[Sca-cooks] Period Feasts, bread, butter

[Terry Decker]

For my feasts, I provide roughly 6-8 oz. of bread per person, usually in two 
servings.  I also have extra loaves available.  I expect leftovers.  Since 
I'm a baker, I make my own breads and it costs roughly $.50 per loaf. 
Depending on where I do the feast, the extra loaves are given to charity or 
hauled off by starving students.  Historically, butter as a spread seems to 
be a function of time, place and availability.  I usually serve a molded 
butter with or without spices (a la Hugh Plat) just to smooth over any 
irritation.

Bread (or more properly grain) was the primary foodstuff of all classes in 
Europe.  In addition to bread or porridge, the beer drinking areas also 
consumed roughly a gallon of beer per day.  For the rest, locally grown 
vegetables and maybe a little fresh meat or fish.  You might take a look at 
Annibale Carracci's The Bean Eater for an example of a common meal with wine 
rather than beer.

Bear


Bear highlighted:
<<< Bread of some form was served at almost every meal.  Based on the 
available
records, it is estimated that per capita consumption averaged 1 to 2 pounds
per day. >>>

I think we’ve discussed this before, but wow. That’s seems like a lot of 
bread. Whether it is light and fluffy or dense, whole wheat. That’s a loaf 
or bread. Or two.

Even with Bear’s bread, I suspect that if you served a loaf of bread (or 
even only 1/2 a loaf) per person at an SCA feast, you’d have a lot of left 
over bread. Maybe if it was spread over 5 or 6 hours, but...

At our feast this past Saturday, I only ate a couple of slices of bread. And 
that was mostly because I was waiting on the rest of feast and there was 
some cheese to finish up. Chunks of cheese. No butter. My wife kept 
complaining of no butter. Not no honey butter, but no butter. I did barely 
have seconds on the venison stew, but I was full.

Even with only two meals that seems like a awful lot of bread. And that 
doesn’t include all the starch/grain in beer that might have been eaten with 
that. With a lot of manual labor, I guess you burn all that off, but it 
still seems like a lot.

Stefan