[Sca-cooks] Sandwich theory

[Jeff Elder]

Good hard winter wheat has more gluten and protein than soft spring wheat.
In reading a little about flours, modern French flours are closer to
Pillsbury all purpose flour.  That being lower in gluten and protein that
bread flour.  High gluten flours trap and hold the gasses from the yeast,
much better than lower gluten flours.  The proteins help in holding in more
moisture also allowing for moister bread.
"I have read" that people were shy of buying light fluffy loaves.  It may
look all pretty and all but they were buying by the pound, and didn't want
bread that was all full of air.  Feeling in some way they were being
cheated.  That, and firmer loaves do travel a whole lot better, when all
stacked together.
The leavening, like barm, and ale yeasts tend to make a denser loaf of bread
more like home made sourdoughs here, granted with work and care one can make
fluffier loaves with this process, but then you may also be adding sugar, or
other ingredients in addition to the proscribed flour-leavening-salt-liquor
recipe.
Last though, and this is mostly conjecture, food was often cut into bite
sized pieces before serving to make it easier to handle with just a knife
and a fork.  Chinese do this to this day, and they are a country, as far as
I have seen, devoid of sandwiches.
I think sandwiches just took someone thinking outside the box.

Simon Hondy

> Stefan
> PS: I did hear an interesting theory though, at a Gulf Wars class, that
> sandwiches weren't done in period because the bread did not have much
> rise because of the hardness of the wheat. And thus it made a bread
> that was too dense or perhaps just not tall enough, to be sliced
> conveniently into sandwich slices. I'm not at all sure about this
> theory, but I do feel there is some reason, other than they just didn't
> think of it, that sandwiches weren't done in period.
> --------
> THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
>     Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas
> StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
> **** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****