[Sca-cooks] OOP: 17th century French breadmaking

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

The Fons Grewe website has an interesting text for those who read French.  The 1661 edition of "Les delices de la campagne" by Nicholas de Bonnefons has an entire chapter on making various kinds of bread.  All of them begin with the mixing of a starter the night before, containing leaven plus one-sixth to one-quarter of the total flour.  The common breads, containing a mixture of grains, are started at 6 or 8 in the evening, to give them more rising time, whereas the sponge for an all-white wheat loaf is begun at 10.

I was amused to see that the tapping-on-the-bottom-for-a-hollow-sound test for doneness is at least 3 centuries old.

http://www.bib.ub.es/grewe/showbook.pl?gw015



Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom