Bread and the Leaven to make it.

By far the most ubiquitous food throughout human history, used on it’s own and in sauces and garnishes, bread is where all medieval kitchens should start.

Bread in the high medieval period is very similar to bread today. The fancy ‘sourdough’ stuff you get from the instore bakery at least. There are thousands of blogs on the wide internet which will tell you how to make the best sourdough bread. They’ll advise you on hydration ratios, autolyse periods and the exact humidity for different shapes. I personally think this is a waste of time and through the method of ‘feeling it’ you can make tasty bread.

How do we get bread bubbly?

Medieval bread, as now bread, is made of two ingredients: Flour & Water. However if you mix those two together on their own you’ll end up with a pretty good siege weapon but not good sandwich material. We need to somehow get bubbles into our bread.
This is usually performed now days using cultured yeast. In it’s dried or fresh form this is a colony of yeasties ready to go, you feed them with the sugar in flour carbohydrates and they will create the gas needed for bread. There is no evidence of this level of cultured yeast in the medieval period, instead we need ‘leaven’. Leaven is essentially what we would call now a sourdough starter, there are many ways to acquire one of these;

Birth one yourself
Ask your weird bread making friend to gift you some
Buy a dried starter online
Steal some from a local artisan bakery

However you get your hands on it, you will now have a jar of slowly fermenting wet flour. Modern advice on sourdough advises a cycle of feeding and ‘discard’, however this isn’t necessary and in fact keeping the starter whole and allowing it to rest will develop a much deeper ‘sour’ flavour that heritage starters are known for. Despite what I first thought when making sourdough, it’s nearly impossible to kill a starter. The only time you should toss it is if you get mould or overly foul smells, that’s a good indicator you’ve brewed botulism.

All you really need to do you keep a starter/leaven is feed it every week or so. And make sure it’s had a good feeding within the day of you using it for bread. You feed a Leaven by giving it equal amounts of flour and warm water. Any flour will do, and if you need it going quick a little pinch of sugar should invigorate it.

What flour to use?

Like choosing fabrics for a tunic, the flour you put in your bread is dependent on social class. There aren’t exactly defined terms of bread in period, and it is of course a sliding scale and may change seasonally what each person had access too. However we can loosely split breads into the following categories in order of decreasing ‘wealth’;

Type of bread	Type of flour
Fine white bread, soft and almost cake like.	Fine sifted milled white wheat flour.
Daily bread	Milled and sifted wheat or rye flour
Daily poor bread	Mixed flours: wheat, rye, barley. Unsifted ‘bits’ might remain.
Not quite bread anymore	Flour heavily padded with seeds & husk
Oh dear it’s a famine	Entirely seeds and husk. (also usually unleavened)

The recipe itself.

Now, I preface this with you have to have a ‘feel’ for bread and these measures will not work perfectly every time even for the same person. The moisture level of your leaven will vary, humidity might get into the dough and mix-ins might cause weird interactions.
I recommend mixing up the below, and adding a little more water or flour until you get a good smooth dough. It should feel like a stiff playdough, cold blutac.

200G of Leaven (Fed within the last day)
200G of Water (Or other liquid, wine is fun)
500G of Flour

You can add salt to taste if you like, this was not accessible for everyone though and I’ve found little evidence it was used in bread.
If you desire a softer bread, add some form of fat to the degree of 20-30G. Oils, lard, and butter work well.

Heat your liquid till it’s warm to the touch but not so hot you couldn’t put your hand in for a time
If you are adding fat, add this now, assure that any room-temperature-solid fats are fully melted.
Mix the liquid and leaven together. This should be rather thin.
Add all your flour on top, and start mixing with a spoon. You can’t over mix this, so really tough it out.
If your dough is not forming together, add splashes of water. If it seems overly wet and runny add some flour. Be careful with this though as going back and forth will cause your leaven to be too diluted.
Once you have a dough formed. Leave it in a covered bowl until it’s roughly doubled in size. Depending on how active your leaven is this can take between an hour and overnight.
After this rise, pull it out of the bowl and give it a light knead. At this point it might have pulled moisture from the air and become a looser dough, add some flour until it is stiffer but pliable.
Shape the dough into a ball, log, buns, an elaborate braid and place on an oven safe tray or pot. Make sure to heavily flour the baking container. This is also where you can cut a pretty design into the top.
Allow the dough to rise again for an hour or two, it will probably not double this time but still gain some size. Do not let it sit for too long as it will start to pull moisture from the air again.
Preheat the oven to 200Deg Celsius. Assure it really is that hot before throwing the bread in.
Toss in the bread for 40 minutes to an hour depending on the shape and vessel. I advise cooking for 40 then checking, when the bread looks almost burned that’s it done.
When it’s done, DONT TOUCH. Hot bread is like unset mousse, if you start messing with it you’ll collapse it and it’ll come out gummy.

When first out the oven your bread may be incredibly solid and you fear you’ve over done it. However as it cools it will soften up, it will also shrink a little. If you’re lucky you may encounter something called ‘singing’ where the bread sounds like someone stepping on cornflakes as it cools. If the bread sings this is a great indicator you’ve got the crust just right!

I will write further on the different mix-ins for bread. Saffron breads for feasts and sweet breads.

Time Travel Garm