[Sca-cooks] Flour Recommendation?

[Doc]

--- Terry Decker <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net> wrote:

> If your dough is soft, then you may have too much
> fat in the mix or you 
> haven't worked it hard enough to properly form the
> gluten.

I used the same quantities of fat and flour, and
worked them both the same amount - dough using butter
is softer than that using Crisco.

As for the kind of fat used in period, I have found
references to fats other than butter being used as
well.

Source [Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin, V. Armstrong
(trans.)]: 61 To make a pastry dough for all shaped
pies. Take flour, the best that you can get, about two
handfuls, depending on how large or small you would
have the pie. Put it on the table and with a knife
stir in two eggs and a little salt. Put water in a
small pan and a piece of fat the size of two good
eggs, let it all dissolve together and boil.
Afterwards pour it on the flour on the table and make
a strong dough and work it well, however you feel is
right. If it is summer, one must take meat broth
instead of water and in the place of the fat the
skimmings from the broth.... (Germany, c. 1553)

Many of the recipes state to use fat, but do not
specify what kind.

-=-=-

> To quote Ivan Day, "Pies of this kind were
constructed from a 'standing
> crust' made by mixing boiling water and butter into
the flour.  Once
> cold, this stiff gluten-rich pastry was ideal for
raising these complex 
> structures, though it did not make for particularly
good eating."
> (Eat, Drink & Be Merry)

What source does he provide for this?  This sounds
like the traditional English method for making pie
crusts, but isn't the only method I have seen in the
primary sources (e.g. rubbing or cutting the fat into
the flour).

Further, one recipe for pie crusts in "The Good
Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchen" specifically warns
the cook not to use to many egg yolks as it will "make
it drie and not pleasant in eating" which contradicts
the common assertion that standing crusts were
*always* inedible (I will grant that they may have
sometimes been inedible).

- Doc



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