SC - Fw: [CALONTIR] Bread

[Jenne Heise]

> One of the things I've learned from SCA-Cooks is that, despite all the
> Biblical (and other) references to bread, we have about three bread recipes
> from our period, and none of them have come from bakers, but rather from
> commentaters. The reason given for this has been that the Baker's Guilds had
> a monopoly on the substance, and would not give out the recipes upon Pain of
> Expulsion.

Since most sources do mention breads being made at home in some times and
places before 1601, I think it's more likely that the reason we don't have
bread recipes is that no-one wrote down bread recipes, because breadmaking
- -- especially using beer barm or other liquid yeast forms -- is so
variable, and at the same time, it's something you often do, day after day
after day (or week after week).  If you were looking for consistency
between bakers, for instance in a baker's guild, then yes, the answer
would be recipes, but accounts of people bringing their dough to be baked,
and discrepancies between bakers' products (see _English Bread and Yeast
Cookery_ and _6000 Years of Bread_) bear out the idea that baking wasn't
solely based on some exclusive corpus of memorized guild recipes...

Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at tulgey.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.

" Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees 
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees, 
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!" -- Kipling