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

[Terry Decker]

> --- Robin Carroll-Mann <rcmann4 at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> 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
>
> 'leaven'?  That wouldn't be referring to an addition of non-wild yeast, 
> would it??  :)
>
> William de Grandfort

Most French breads were made from continuous use starters.  Until this 
century, there was a law in France that prohibited the use of yeast.  The 
law was rescinded primarily because you need yeast to produce those 
extremely light and crusty baugettes.  I assume that the term used in the 
original text is "levain" (if I remember the right spelling) which in the 
context of 17th Century France refers a ball of dough (around 10 pounds or 
so) the baker maintains to seed the sponge for a batch of dough.

Yeast is never added to the levain or (presumably) to breads made from the 
levain.  Yeast is used strictly for specialty breads.

Bear