[Sca-cooks] Re: Coffyns

Fri Feb 18 04:59:09 PST 2005

Also sprach Nancy Kiel:
>Also, if the pastry is thick enough to stand on its own, you don't 
>need a form.

True, but I was just talking about using a form for mass-producing 
identical shells somewhat more quickly than you might otherwise. At 
least that's the rationale in modern pork pie production when the 
wooden block form is used (there are also extremely fancy hinged 
molds you can buy for larger pies and pates, but that's not really to 
address mass production issues).

The way it works is, you roll your pastry into a smooth ball (having 
first determined, more or less, how much you'll need to do the job, 
either through past experience or a trial attempt), and then squoosh 
(that is a technical term) the wooden block, which resembles a hockey 
puck on a stick, with the stick protruding from one of the flat 
surfaces, into the dough, which spreads it out and forces the surface 
of the dough ball to begin to wrap itself around the block and up the 
sides. You then pat the sides, turning the whole thing occasionally 
via the stick, a la a potter's wheel, until they come evenly up the 
sides of the form, taking on its shape. You have the option of 
trimming the sides to smooth the edges.

To remove the dough from the form, you roll it on its edge on your 
pastry board, which thins it slightly and, consequently, increases 
its circumference and diameter accordingly, which tends to create a 
space between the form and the dough (hot-water pastry isn't sticky), 
making the form easy to remove with a twist of the stick. The pastry 
will also harden pretty dramatically as it cools off.

Now, I have no compelling evidence to suggest that this method was 
used in period, nor that anything like a hot-water dough appears 
until the seventeenth century, but it's tempting to assume such a 
thing could have been done (whether or not it actually was is another 
story), since the technology clearly existed for other types of 
manufacture.

As for the question of the thickness of the pastry and whether you 
need support, it also becomes more stable when the pastry is filled 
with something fairly solid, and a lid sealed in place.

Adamantius

>
>
>
>Nancy Kiel
>nancy_kiel at hotmail.com
>Never tease a weasel!
>This is very good advice.
>For the weasel will not like it
>And teasing isn't nice.
>
>
>
>>From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius.magister at verizon.net>
>>Reply-To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
>>To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
>>Subject: [Sca-cooks] Re: Coffyns
>>Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 14:42:32 -0500
>>
>>Also sprach Micheal:
>>>I working away in my kitchen one day when a thought hit me.  It 
>>>hurt ( before anyone else gets it)You know they had pots and pans 
>>>made by hand. Why wouldn`t they have used such for a shaping mold. 
>>>Flip the pot  bottom side up. Take the pastry throw it on top of 
>>>your cleanest pot of appropiate size. Shape drop it on the counter 
>>>fill it  cap it oven it. Much faster operation for simple day to 
>>>day . Much faster then all the hands on methods I have been 
>>>reading. May also explain why there are no molds to be seen or to 
>>>be questioned about. I realy have a hard time believing they liked 
>>>to work any harder then we do. Another project to look at maybe.
>>>Da
>>
>>They probably did have the pastrycook's equivalent of raising 
>>stakes, and the process of wrapping dough over and around one 
>>probably very much like raising a knee cop. Modern instructions for 
>>working with hot-water pie doughs often include using something 
>>like a large glass jar as a form, but I believe I have an old 
>>(semi-old, probably 1940's or so) English professional baking 
>>manual/textbook which mentions using a wooden form, presumably a 
>>cylindrical block with smoothed edges, on a stick, to form the 
>>pastry cases for small pork pies.
>>
>>But I was always struck by the period instructions to "raise a 
>>coffin", and always had a feeling the verb use was functionally 
>>identical to the verb usage wherein an armorer raises a cup-shaped 
>>piece. [Note that the recipes don't say to "dish a coffyn in a 
>>trap"; they say to "raise" it... ;-)  ]
>>
>>Speculation, yes, but interesting nonetheless.
>>
>>Adamantius
>>
>>--
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
>>brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let 
>>them eat cake!"
>>	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
>>Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782
>>
>>"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
>>	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
>>Holt, 07/29/04
>>
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-- 

"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04