| A week before the English
Companions visit to West Stow my husband Glenn announced that he might like
to have a go a baking bread in a proper bread oven. He is quite a good cook,
but he has never touched on making cakes or bread before. Explaining to
him that it's just like mixing cement didn't seem to go down too well either! |
| |
| Recipes |
| Having done a little bit
of research on the Internet into the construction and uses of the bread-oven,
he didn't seem to think it would be too hard. We found some bread recipes
and he tried them out one evening. One batch was very heavy and didn't rise
or cook properly in the middle, although we discovered that this was probably
because he had neglected to put any honey in with the yeast (no sugar in
Saxon times)! The other batch that did have honey in did rise and had a
very nice crust. It was a very nice loaf, as my colleagues in the office
will agree. (Two of them took the recipe and have made their own loaves
since.) |
| Feeling that he had mastered
the art of baking to a recipe, Glenn then discovered a recipe for Roman
bread on the back of a packet of spelt-wheat flour. This would be ideal,
a very ancient recipe which has most likely been used throughout the ages. |
| |
| The Modern Recipe |
| Roman Army Bread |
|
Ingredients
|
| 1lb (500g)
Spelt Flour |
1oz (15g)
Fresh Yeast |
| 1 tsp
Sea Salt |
14floz
(400ml) Warm Water (37 degrees C/100 degrees F) |
| 3 tbsp
Olive Oil |
1tsp Honey |
- Place the flour in a large
mixing bowl.
- Blend the yeast into half
the water and roughly mix into the flour.
- Dissolve the salt in the remaining
warm water and add to the flour, followed by the oil to
form a sloppy dough.
- Mix vigorously for 15 minutes
with a wooden spoon.
- Either divide the dough between
two large greased bread tins, or for a typical 'slipper'
loaf, cut the dough in half and form into ovals on two large
greased baking trays.
- Dust with flour and allow
to rise in a warm place for 20-25 minutes.
- Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees
C (370 degrees F/Gas Mark 5) and bake 'slippers' for 35
minutes and tin loaves for 40 to 45 minutes.
|
|
|
| We tried using different
sorts of flour, rye flour was very heavy, but stone-ground and the spelt-wheat
seemed to work best. If we left the heavy dough to prove overnight it might
have been better. |
| |
| Yeast, Oil and Salt |
| We believe that the Saxons
knew how to collect air-borne yeast by leaving a mixture of flour and water
out in the air. They certainly could brew ale - so they must have got the
yeast from some-where. Oil and salt were also available (ele and sealt in
Old English). |
| |
| The Demonstrations |
| When we arrived at West
Stow, it was scheduled to be a baking hot day (appropriately enough) and
so Glenn decided to use the larger of the reconstructed bread ovens which
was inside a craft hut, rather than the smaller oven out in the open next
to the Oldest House. (During the excavations at West Stow a bread oven was
found within the outline of a Sunken Featured Building by Stanley West and
his team.) |
| The principle of cooking
in a bread oven is that you light a fire inside and let it get very hot.
The oven is made of clay over a basket work structure - clay inside and
out for insulation. Once the fire is exhausted the ashes are raked out and
the bread goes in and is cooked by the residual heat left inside. |
| Glenn set up his supplies
in the craft hut - large water container (hidden), wooden bowls and spoons,
hastily made linen bags for nuts and seeds (made by me), ash rake (supplied
by West Stow), etc. Then Christine White (Ranger/Events Organiser) came
by to have a look at what he was getting up to and offered some advice,
which was to build the fire small to start with and work up. We shouldn't
expect the first batch to be any good! |
| |
| Day 1 |
| The first batch on the first
day was a mix enhanced with pine nuts, but indeed was not very good. It
took an awful long time in the oven and when it came out was not brown and
was doughy in the middle. The problem was that the fire was too small and
was too restricted to the middle of the oven. The fire burnt for about 2.5
hours and the bread was in for about an hour. |
Day 1 - raking the ash out of the oven. |
Day 1 - the dough going into the oven
on a greased iron skillet. |
Day 1 - the loaf is pulled out of the
oven. |
Day 1 - Glenn with the poorly baked
loaves and some of the bags and pots of ingredients. |
|
| |
| Day 2 |
| Day 2 was a lot better.
The mix was the same for the first set of loaves, with added pine nuts.
The fire was built a lot bigger and covered the whole of the floor of the
oven. It burnt for about 3 hours or until the outside of the oven was uncomfortably
hot to touch at the base. (The first day, Glenn said it was only just hot
enough at the top.) The first set of loaves went into the oven and came
out 5 mins later, beautifully golden brown on the outside and fluffy and
light on the inside. However, they were odd shapes. This was because the
dough is very wet and was put into the oven on a greased iron skillet and
then 'plopped off'. There was very little ash on the bottom of the loaves. |
Day 2 - a selection of loaves, far left
is a good loaf baked in the clay oven; next is a leaf we baked at
home' then one of the poor loaves and finally another of the good
loaves (slightly burnt). |
|
Glenn then made up another
batch of dough, this time with linseeds. This went into the oven about an
hour after the first lot and took about 20 minutes to cook. He reckoned
you could do about 10 loaves in that oven at a time. Meaning that if you
had your dough already mixed up you could probably cook between 30 and 40
loaves before the oven cooled too much.
|
| Glenn's
Anglo-Saxon Bread Recipe |
| Ingredients |
| 1
small wdnspoon yeast |
2
large wdnspoons oil |
| 1
small wdnspoon salt |
2
large wdnspoons honey |
| warm
water to mix |
1
bowl spelt-wheat flour |
|
1. mix yeast with sufficient water
to make a milky liquid
2. place flour in large bowl add oil and honey
3. dissolve salt in water and add to flour
4. when yeasty water is frothy add this to the bowl
5. add and mix water until mixture has consistency of sticky dough
6. mix with wooden spoon until your arm aches
7. make into 2 loaves
8. allow the time it takes to play a game of 'King's Table' to prove
9. bake in the oven until crisp and brown
*one of our small wooden spoons is
about the equivalent of a teapoon; a large wooden spoon equals a
tablespoon and a small wooden bowl holds about 1lb of flour.
|
|
| We shared 2 of the loaves
with the other companions and had half of one ourselves with our authentically
cooked leek and pea stew (made by me). The remaining half of our loaf Glenn
took to work with him and I took a loaf to my office. Everyone said they
enjoyed it. |
