[Sca-cooks] how to make bread

[David Friedman]

>I am new to the list and fairly new to the SCA.  I was looking for ways to
>make bread at camp.  Can anybody help me? I have a propane stove and a
>Colman type oven.
>Thanks

I have no experience with using either of those 
things. But there are several period frying pan 
breads, which can be made without an oven.

This one is 16th c. Mughal--northern India

Bread
Ain i Akbari

There is a large kind, baked in an oven, made of 
10 s. flour; 5 s. milk; 1 1/2 s. ghi; 1/4 s. 
salt. They make also smaller ones. The thin kind 
is baked on an iron plate. One ser will give 
fifteen, or even more. There are various ways of 
making it; one kind is called chapati, which is 
sometimes made of khushka; it tastes very well 
when served hot. [see p. 6 for units]

1 lb = 3 1/2 c flour	2.4 oz ghee (clarified butter) = 3/8-1/2 c
1/2 lb = 1 c milk	.4 oz salt = 1/2 T

Melt the ghee, stir it into the flour with a fork 
until there are only very small lumps. Stir in 
the milk until thoroughly mixed, knead briefly. 
Put the ball of dough in a bowl covered by a damp 
cloth and leave for at least an hour. Then knead 
the dough until it is smooth and elastic, adding 
a little extra flour if necessary. Either:

Take a ball of dough about 2" in diameter, roll 
it out to about a 5" diameter circle. Cook it in 
a hot frying pan without grease. After about 2 
minutes it should start to puff up a little in 
places. Turn it. Cook another 2 minutes. Turn it. 
Cook another 2 minutes. It should be done. The 
recipe should make about 11 of these. Or ...

Take a ball of dough about 3" in diameter. Roll 
it down to a circle about 7" in diameter and 1/4" 
thick. Heat a baking sheet in a 450° oven. Put 
the circle of dough on it in the oven. Bake about 
6 minutes; it should be puffing up. Turn it over. 
Bake about 4 minutes more. Take it out. The 
recipe should make about 5 of these.

And here is my conjectural reconstruction of the 
oat cakes that Froissart describes:

Scottish Oat Cakes: A Conjectural Reconstruction

"the only things they take with them [when riding 
to war] are a large flat stone placed between the 
saddle and the saddle-cloth and a bag of oatmeal 
strapped behind. When they have lived so long on 
half-cooked meat that their stomachs feel weak 
and hollow, they lay these stones on a fire and, 
mixing a little of their oatmeal with water, they 
sprinkle the thin paste on the hot stone and make 
a small cake, rather like a wafer, which they eat 
to help their digestion." (Froissart's 
Chronicles, Penguin Books translation.)

So far as I know, there are no surviving period 
recipes for oat cakes. This article is an attempt 
to reconstruct them, mainly on the basis of 
Froissart's brief comment.

Rolled oats--what we today call "oatmeal"--are a 
modern invention. I assume that "oat meal" in the 
middle ages meant the same thing as "meal" in 
other contexts--a coarse flour. The only other 
ingredient mentioned is water, but salt is 
frequently omitted in medieval recipes--Platina, 
for instance, explicitly says that he doesn't 
bother to mention it--so I have felt free to 
include it. The oat cakes Froissart describes are 
field rations, so unlikely to contain any 
perishable ingredients such as butter or lard, 
although they may possibly have been used in 
other contexts.

Consistent with these comments, the following is 
my conjectural recipe for oatcakes as they might 
have been made by Scottish troopers c. 1400:

1/2 c "Scottish Oatmeal" -- coarsely ground whole 
oats.	1/4 c water	1/4 t salt

Put the oatmeal in a spice grinder and process 
for about 20 seconds, producing something 
intermediate between what you started with and 
bread flour. Add salt and water and let the 
mixture stand for about fifteen minutes. Make 
flat cakes 1/4" to 3/8" in thickness, cook on a 
medium hot griddle, without oil, about 3-5 
minutes.

The result is a reasonably tasty flat bread. In 
scaling the recipe up for a meal or a feast, you 
would want to experiment with grinding whole oats 
into meal or find a finer (and less expensive) 
oatmeal than the gourmet product, intended for 
making porridge, that I was using.

Hope those help. I also have a couple of frying 
pan pastry recipes that I am fond of--both 
Islamic.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com