[Sca-cooks] Ingredient Puzzles in al-Warraq

[Galefridus Peregrinus]

You might try bolting the emmer flour -- that's what my wife does when 
she's trying to approximate the medieval version of white flour, and 
I've used it to obtain bran from stone-ground wheat flour. Bolting 
involves sifting the flour through increasingly fine sieves.


-- Galefridus

> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2013 11:57:52 -0700
> From: David Friedman To: Cooks within the SCA Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] 
> Ingredient Puzzles in al-Warraq
> Message-ID: <52320EB0.60703 at daviddfriedman.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
>
> Many thanks. Fascinating.
>
> But I still don't know what samidh is. Nasrallah says it is "fine 
> flour, bran free, high in starch content, and low in gluten." Perry 
> says it is coarsely ground, which is inconsistent with only the "fine" 
> part of Nasrallah's description. So what modern flour would fit the 
> description?
>
> One thing I find puzzling is the "low in gluten." al-Warraq uses 
> samidh for various leavened breads, and I thought the problem with low 
> gluten flours was that they didn't rise well. Am I mistaken?
>
> My only evidence so far is that the crumbly crackers recipe works with 
> semolina, doesn't work (too wet) with cake flour or ordinary white 
> flour. It works with emmer flour. But ...
>
> You are supposed to bake it until it is golden. That fits what happens 
> with semolina. But the emmer flour I got is whole wheat, it produces a 
> brown dough, and it's still brown when cooked.
>
> I may try King Arthur's white whole wheat flour next, although it 
> isn't low in gluten. Other suggestions?
>
>
> On 9/11/13 11:37 AM, Johnna Holloway wrote:
>> That PPC critique offers a number of possibilities as to differences 
>> in translations and ingredients in the early Islamic manuscripts.
>>
>> https://prospectbooks.co.uk/samples/Baghdad-critique.pdf
>>
>> I am sure that Charles Perry might have some differences of opinions 
>> and since he is supposed to be there?.
>>
>> Johnna
>>
>> On Sep 11, 2013, at 2:27 PM, David Friedman wrote:
>>
>>> I've been thinking about what I could offer to teach at the next 
>>> West Coast culinary symposium, and it occurred to me that one 
>>> possibility would be the ingredient puzzles in al-Warraq and my 
>>> attempts to solve them. I have two so far--baker's borax and samidh 
>>> flour. What are they?
>>> Are there other interesting puzzles along those lines that people 
>>> have come across? Evidence to help solve them?
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>>
>
> -- 
> David Friedman
> www.daviddfriedman.com
> http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/