Subject: Re: Recreating 1200ish AD food

From: [email-masked] (Par Leijonhufvud labtek)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 1995 04:17:20 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Karin Oughton  <[email-masked]> wrote:
>[Initial apology if breach netiquette - Nervous Newbie]
>
>I'm spending a weekend on a recreated village in Yorkshire next week & we need
>to prepare all our food over open fires & as authentically as possible. The
>site is a Dark Age village, and the weekend is loosely set around the 1200's.
>We are getting a wide variety of foodstuffs, and I think that I can cope
>with most of the meals - BUT - I have never been able to make any sort of
>bread that didn't have the consistency of a brick & would shatter your teeth
>at ten paces (even modern bread). Could anyone suggest any sort of bread
>that would be suitable and some hints on how to make it?
>

Simple, unhelpful, answer:
Your bread would be sourdough bread, made with wheat and barley.

Complex, perhaps mose satisfying, answer:
At this time the main form of leavening for bread was sourdough. This is 
made easilly by mixing (approx.) equal volumes of wheat flour and water 
(to a smooth batter) and letting it stand in your kitchen for a few days. 
When it is bubbly and smells yeasty, but with a sour tang, it is ready to 
use. Use some of this starter (keeping the rest for further use; it can 
be kept for a week or so in the refridgerator and forever in the freezer) 
in place of yeast (say 1/2 cup == 25g cake yeast).

To make sourdough bread you need to start the day before, by mixing all 
of the liquid, most of the flour, and the starter in a bowl (it must not 
be too dry) and letting it rise over night. This is because the sourdough 
yeast often is slower than ordinary yeast (but it is often more active at 
low temeperatures). Then you simply add flower until you have a 
non-sticky dough, let rise, and bake.

While a number of different grains would have been available at the time 
and place you are pretty safe with wheat and barley. Don't use pure white 
"cake" flour, but instead a somewhat more course product, anything from 
perthaps 1/4 whole-meal to 100% whole grain. Use mostly wheat, with an 
admixture of barley.

If you have an oven use it to bake your bread (learn to test temperatures 
by finding out how long you can hold your hand in a regular oven at a 
certain temperature; I usually can get away with 5-8 seconds in the 175 C 
I use for most baking). Bake until a needle (or thin wooden stick) can be 
pushed into the bread and come out without any dough stuck to it, or the 
bottom has a nice sound to it when tapped.

If you are without an oven make a thin cake on a skillet.

If you want to make the bread rise better you can allways add some 
sweatener, such as a couple of tablespoons of honey to a pint of liquid. 
This will give the yeast some food to get going on.

/Pär
-- 
/P{r

Name:   Paer K.G. Leijonhufvud          Oh, *practice*. I don't mind 
Email:  [email-masked]   *practising*. So long as we