[Sca-cooks] Ingredient Puzzles in al-Warraq

Susan Lin susanrlin at gmail.com
Thu Sep 12 12:01:53 PDT 2013


I don't know if you're interested but King Arthur has a help line.  I
wonder if they might have a suggestion for you since they have lots of
different kinds of flour.  They might even be interested in considering
some sort of blend.  Just a thought.

On Thursday, September 12, 2013, David Friedman wrote:

> 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<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/<http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/>
>
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