Pilgrim Seasonings

• Manchet is one of a group of white breads of the English in the 17th century. Other white breads include paindemaine, desmaine, French bread and rolls and wastel. Wastel sounds as if it would be course, but it’s fine.
• You don’t need to ‘olde tymee’ this bread by using whole wheat flour. There are plenty of breads that use courser flours. Manchet is the finest bread.
• To get flour in the past, you would take your sacks to the mill, a grist mill or a pounding mill. The miller would get his payment, and you’d carry it home. Home is where you would sift it.
• For white bread there might be several siftings; some of the sieves were lined with silk, which would give very fine flour indeed. You wouldn’t just toss out those siftings – sometimes they are added to the courser breads.
• We used beer in place of what is most usually these days water as the liquid of the starter to create the flavor profile of barm. Barm is the yeasty sediment at the bottom of the brewing vessel.
• Actually, we used a non-alcoholic beer tasting beverage, available at the grocery store and not the liquor store to make this starter. It’s what we had on hand, but it also means you don’t need alcohol to make this bread. We’ve done this in the past with just yeast and water…..but really then it’s just a rather average white bread, and this way – something extraordinary.
• I don’t usually use the mixer to knead, but I’m also accustomed to make a batch of eight two-pound loaves….and then I forgot to take any photos of that mixer action. Dough hook and heavy duty mixer made it go quicker.
• Years ago, when I was re-reading Bernard Clayton’s The Bread of France, the beating of the Normandy bread with a rolling pin rang a bell….and it also became a great bread to make with my then 5-year old son.
• Manchet bread isn’t a regular part of our pilgrim bread repertoire , so it was in re-re-re-reading Gervase Markham that the manchet, the bread that was supposed to have come to England in 1066 with the Normans, bread that was beaten with a brake (think flax brake, or a big bread box with a hinged stick)….bells ringing…..
• I use a pastry pin as a rolling pin, not the sort with handles and a roller. A big dowel would work here, too.
• The kneading spot on my counter is fairly rough because of years of assorted butcherings and other heavy knife use. Last fall the absolutely fabulous, absolutely enormous bread board developed a crack that finally split it in two, too small for any good purpose pieces. The rough counter caused some tiny rips and tears in the dough, that if we hadn’t been planning to hack it into smaller bits, would have been more of a headache. Smooth kneading surface is good versus good lighting for photos – such are they choices we make.
• According to William Harrison in The Description of England (1587) “…of manchet, of which every loaf weigheth eight ounces into the oven and six ounces out,…”(p.134).
• If you want to make manchet dough into 2 or 4 larger loaves, by all means do.
• Starting the oven out very hot and then lowering the temperature mimics the falling oven situation of a wood fired oven. Greatest heat at the first causes a rapid rise (called oven-spring) and establishes a crispy crust and good color. Lowering the temperature at this point means the interior will finish baking without charring the outside.
• Back to Gervase Markham (The English Housewife): he advices our housewives to Be Sensible – that is, to use all your senses.

1. Your first test for bread –smell –when the scent shifts from a wet, doughy one to some richer and better developed, turn your oven down from 450 to 375.
2. Second test – sight – when they are a rich golden color, you know you are getting to the end.
3. Third test – hearing – take one out (use a potholder or a doubled over dishtowel) and thump it in the bottom. There should be a hollow sound, not a dull thud. You’ll know it when you hear it. That, m’dears, is the sound of done!
4. The last test is by taste….let the bread cool before you eat it. There are any number of physicians and others in the past who warned against eating hot bread. And not just in the faraway past – my own Nana warned me….Hot bread has vapours that will rise and unbalance you. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

• I really do think that manchets look like happy clams, like little muppet clam loaves.

XXX