[Sca-cooks] Bread Puzzles

[JIMCHEVAL at aol.com]

Wow. You folks are sure better at math than I am.
 
A few notes:
 
I have a link to the original French in my post. Here it is:
_https://books.google.com/books?id=pLGnkboiV38C&dq=%22pain%20blanc%22%20seti
er%20denier&pg=PA198#v=onepage&q&f=false_ 
(https://books.google.com/books?id=pLGnkboiV38C&dq="pain%20blanc"%20setier%20denier&pg=PA198#v=onepage&q&f=fal
se) 
 
There are a few regionalisms in it, but basically it's medieval  French.
 
I note elsewhere in the post that it is dangerous to take the measurements  
too literally. These varied enormously across France until the Revolution  
(threatening to behead people does wonders in getting them to fall in line). 
I'm  reasonably sure that the pound and ounces here are in the ballpark of 
our  meaning, but it would take some pretty close study of the Limousin 
weights and  measures in particular to be sure.
 
Under the "Leavening" heading. I cite a variety of references which confirm 
 that the term at this point referred to old dough (at least in France). 
The  first reference I've seen to breaking this up comes from Markham (that 
is,  seventeenth century). This and the later French practice of cultivating 
several  generations of leavening makes me think that the use of leavening 
evolved over  time (but was still in its infancy in our period).
 
I fully agree about the importance of bolting and sifting (and in fact  
emphasize that in the relative section of my post). In my own case, having  
laboriously sifted blender-ground flour into very white flour I still ended up  
with a brown bread. Ideally however one would use an impact method to grind 
the  flour, in order to remove the bran from the endosperm without mixing 
it all  together.
 
(For what it's worth, however, when I made myself some bread with  
completely unsifted home-ground flour, it was delicious.)
 
Otherwise, I would like to emphasize that as excited as I was to find this  
particular text, my post goes well beyond it to outline parameters based on 
 various sources that hopefully would bring any attempt to make "medieval" 
bread  closer to what is actually known. I'm grateful for David's 
persistence and for  his and Bear's calculations, but I hope anyone trying to make 
French  medieval-style bread will consider the other options here as well.
 
Jim  Chevallier

Contributor, Savoring Gotham
A Food  Lover's Companion to New York City
Editor-in-chief: Andrew F. Smith  and Foreword by Garrett Oliver
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/savoring-gotham-9780199397020?cc=us&
lang=en


In a message dated 1/28/2016 2:58:57 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,  
t.d.decker at att.net writes:

Very  interesting.

Let's eliminate any weight discrepancies.  The French  livre (or pound) was 
set in 1350 and was retained until replaced by the  metric system.  It 
consists of 16 oz. or 2 marcs (8  oz.). 
....
Then there is the question of whether the levain is  hard or soft.  I'm 
going 
to assume a soft leaven of 1:2 flour to  water by weight.  A hard leaven 
needs to be broken apart in a warm  liquid before use. 



This should produce a loaf of roughly  1 lb. 2 oz., a little larger than 
the 
ones described, but still in the  ball park.

I am of the opinion that the smaller amount of liquid is  used to hydrate 
the 
starter no matter what the description says.  I  have encountered a 
description of a modern French baker transporting his  levain, about the 
size 
of a soccer ball, half way around the world.   The levain was used to 
leaven 
commercial batches of bread and recovered  from the dough created, so I 
have 
no reason to doubt Jim's description of  the starter.

....

I don't know what you used for sieving, but  medieval flour for white bread 
usually went through a coarse sieve, a fine  sieve and a cloth sieve.  That 
last one makes for some very finely  ground flour, but it is labor 
intensive.


A transcription of the  original text would be of  interest.

Bear



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