More thoughts on the DIY in the SCA

Do you think we might be getting less DIY? I was reading about the early days of the SCA, in particular the early days of Atenveldt, and I started to wonder this. Duke Arthur of Lockehaven makes a passing mention to pavilions in the early days being nothing more than bedspreads over some wood. At least where I live, I feel like these days you'd never see something so makeshift. It's like we're getting this schism almost where on the one side you have people with perfectly period encampments and on the other are the people with the pop up dayshade. I have wondered if the fact that you can buy a perfectly serviceable modern dayshade has discouraged people from trying to make their own (I'm sure there are other reasons, too), but now I wonder if part of it too is that the standard for a period encampment is set pretty high -- has the best become the enemy of the good? Maybe we should all add a little bit of that "let's just try it" attitude.

Slight Bread Redemption

I did another loaf of bread today:

Sponge:

1 cup very liquid starter
1/2 cup white flour
1/4 cup wheat flour

Let stand several hours, until bubbly.

Mixed in:

1/2 cup wheat flour
1/4 cup white flour

Turned out onto a very well floured board and kneaded five minutes, adding at least another 1/4 cup of white flour, possibly more.

Let rise in a warm oven until doubled in size, punched down, kneaded a few strokes, then returned to warm oven in a bowl lined with parchment paper. When it had doubled again, I slashed the top and preheated the oven to 450 (with terracotta stone and a Pyrex with some water).

Transferred loaf to oven, turned heat down to 400 for ten minutes then 350 for ten. Bread sounded hollow when tapped, removed from oven and let cool.

Much better this time! The crust is very nice, the crumb is a little better but it's still a little doughy so I know I need to get brave and bake it hotter, but I'm scared to overdo it.

It weighed 1 lb 4 ounces going in and 1 lb 2 ounces coming out -- I'm shooting for a pound, so I'm getting closer.

This was approximately a 10 hour process, start to finish. Maybe longer.

Anne approves, says it's her favorite so far.

Medieval Salads

Salat
Originally uploaded by laurelfactorial

It's spring! And that means greens. This year I've actually got a nice porch garden, and since the lettuce really had to be picked yesterday I thought I'd make myself a nice medieval salad.

Medieval salads (frequently spelled as some variation on salat) were both more complex and simpler than modern salads. More complex in that extant recipes nearly always call for an incredible variety of greens and herbs, but simpler in that there doesn't seen to be evidence for anything else like cheese or nuts added, and the dressing is invariably salt, oil, and vinegar.

With this in mind, I used my lettuce (washed very well -- I appear to have aphids), some sorrel, parsley, sage, oregano, and spearmint. I tore the greens and herbs into little pieces and layered them in this nice bowl, then sprinkled just the tiniest bit of verjuice (the sorrel is already quite sharp) and some oil (I only had olive; would like to try this with almond) over it. Then I ground on some black pepper (although it doesn't seem to appear in any of the period recipes and did not add significantly to the tastiness, so I'll probably omit it in the future) and dusted with flake salt (fleur de sel).

This turned out really, really good. I like having lots of greens, and the dressing didn't overpower the flavors at all but complemented them.

A nice dish for spring!

Here are some period salad recipes:

From Forme of Cury, reprinted, translated, and redacted by Gode Cookery:
"78. Salat. Take persel, sawge, grene garlec, chibolles, letys, leek, spinoches, borage, myntes, prymos, violettes, porrettes, fenel, and toun cressis, rew, rosemarye, purslarye; laue and waishe hem clene. Pike hem. Pluk hem small wiþ þyn honde, and myng hem wel with rawe oile; lay on vyneger and salt, and serue it forth."

Also from Gode Cookery, this one is originally from Platina:

"Coditum Padodopum. A preparation of several greens is made with lettuce, bugloss, mint, catmint, fennel, parsley, sisymbrium, origan, chervil, cicerbita which doctors call teraxicon, plantain, morella, and several other fragarant greens, well washed and pressed and put in a large dish. Sprinkle them with a good deal of salt and blend with oil; it should be eaten and well chewed because wild greens are tough. This sort of salad needs a little more oil than vinegar. It is more suitable in winter than in summer, because it requires much digestion and is stronger in winter."

And yet another, this time from The Good Huswifes Jewell:

"To Make a Sallat of All Kinds of Hearbes. Take your hearbes and picke them very fine into faire water and pick your flowers by themselves and washe them all cleane and swing them in a strainer and when you put them in a dish, mingle them with cowcumbers or lemons, payred and sliced, and scrape sugar, and put in vinegar and oyle, and throw the flowers on the toppe of the sallat, and of every parte of the aforesaide things and garnish the dish about with the foresaide things and harde eggs boyled and laide about the dish and upon the sallat."

And here's a nice SCAdian page all about medieval salads!

Isn't it cute?

After baking
Originally uploaded by laurelfactorial

This is the mini loaf from yesterday after baking. It doesn't look nearly so burned in the photo as it actually was.

I have a lot of roughly ground wheat and sifted out wheat bran from previous bread baking experiments which I've been using to dust the stone. Works quite well.

Click on this to go to my Flickr photostream, where you can see the rest of the pictures from this loaf.

Damn it!

That's it, my bread baking is officially cursed. Maybe I should just give up.

For at least a year now I haven't had any bread really work. I used to think I was a whiz at bread, so I don't really know what happened.

Tonight the screw up was putting the bread too close to the top heating element of the oven: the top was brown brown brown and the bottom was basically raw.

RRRR!

It was still mighty tasty, and that's at least an easy issue to fix: move the oven rack!

Continuing bread experiments

I'm baking a loaf of bread with the mead lees. I've started a sponge with:

Mead lees (about 1/4 c liquid total)
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup unbleached white flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour

Let this rise pretty much all day until it was bubbly. Reserved a tiny bit for the next batch.

Added:

1/2 c white flour
1/4 c wheat flour

Put another 1/4 c white flour on the counter, and kneaded the bread almost five minutes (I think) until all the flour was incorporated and it was nice and sticky-smooth.

It's a teeny tiny loaf, almost like a dinner roll.

Let it rise until doubled in size. Punch down. Repeat. Proof, slash top, preheat oven, bake on pizza stone (see earlier post).

Pictures when it's done.

Mead update

I strained out the dandelion bits and poured off the clear liquid, leaving behind the lees, into a bottle. It was short, so I steeped the dandelions in boiling water until it came down to "blood heat" and used this to top off the bottle.

I will probably repeat the racking process (siphon off clear liquid and leave behind yeast dregs) again in a week, then I'll actually put a cap on my bottle (instead of just covering it loosely) and let it stand a while before testing and deciding how to proceed.

Found the basket blog!

This is a lovely natural skills blog, the author lives in the UK and makes all kinds of beautiful things.

Here are some posts on baskets:

Process, with pictures for one type.

Detail on starting the ribs.

Pictures of a different type of basket.

And here are directions, from eHow, on making that second type of basket (with the handle).

Disclaimer: I have no direct evidence that this kind of basket is medieval. However, here are a few links about medieval basketry. One of those links is to a gallery of images of medieval baskets, in which you will find these pictures which look quite similar to that style with the handle:

From an early medieval calendar:


From a 12th century psalter:


There are a couple of nice baskets in the Maciejowski, notably in this image of Noah's drunkenness:

DIY SCA

This post has been percolating for a while.

One of the things I really love about the SCA is how DIY the culture is: we are encouraged to be producers rather than consumers. I like the idea of a well rounded SCAdian, that our cultural ideal is someone who can sew a basic set of garb, cook a few medieval dishes, brew a batch of mead, play a period game or two, recognize a few different sorts of weapons, etc. While it's wonderful to support the efforts of those among us to who do achieve greatness (or even just competence) at any particular art, I also like that we also as a group support the efforts of those who want to learn a little bit about everything. Really, who among us has not tried their hand at a dozen different things? Some of them we like and pursue further, others we never pick up again.

Research is great, and heavily researched projects absolutely have value. But every once in a while, I just want to do a little bit of research and then go for it with something, and I think this has a place, too.

My next weird project seems to be wooden spoon carving. Can I do it without cutting off any of my fingers? What can I find out about medieval wooden spoons? I have yet to actually try it, but I've watched any number of videos on youtube about it and now I'm itching to try it for myself.

Also percolating along these same lines is basket making. I found directions for making willow baskets that look somewhat like baskets that I've seen in medieval manuscripts. (Of course, vexingly, I can no longer find the link.) Anyone know good sources on medieval baskets?

I'm just really into doing stuff for myself, at least to see how it's done, and I was drawn to the SCA for just that reason. I think it's as good thing that we expect everyone to be capable of many different things.

More on mead

Making mead is fun and easy. To encourage more people to brew it, here are a few more online resources:

Basic Mead Brewing in the SCA, from House Greydragon.

A nice article from Greydragon about a 13th century English mead recipe.

A Celtic Feast, from the publication "Early Period." The first recipe is for mead.

Sir Kenelm Digby's recipe.

Mead in the Florilegium.

A mead-lovers FAQ.

If you have a copy of the Known World Handbook, there are two lovely mead recipes in it. They are what I started with when I first was learning to brew and both have served me very well over the years.

Dandelion Mead

The dandelions just looked so fresh and clean and beautiful at work yesterday that I decided to finally try my hand at a very small batch of dandelion mead. It seems like such a perfect expression of spring!

Here's the recipe I'm using:

12 ounces (one bear) of honey
4 pints (or 2 quarts or 1/2 gallon) of water
1 quart dandelion blossoms (more would be even better)
1/4 tsp champagne yeast

Pick dandelions at mid-day or early afternoon, when they are fully opened. Only pick the most beautiful, fresh, and succulent looking ones, and only pick them from areas where you know they are free from spraying or dog pee. Remove any bugs. When you get the dandelions home, you want to separate the yellow part of the flower (florets) from the green part (the bracts) -- discard the green parts and any stems. Place the yellow florets in a large bowl.

Bring water and honey to a gentle boil. Foamy scum will rise to the surface -- skim this off using a spoon and discard. Simmer, continuing to skim foam, until no more rises (will depend on how clarified your honey is, since I nearly always use local, raw honey, this can take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes).

When the foam has stopped rising, turn off the heat and pour the honey and water into your bowl, over the dandelion florets. Let stand until it has cooled to about 75 degrees farenheit, then add the yeast. Cover with a lid (if you have one that fits your pot) or a cloth.

I'll probably let this work about a week, then bottle it (straining out the dandelion bits). After a week or two, I'll siphon off the clear liquid into another bottle, discarding the yeast dregs (or, more likely, using them for baking) and topping off with water so there's no air space. I'll taste the mead after a month and decide if it's ready or if I want to age it. I'll post updates as I proceed in the process.

One of my favorite resources for mead information and recipes is this page from House Greydragon.

Chilled barley water

It is indeed delicious over ice, as well as lukewarm. I brought it with me in a water bottle and sipped from it all day yesterday, most enjoyable and refreshing.

Bread Update

As mentioned in "Hearth Night II," I tried baking bread using a terracotta flower pot tray as a pizza stone. That part of it worked great, even if my starter failure continues to plague me (I think the house is too cold, now that it's warmed up I'm going to try again). If you want to use this same process at home, here's how:

Purchase a large terracotta flower pot tray. The bigger the better! I settled on 12" which cost $7 at the home repair mega store. If you are super ambitious and have a large oven, purchase a pot, too; putting the pot upside-down over the tray (with bread inside) makes a cloche which supposedly works really well (haven't tried it). Wash the tray well WITHOUT soap.

When you're ready to bake your bread, put an old cookie sheet (that you don't mind destroying) full of water on the lowest rack of the oven, then put your stone on the next rack. Preheat the oven (how hot depends on what kind of bread you're baking, for light artisan loaves, you want it hot hot hot, say 450-500 degrees; for mixed whole grain loaves I usually set it a little colder, say 350-400).

Sprinkle some flour on the stone and put your dough on it when ready to bake. Bake until loaf, when tapped, sounds hollow.

This still isn't an exact recreation of the properties of a medieval oven, but I believe it is fairly close and certainly achievable. I'd hope that I can encourage others to experiment with producing medieval(ish) bread from a modern oven.

(Stay tuned for new and improved bread recipes!)

More on Barley Water

There's a nice article in the latest TI on barley water, a lovely period non alcoholic drink. The author gives a recipe for barley water with lemon and honey, which can certainly be dated to the 17th century (in England) and may have been around earlier and which, incidentally, is enjoyed in England up to the present day.

I am very fond of barley water, and have blogged about it previously. The basic recipe I currently use is:

1/4 cup barley (I like whole hulled barley rather than pearled)
1 quart water

Bring to a boil, turn down the heat and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes. Strain out the barley (which you can eat, or add to any number of other dishes). This makes a small batch of about 3 cups of liquid.

You can add any number of flavoring agents, I'd start with honey, or leave it plain. Serve warm or cold.

Many of the period recipes include licorice root or anise/fennel seeds. Last night, inspired by the TI article, I made a batch with a spoonful of fennel seeds and a small handful of raisins of Corinth (Zante currants) simmered with the barley, then while it was still hot I sweetened it with honey. It was lovely hot, and I'm going to try the chilled version today (we're in some very nice warm weather here!)

Really, it bears repeating: this is a great non-alcoholic period beverage, dating with certainty as far back as the Romans (and likely even earlier), perfect for events. I like to make it at home and bring it to camping events cold in the cooler, and this summer I might try to make some over the fire.

Better Medieval Living Through Disgustingly Modern Technology

I'm a big girl. My thighs rub together when I wear a dress. TMI, but there you have it. By the end of a super active day in garb, I'm uncomfortable.

Well, NO MORE! I went to REI today and purchased "Body Glide" anti-chafe balm. It looks like a stick of deodorant and claims to be no mess, invisible, and sweat-proof.

I am super super excited about trying this out, and I hope that it becomes a part of my SCA gear. I think it will paradoxically allow me to be more authentic in my dress, as I won't feel the need to wear linen pants under my garb (which also means I won't get as hot). Heh, maybe I'll get crazy and start going authentically commando.

Kidding!

Okay, maybe I'm kidding.