![]() Remember that by our standards most Anglo-Saxons were what we would deem ‘poor.’ You will need one of the following: First you need to decide on your level of poverty. When the Anglo-Saxons were rich enough to own metal objects, they made brooches, not measuring spoons.ġ. But for now, on to the bread.īecause these instructions strive to be as authentic as possible, there will be no instructions about measurements or cups or weights. We have gleaned it from dozens of different references, many of which we’ll discuss in the coming months. The recipe wasn’t written down as such, any more than modern cookbooks tell you how to put toast in the toaster. And - they’re yummy!Ī bread researcher contemplates a table full of hearthcakes and modern oatcakes. (Their word was hlaf in Old English, panis in Latin and these hearthcakes in particular were probably what was meant by their word cicel, pronounced ‘kitchel,’ related to the word cook.) These are not yeast- or sourdough-raised loaves baked in an oven, but a simple hearth-cooked bread that must have served as an everyday staple for the vast majority of people in the Anglo-Saxon period. So the following recipe is for Anglo-Saxon everyday bread: what most Anglo-Saxons would have thought of when they heard the word bread. They ate a humbler, cheaper, easier bread. The average person didn’t have the resources to waste large parts of the flour by sifting the bran out of it, or the wealth to build or fuel an oven. The bread that would be most familiar to us moderns was the bread of the rich: the food of kings, nobles, and abbots of wealthy monasteries. Which kind of bread you ate depended most on how wealthy you were. They used a variety of grains, three different methods of leavening (yeast, sourdough, and steam), and four or five different kinds of cooking or baking. ![]() The first thing to know is that the bread of the early English varied hugely. What is ‘original’ English bread? What kind of bread did an average Anglo-Saxon eat? ‘You’re delighted to eat them when they’re hot!’ ![]() How many things are wrong with this picture? Let me count the ways. The housewife scolds King Alfred for burning the cakes.
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