[Sca-cooks] White Flour, White Sugar

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

WHITE FLOUR

On our local cooks guild list, someone posted that white flour was
not period, and that she was told this by a judge in a Kingdom food
competition (i wish i knew who!) that she should be mixing white and
whole wheat half and half.

My recollection (i don't bake so i haven't studied this as deeply) is
that flour was bolted by the kitchen staff to make fine and very fine
grades (such as for Manchets), so fine white flour was indeed
available, and people of our station (according to the SCA) could
very well be using white flour.

Can someone please present a more reasoned account of flour so i can
dispell this myth?

I personally buy unbleached flour. I know that freshly milled flour
is yellow and that it lightens with age. Was flour bleached in
period? (i suspect not, but i am ignorant)

I know that sometimes it was adulterated, although there were laws
against this...

WHITE SUGAR

Did they have white sugar, either in the Muslim or European world "in
period"? From my reading it seems to me that the Muslims, at least,
had white sugar or something very close.

Or is piloncillo really the closest kind to the sugar used "in period"?

How close are demerara or turbinado in character to "period" sugar?

Someone else (who got a laurel for cooking) implied that date sugar
would be more suitable for cooking in the Andalusian cookbook. This
seems to me to be in error, since in have read that the Muslims were
growing sugar cane in Spain.

I prevail upon the collective wisdom to dispel the clouds of ignorance...

Anahita