SC - FWD - carrot supplier

[Cindy M. Renfrow]

On Fri, 26 Jan 2001, Decker, Terry D. wrote:

> I'd be a little hesitant to take this at face value.  Rye was a far more
> common grain than barley or wheat and the accounts I have of Scandinavian
> baking practices tend to support rye as being the common loaf.

ISTR, based on something as flimsy as my memory that in the southern
parts of the viking home range (Denmark) wheat might have been far more
common than it was in northern Norway.

> While I don't discount a loaf of bread from pea flour and pine bark, I would
> judge it to be famine rations or possibly horse bread, rather than a normal
> loaf for human consumption.

I recall them being found in various contexts in Birka, and I know that
pine bark was used more or less regularilly in Finland in bread even in
normal times as late as the end of the last century. It was also a quite
common practice in times of less than plenty in much of scandinavia.
This said I agree that a loaf made from only pea and pine bark would
have been an exception (a gluten intolerant Viking?).

Oh, and pine cambium layer (what we are actually talking about here, not
the brown outer stuff, in case anyone thought this) does not taste too
bad, either in bread or roasted.

/UlfR

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Par Leijonhufvud                                      parlei at algonet.se
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