[Sca-cooks] White Flour, White Sugar

[Decker, Terry D.]

A lot of this is a judgement call.

With sugar, what you can get away with?  You can put brown sugar into a
sauce where it blends in, but would it look right in a Dish of Snow?  The
question to ask is, how will the nature of the ingredient affect the flavor,
texture, or visual aspect of the dish.

Flour is a bit easier in my view.  The extant European bread recipes are for
well-sieved wheat flour.  When a recipe calls for fair or fine flour, you
can safely assume that white, well-sieved flour is what is called for.
Simmel or simnel (as denoted by their names) are specifically made of the
finest flour, at least twice and very possibly thirce bolted.  Manchet,
pandemain, wastel, gastel, and rastons are made from fine flour.  Cockett,
treet, corbeil, and cheat all have higher bran content.  The precise quality
of some of these loaves was fixed by the Assize of Bread and other
regulations.

Since the quality of a noble's table would be a measure of the quality of
the noble, I would expect to see the finer bread served there, which seems
to be supported by the available account books.

Bear

> So my question is this: unless a recipe specifies double
> refined (white)
> sugar, or thrice bolted (white) flour, do we assume that a
> lesser grade
> is the norm? How lesser a grade? At what point does all this become a
> judgment call?
>
> MD/Marged