[Sca-cooks] Coffin Construction (Pastry!)

[Elise Fleming]

Greetings!  Regarding raising a flour and water coffyn, you might want to look at the "molds" at http://sca.4th.com/photos/events/2006/alys-england?page=9 and scroll down to "alys2006-387".  There are two wooden, cylindrical molds that Ivan Day uses for raising pies whose crusts aren't to be eaten.  I got to thinking that if you wanted to make one of these dough "coffyns", you could mold your dough over a coffee tin or similiar-sized item.  Johnnae and I, with two other women, attended one of Ivan's classes where we made up the flour and water dough and pressed the dough over the molds.  Johnnae, do you recall the exact procedure?  Seems to me we put the mold in the center of a mass of dough and then, with our hands, pushed the dough upwards to the top of the mold.  I think we rolled out the "lid", wetted it with water, and then sealed it to the outer part of the dough coffyn after the contents had been added.  (We didn't have time for real food in the coffyn so I suggested using a wadded up towel, which we did!)  The coffyn was moderately thick since it didn't have to be edible.

Alys K.

Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
http://home.netcom.com/~alysk/