[Sca-cooks] Germanic Bread was Viking Skillet

[Terry Decker]

Pliny (79 CE) comments about the Vandal use of barm from the ale pot to
leaven bread.

Commercial bakers, mostly Greeks avoiding the wars in northern Greece,
became established in Rome about 173 BCE.  They were later joined by
Romanized Gallic bakers from the Greek colonies in Southern France and
introduced the practice of using ale yeast to Rome.

Yeast leavened breads are more common to the beer drinking regions of
Northern Europe while sourdoughs tend to be more common in the wine drinking
regions.  So it is very possible that Viking wheat breads were leavened from
the ale pot.

IIRC, some information from about the 17th Century suggests that rye breads
were spontaneously leavened.

Barley breads, which were probably common during the Viking period, would be
unleavened.

Bear


>
>The issue of yeast or sourdough is another tricky one, since at least
>the near-Roman Germanic tribes, during late Roman times, used yeast,
>probably a byproduct from beer production, in their bread (roman writers
>comment on their non-sour, lights & fluffy bread).
>
>UlfR