[Sca-cooks] Arts and Sciences; bread

[Terry Decker]

>> I took the original, converted weight to cups and divided the whole  by 
>> 12 ... giving me a recipie that started with 10 cups of flour  instead of 
>> half a busheland 1.5 cups of water instead of one gallon.
>
> Congrats on your achievement -- it sounds like you'll approach the  role 
> of champion with integrity, which is what's important.
>
> Can you tell us more about the original recipe you used? Who's this 
> making a bushel of flour's worth of manchet? I STR Markham giving a 
> recipe with instructions on how to shape them and all, but I don't  have 
> it in front of me right now... I just remember following his  shaping 
> instructions and getting little loaves that were almost  perfect little 
> hat-box-shaped cylinders, which was way cool.
>
> Glad to hear you're having fun, and hoping to hear more...
>
> Adamantius

Malkin appears to have used the recipe from "The Good Huswife's Handmaid for 
the Kitchen" (1594, and appended below)..

I would like a little more detail on how the conversion was calculated. 
>From my calculations, she used the weight of a Winchester bushel (70 lbs.) 
and failed to account for the removal of the chesill.  If Malkin had used 
one of the smaller Elizabethean bushels, I would have expected her results 
without subtracting the chesill to be between 8 and 9 cups of flour and with 
the chesill removed to be between 5 and 7 cups of flour

In any event, the recipe worked, which is what counts.  As a baker, I can 
only applaud the win.

Bear


To Make Fine Manchet. Take halfe a bushell of fine flour twise boulted, and 
a gallon of faire luke warm water, almost a handful of white salt, and 
almost a pint of yest, then temper these together without any more liquor, 
as hard as
ye can handle it: then let it lie halfe an hower, then take it up, and make 
your Manchetts, and let them stande almost an hower in the oven. Memorandum, 
that of every bushell of meale may be made five and twentie caste of bread, 
and every loaf to way a pound besyde the chesill.

The Good Huswife's Handmaide for the Kitchen, 1594