *better*
> to make actual, authentic trenchers, but I'm wondering if 
> these would be
> o.k. when they were more practical than *real* trenchers or 
> when the person
> is unskilled as a baker (as we were back in those days <s>?))
> 
> Lady Celia des L'archier

The real drawback to making trenchers for feasts is the need for oven
capacity 4 days in advance.  If I had access to commercial ovens during the
week before an event, I would produce trenchers more often.  Unfortuantely,
I often work sites which don't have commercial ovens and have to pre-bake at
home, which makes trenchers impractical in terms of time and effort.

While not precisely as described, the faux trenchers you suggest seem to be
a reasonable cheat (at least to me, I don't know about His Grace).  I might
suggest that with them you make some real trenchers with which you could put
on a show of carving them for the head table, thus creating the illusion of
real trenchers, while you pass out the faux trenchers to the rest of the
feasters.

Bear