[Sca-cooks] Fair feast budget

[Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise]

> Okay, this has some merit, as well.  I suppose that, at an SCA feast, there are expectations of
> freshness and 'home-made' tastes and textures.  If feast-goers were to recieve nothing but
> store-bought or otherwise commercially prepared items, I think these feasts would quickly lose
> their appeal.  And, who doesn't love the flavor and aroma of a freshly baked loaf of bread??

There are points for and against. I used to be able to get store-bought, 
baked-fresh-that-day bread for 59 cents a loaf for very nice Vienna 
loaves; over time the price has gone up to 1.09, but between storage 
issues (baking enough bread for a feast onsite would be very complicated 
for most of the kitchens I work with, and I don't own a chest freezer) 
and the cost of the ingredients, not to mention the sheer physical 
drudgery (I once made about 790-850 sausage rolls from pizza dough in a 
month; it was worth it, but I got tired of staring at the ceiling 
because my shoulders and neck were so tight!) I've opted to go with 
fresh, crispy, storebought in-store baked bread for the meals I've 
cooked-- with one exception.

The feast I did for convivencia we had Sarah bas Mordechai do her 
challah bread, as well as a plain yeast roll from a recipe by Master A. 
We also served pita breads, storebought.

I'll probably serve challah-type bread from Sarah again if she can make 
it for me-- while it is not documentable, it's wonderfully luscious. 

-- 
-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net 
"The toad beneath the harrow knows/exactly where each tooth-point goes,
The butterfly upon the road/Preaches contentment to that toad." 
			- Rudyard Kipling