[Sca-cooks] Period Bread-The Update

[Stefan li Rous]

Aethelwulf said:
>    ....the trencher experiment worked well !!

In some ways this surprises me. And no, it has nothing to do
with your abilities as a baker. It is my understanding that period
trenchers were made from a rougher flour, not the same stuff the
manchets were made from. And that they were purposefully made
with three day old bread, to make them harder and the food less
likely to soak through.

Perhaps this file in the FOOD-BREADS section of the Florilegium
might give you a bunch more info on period trenchers and modern
attempts to re-create them:
trenchers-msg     (32K) 12/15/00    Wooden and bread trenchers. Plates.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-BREADS/trenchers-msg.html

>                 I did another batch of Manchet per the
> reciept and quite frankly......it sucked. dont know what
>   i did wrong or if my early success was sheer luck.
> I follwed the directions as the first time and the results
>   were almost dead on for my "experimental" batch with whole
> wheat/all purpose mix.Grrrrrrrrrrr*sigh*

Welcome to the "wonders" of breadmaking. :-) At least you didn't
have a feast waiting on these. Think of the extra complexity of
doing this using a period oven and naturally occuring yeasts... :-(

--
THLord 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 ****