[Sca-cooks] masa

Stefan li Rous StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
Sat Nov 10 13:00:46 PST 2007


Constanza Marina de Huelva mentioned:

<<< Here's some info on Spanish ladies and bread.  It's from Heath  
Dillard's
book, "Daughters of the Reconquest: Women in Castilian Town Society,  
1100-1300".
I read it from the online version which has the hardcopy page numbers
interspersed.  You can see it on The Library of Iberian Resources  
Online.

libro.uca.edu/dillard/dr6.htm

p. 151

"On other occasions they would carry grain to a water mill to be  
ground into
flour, ...

The townswoman's grain was either grown in a family plot outside the  
walls or
purchased in the municipal market.  Once it was ground, she made the  
family
bread at home with the flour and the massa she kept for leavening.   
Usually she
took her loaves to be baked at a municipal oven.  ..."  >>>

I thought masa was corn meal or corn flour (from maize) used in  
tamales and for thickening chili. Obviously in this case it can't be  
maize. It's not flour (wheat) since that is also mentioned. So what  
is it?  And the comment about "kept for leavening" confuses me also,  
unless this is something like ale barm.

Stefan
--------
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 ****





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