[HN Gopher] Bread in the Middle Ages (2013)
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Bread in the Middle Ages (2013)
Author : alexellisuk
Score : 47 points
Date : 2022-01-04 08:41 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.medievalists.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.medievalists.net)
| brandrick wrote:
| Bread in 2021....
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Cheap_Meals/comments/rvy340/bread_i...
| thrower123 wrote:
| I don't know anybody who's actually eaten canned brown bread
| who knocks it.
|
| It's tasty stuff; I'd take the raisin variety over a muffin or
| banana bread.
| hansthehorse wrote:
| I grew up with the occasional can of B and M. I can't find it
| here in SE Florida.
| phonypc wrote:
| Surely canned bread is as old as canning.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| I'd argue that bread in 2021 has returned more to its roots
| thanks to the sourdough trend from 2020. I started baking
| along with everyone and I just cannot go back to mass
| produced bread.
| AlanYx wrote:
| True! I also find it fascinating that the first recipe in
| the linked article (Wroclaw Trencher Bread) includes beer
| as an ingredient, which has had a popular revival recently
| as a bread hack to add maltiness/flavor. I've seen
| YouTubers complain that it isn't "authentic" somehow, but
| it looks like it really is more traditional than it seems!
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Any premodern bread that wasn't made like sourdough was
| made with beer barm. Bakeries and breweries were typical
| colocated. I'm not sure what was done in predominantly
| Muslim areas for yeast though, since they wouldn't have
| had breweries.
| chihuahua wrote:
| For me, there's 2 entirely different kinds of bread:
|
| * homemade bread: good flavor and texture
|
| * supermarket "bread" for sandwiches: consistent size, soft
| texture for a sandwich where the fillings don't fall out,
| especially for eating away from home
|
| Supermarket "bread" is more of an edible wrapper, but it
| has its purpose.
| phonypc wrote:
| Where does an industrially produced supermarket baguette
| that's nonetheless made with just flour, water, salt and
| yeast fall?
| detaro wrote:
| Not sure, seems like Zwieback-type breads (twice-baked, very
| dry) were common for a long time as shelf-stable bread and
| canning reserved for other things. It certainly was a thing
| by WW2 though.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Bread in 2021....
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Cheap_Meals/comments/rvy340/bread_i...
|
| That's not a recently developed product, let alone a recent
| invention:
|
| https://newengland.com/today/food/new-england-made/bm-brown-...
|
| > It's not clear when B&M (the letters stand for co-founders
| George Burnham and Charles Morrill) started selling their
| version of the classic New England bread (a sweet variety made
| from cornmeal, wheat and rye flours, and molasses), but like
| its Necco Wafer and Moxie soda kin, the canned bread has been
| around so long it's hard to imagine a time when it wasn't for
| sale.
|
| The article has an ad for it from the 40s.
| blippage wrote:
| Two things I know about bread: Roman soldiers baked bread, using
| beer as a raising agent instead of yeast, on account of the fast
| that beer was readily available.
|
| A "baker's dozen" is the number 13. This is believed to stem from
| medieval England, where bakers gave an extra loaf in order to
| avoid penalties for being underweight.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| That was typical of all premodern breads, other than
| sourdoughs. Yeast was isolated in the 1800s.
| vestrigi wrote:
| Compared to ancient beer the yeast of modern beer is killed off
| before bottling, so you can't use it as a yeast replacement,
| but instead this allows the beer to be stored for a long time.
| ectopod wrote:
| You need bottle conditioned beer. Many wheat beers are.
| OJFord wrote:
| 'Killed off'? Or just filtered? (Genuine question - I brew a
| bit, and have used mine for bread, but don't really know
| anything about commercial brewing.)
| bloggie wrote:
| I'm just a home gamer so could be wrong. In large
| commercial breweries it is killed off, flocculated out with
| a flocculation agent then filtered out. It is killed at a
| certain time so the amount of remaining sugar is
| controlled.
|
| Some microbrews don't do this and you can recuperate live
| yeast from those beers for brewing or baking.
| rainbowzootsuit wrote:
| I've always heard filtered to bring it to sterility, but
| there have to be other steps to flocculate. Micro brews or
| traditional European brews are often bottle finished.
|
| Some micro breweries use a finishing yeast that's different
| than the fermentation yeast to keep that proprietary. I
| think anchor brewing comes to mind for this.
| [deleted]
| voz_ wrote:
| Bookmarked to read for later. Thank you for sharing :)
|
| Wanted to also say - ACOUP, the best history blog I have read
| yet, has a great series on bread, wheat, and farming in the
| Western European/Mediterranean, (iirc between ancient times
| through medieval)
|
| https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...
| Wronnay wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220105170648/https://www.medie...
|
| When you don't want to deactivate your AdBlocker...
| eps wrote:
| The original rendered just fine with my adblocker on.
| eps wrote:
| Tangentially related - I recently discovered poolish, which is a
| form of pre-ferment that helps dramatically improving the taste
| of bread baked using commercial dry yeast.
|
| If you are about to make a loaf, take half of the flour, mix it
| with water 1:1, add a minscule amount of yeast and let it ferment
| overnight. Then add the rest of recipe and bake as usual. What
| you get is a bread that taste bread-ier. Sounds silly, but it's
| just ridiculuosly good.
|
| If anyone's interested in specifics, the Ken Forkish book (Flour
| Water Salt Yeast) has a good recipe. Highly recommended to try if
| you are into breadmaking.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| I had a revelation recently regarding commercial dry yeast and
| poolish. The sour part of sourdough comes from the
| lactobacillus bacteria making lactic acid. Commercial dry yeast
| makes for a fast rise, which isn't enough time for the
| minuscule amount of bacteria that's present in the flour to
| flourish (pun intended?). Letting the mixture ferment overnight
| lets the bacteria grow more, which creates the flavor. My guess
| is this technique can be used to stand up a sourdough starter
| from scratch faster than mixing raw flour with water over the
| course of a week or so.
| hackermailman wrote:
| If you like this sort of histotainment BBC used to make good
| series like Tudor Monastery (1500s) https://youtu.be/0-uqQknglio
| or their original 'Tales of the Green Valley' (1620)
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6LJQOAaGj2magtWkqqRQ...
| both where historians attempt to farm as they did in the period,
| capturing wild yeast from apple trees to make bread and ale which
| Tudors lived off of
| thinkmassive wrote:
| On a related tangent, I found the book Against the Grain, by
| James C Scott, to be very interesting. In it he discusses how
| farming existed long before cities, and how certain grain crops
| contributed to (and were leveraged for) the emergence of city
| states.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34324534-against-the-gra...
| nabilhat wrote:
| There are several more of these! Ruth, Peter, and (usually)
| Alex are so amazingly good at this.
|
| Random fact: Ruth Goodman's demonstrations of how laundry was
| washed through the ages and why those methods worked has
| changed how I do my own laundry. It turns out the washing
| machine isn't nearly as effective as a half-hearted manual wash
| with a laundry plunger, while causing substantially more wear.
| floren wrote:
| Funny, watching those shows had me frequently thinking "yeah,
| I could do that... seems ok" (I have a farming background)
| _except_ for the laundry stuff :)
|
| Well, the laundry stuff and all the particulate garbage they
| were breathing from the wood and coal fires.
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