[Sca-cooks] Yeast and Bread in Norway

[Patricia Dunham]

My Old Norse specialist does remember having seen reference to ICELAND being too cold for yeast in very "olden times".

However the words for yeast exist from a LONG time before the 16thC. For example, the burned buns from Helgo (pre-Viking age!) definitely look raised, about the size of a modern hamburger bun?  These Helgo pic refs are from Excavations of Helgo: Foundation IV, pp. 141-143, all analyzed as barley and oats. Oats should provide enough oat-gluten to allow for rising, in our opinion.

No term for anything will be earlier than 12thC, unless you have a runic example! If so, DO let us know!

There are lots of different terms for different types of yeast!

for brewing yeast (gerdh ("stuff that makes"), probably 12thC)

for bread yeast (jastr or jast) - before 1300. word first seen in some Saints' life, one of the manuals for converting Island. …right after Thorlaks-saga… Thorlak  d.1193.

Bread baked on a grid-iron, grindabraudh, traces back to Diplomaterium Islandicum, pre-1300.   

kveykur (ferment of ale, possibly as made into cakes of yeast? — early 14thC. ) 

a slice of bread (in an early 1500's saga) - braudhskifa

if lefse is made with potatoes, that would be post 1500, at least! would require the import of potatoes from South America!

the term lefse does not occur in ON at all; the original word for "bread" (generic) was hleifr, at least as early as 10thC

by 1200. when helifr shifted to "loaf of bread", braudh became the word for generic bread

There is an article on bread in one of the Helgo summary sections, we'll keep looking for that  if anyone is interested?

There is VERY little specific info on food, bread, minutiae of everyday life in any the sagas(!)

Hope this helps.

Chimene & Gerekr



> On Aug 21, 2017, at 4:04 PM, Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com> wrote:
> 
> 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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