[Sca-cooks] Yeast and Bread in Norway

[Terry Decker]

Mead and beer making produce yeastie beasties.  And there is always 
spontaneous fermentation.

The primary grains for Scandinavia were oats, barley and rye.  Wheat was in 
limited cultivation and would likely have been an expensive import.  Of 
these only rye has enough gluten to make a raised bread.  A near period 
description of rye bread from Denmark suggests that fermentation would have 
been spontaneous rather than using cultivated yeast.

The earliest I can place hartshorn is the end of the 16th Century.

Bear


MEM (Mary Morman) is off exploring Scandinavia. She came across this demo at 
the Open Air Folk Museum.

Since she can’t get onto the list, she asked me to please post the following 
note--

Yesterday at the Open Air folk Museum we watched two young women baking 
bread on a griddle. One woman mixed the dough and the other rolled it into 
flat round cakes which she then folded onto a wide stick and unfolded onto 
the griddle. The bread was soft, lightly risen, and slightly sweet. Now, 
culinary hive mind, here is my question. I asked what kind of yeast they 
were using and was told there was no yeast in Norway until after the 16th 
century. (Flat out wrong as far as I can tell) and that bread (lefse) was 
raised with "horn salt" which was "like baking powder". Comments?

She added later, "Clearly they were using modern white flour, white sugar, 
and baking powder for the demo…. This 'traditional' bread called lefse was 
NOT a flatbread. Of course that doesn't mean that lefse made in 1600 wasn't 
a flat bread. I am just perturbed that people who run a museum that 
demonstrates traditional baking would instruct their staff to make a blanket 
about no yeast in Norway before 1700 and to suggest that hart salt Yes 
likely hartshorn) PRE-dated rather than Post-dated yeast. Johnna 
<https://www.facebook.com/johnna.holloway.7?hc_location=ufi> can you put the 
question up on the cooks list? I do not have access while traveling."

——
I noted "Horn salt would be hartshorn.”

https://arcticgrub.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/trilogy-of-flatbreads-part-three/ 
<https://arcticgrub.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/trilogy-of-flatbreads-part-three/> 
describes it.

Johnnae
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