SC - Fw: [TY] Looking for simple period bread recipie

[Christine A Seelye-King]

On Tue, 6 Mar 2001 11:44:09 -0500 "Marcus Antaya" <mjantaya at home.com>
writes:
> Actually, My Lady,
 I too would be interested in the bread recipies...
> Could you post them on the list?
> Many Thanks
> Gyric

Here is the excerpt I posted to my Kingdom list.  Bear does not actually
give the recipes, but talks about the recipes.  As he says, they can be
found in the Florilegium.  The dates in parenthesis are mine for the
benefit of the gentle who first asked the question.  
Christianna

As a point of interest, I now know of four in period bread recipes.  They
are Platina's (1475), Rastons from the Harleian MSS (15th Cent), Fine
Manchet from the Good Huswife's Handmaide for the Kitchen (16th Cent?),
and Restons, also from the Good
Huswife's Handmaide.  The first three recipes are to be found in Stefan's
Florilegium.

Platina uses a levain to start his bread and allows it to ferment
overnight
in a cool place.  For practical purposes, the levain can be a continually
fed starter, such as we use for sourdough, a mixture of flour and water
which has been allowed to ferment and is used as a one shot starter, a
large
piece of dough from a previous baking, or a large ball of dough which is
regularly replenished and from which pieces are taken to start batches of
bread.  In this case, I think Platina is retaining a piece of dough from
each baking to start the next.

The other three recipes use a barm.  In period this would have been
dipped
off the top of an active ale pot.  I've simulated this by using
dissolving a
pinch of sugar and 1 teaspoon dry active yeast in 1 pint of water.  

None of the recipes specifies a two stage rise, which makes me think that
the dough was mixed, kneaded and shaped, then allowed to rise before
baking.
Being a sourdough, Platina's recipe rises overnight, much as modern
French
sourdough does.  The rastons are "lat reste a whyle."  The manchets are
"let
it lie halfe an hower" (before shaping).  The restons have no rise
specified.  

The restons are an enriched spice bread so the lack of a rise may be to
give
them a heavier cake-like texture similar to a cinnamon roll.

The question of when the two stage rise and the sponge method of making
dough began is difficult to infer from the limited recipes.  However,
Gervase Markham's The English Hus-wife (1615) calls for a two stage rise
in
his manchet recipe and Louis Liger in Le Menage des champs (1711) has
recipes, probably dating from the 17th Century,  using a two stage rise
and
the sponge method.  I need to find a translation of Le Pastissier
francois,
which I think will push the sponge method back to at least 1655.


Bear 
 "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US> 
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