[Sca-cooks] Millet

[JIMCHEVAL at aol.com]

Millet has a long history in France. Millet and panic were two of the main  
grains used by certain groups of Gauls.

Le Grand has this on these  grains:

"Liébaut speaks of bread of panic and that of millet, much used  in 
Gascony, in Béarn, in Perigord, and in the regions of flat lands or of  mountain; 
and it is even that, according to him, which has given the Gascons the  
nickname of Miliacés ["Milleted"]. But certainly this must be a custom newer  
than the century in which Froissart wrote; because this historian having spent  
some time at the Court of the Count de Foix, he would not have failed to 
see in  the region the bread of which we are speaking, if it was something so 
common as  the author of the Maison Rustique says.

Whatever the case, "these sorts  of *miches*, says Liébaut, (it is the name 
he gives them) are kneaded and baked  differently than others. One puts in 
a cauldron, on the fire, six parts of water  and four of flour, and stirs 
vigorously with a stick until the dough is cooked.  Then it is cut into 
pieces, and eaten; but it is only good fresh, and cannot be  kept until the next 
day." Liébaut adds that this kind of bread was eaten with  milk, or in meat 
bouillon; the Perigourdins fried it in oil or in butter, and  that the 
inhabitants of the mountains added to it cheese or salted  whey.

Besides, one sees by all this whole account that it was a cooked  dough, 
rather than a true bread. Nonetheless city Bakers made a millet bread,  cooked 
in the oven; but the later, says the author, kept no longer than the  
other. It was sold as it came out of the oven, crying in the street, millet  
bread, piping hot. According to Champier, it was only good for wine makers,  
harvesters and other people of this sort. Today still the Gascons make one of  
it, which they call brassier, because it is cooked under the coals between 
two  leaves of cabbage (brassica)."

Cooking between cabbage leaves by the way  for a long time was the 
equivalent of using tin foil and pops up in both Italian  and African-American 
culture.
 
jC

Jim Chevallier
www.chezjim.com

FRENCH BREAD HISTORY:  Seventeenth century  bread
http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2016/02/french-food-history-seventeenth-century
.html









In  a message dated 5/5/2016 4:58:22 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, 
t.d.decker at att.net  writes:
I was trying to remember where I had seen a similar recipe, Bajri no  
Rotlo, 
an Indian flat bread.