[Sca-cooks] masa

otsisto otsisto at socket.net
Sun Nov 11 14:06:37 PST 2007


Perhaps rice flour or barley flour?
In some places massa means cement because of the cements texture and it is a
type of "meal", like corn meal so perhaps massa in your context may mean
texture. Fine flour texture and a rough ground- meal texture.

De

-----Original Message-----
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





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