[Sca-cooks] Was bread served warm?

[Terry Decker]

> It's conceivable that other factors, like lower gluten, a lower  priority 
> in the oven pecking-order. etc., might also limit the size  of the loaves. 
> It's just that the cut trenchers we see in  illustrations look to be maybe 
> six inches square, so I was wondering  how you could get that from a loaf 
> whose largest dimension before  trimming was, at most, six inches. But 
> then, I also vaguely recall  references ("The Boke of Kervynge"?) to using 
> more than one trencher  on a plate.

There are some German woodcuts that show multiple trencher slices stacked. 
Wealth households appear to have used them with regularity.  The less 
wealthy used them for special occasions and in single slices, as noted in 
Menagier's instructions for a wedding feast.  The middle class and poor made 
do with metal, ceramics and wood.

>
>> The descriptions of trenchers we have are from the High Middle Ages  into 
>> the Renaissance.  I place the start of trencher loaves  sometime in the 
>> 10th Century.  They were initially split round  loaves (early 
>> 12thCentury) with the carving and shaping showing up  in 13th and 14th 
>> Century sources.  There is no way to determine if  the earlier trenchers 
>> may not have been larger loaves than those  written about later.  Their 
>> use began declining after the 13th  Century and disappeared in the 17th 
>> Century.
>
> Replaced to a great extent by sippets and toasts...
>

Probably not.  Sippets and toasts are meant to be eaten at the table. 
Trencher slices are used strictly as plates and are removed by the almoner 
to be given as charity to the poor.  Trencher bread was truely replaced by 
porcelain.

>> Given the cost, bread trenchers fall under the heading of  conspicuious 
>> consumption.  Their use appears to tie to wealthy  feudal household 
>> ritual, so a small loaf, daintily carved would  probably add to the 
>> display of wealth and position.  They were a  Rolls Royce kind of status 
>> symbol.
>
> Some day I'd like to do a multilateral presentation on the effects of  the 
> "Mini Ice Age" of approximately the 12th through the 18th  centuries. It 
> would involve tying together a number of strings,  including clothing 
> styles of the period, the weather (obviously),  plagues, harvests and 
> famine, and from a foodie perspective, the role  of the trencher and the 
> emergence of edible pie crust.
>
> Adamantius

The rise and decline of the bread trencher seems to match up geographically 
and temporally with the rise and decline of the feudal manor system. 
Trenchers predate the Mini Ice Age and their passing fits closer to change 
from a fealty based system to an employer-employee system and the growth of 
personal wealth between the 13th and 15th Centuries.  The trenchers were 
also heavily tied into the concepts of Christianity as practiced during the 
period and the final vestiges of their use were on fast days.

If you get around to writing the paper, I would certainly like to see how 
you think the Mini Ice Age affected the use of trenchers.

Bear