[Sca-cooks] Millet

[Terry Decker]

Deteriorar - deteriorate, damage, wear, spoil.  Might I suggest "spoils."

Tapioca flour, yeast, baking powder and xanthan gum are not part of the 
original recipe you presented.  The are used in some modern recipes for 
millet bread.  For historical recreation of the recipe, I wouldn't use them. 
For practical reasons, I might use yeast and pea or bean flour as additives 
for the "thick" version of the bread, but would forget about them in the 
"thin" version.

As to your added ingredients, tapioca flour is high in starch and will 
require greater hydration than millet flour.  I suspect that without added 
fats it may promote cracking in the final product.  Yeast will lighten the 
final product, but without gluten there is no particular need to let the 
dough rise.  Ten or fifteen minutes to activate fully is all you really 
need.  The result you get will be primarily in the oven spring.  Baking soda 
and cream of tartar would be a better bet than baking powder, which has a 
delayed, heat activated effect that may dry the final product.  Xanthan gum 
is a modern additive used to produce a leavenable plasticity in gluten free 
dough, which might be of value if using yeast (the rise should be 45 minutes 
to 1 hour).

I would point out that examining the references to Bajri no Rotlo, are not 
so much about historical research, but about learning how to prepare the 
recipe.  Use it as your starting point, then work with the other ingredients 
if you wish to modernize the recipe.

Bear

We all wrote -
>
> I wrote:
> "Make dough with millet flour, salt and a little water, kneading it into a 
> round shape. Make it thick if it is to be baked and thin if fried. Cover 
> the outer layer with sesame seeds, anise and green anise. Cook immediately 
> before the dough deteriorates.?
>
> I see that when originally translating this recipe, I had a typo and wrote 
> think not thick. This is a direct translation from Barajas-Benavides? 
> Spanish version of "The Alhambra,? p 96. I did have a copy of the English 
> version but it was not good and I must have misplaced it.
>
> What would be a better word than ?deteriorates?? - I don?t like it either.
>
The original text reads: deteriore. The full sentence is: Cocinar enseguida 
para que la masa no se deteriore - translated that is - Cook immediately so 
the dough does not deteriorate.

Tis interesting because we criticise medieval manuscripts because the 
scribes were not cooks so their notes were transcribed directly with no 
interpretation. Now the Barajas-Benavides book is a 20th publication and 
still we find people like me and other official translators doing the same 
until or unless we actually try the recipe. So Sara has hit it on the head 
with her interpretation of the recipe - cook immediately to prevent dough 
from drying out and cracking. - A thousand thanks!

Interesting, in the end I let the dough rise for 2 hours. After baking, it 
cooled and cracked. Perhaps I should have watched them more carefully and as 
soon as it stopped rising due to whatever items I used which included- 
tapioca flour, yeast, baking powder and xanthan gum.  I am not a cook, but 
an historian trying to interpret ancient recipes into modern terms.

Members of our group mention an Indian flat bread - Bari no Rotio. It is 
possible that mijo bread descend from the Indians, then went to Bagdad and 
on to Spain. That’s a little too far for my research.


_______________________________________________
Sca-cooks mailing list
Sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/sca-cooks-ansteorra.org