Medieval Peasant Bread
Treated myself to this heritage blend of flour from Bakerybits https://www.bakerybits.co.uk/bakery-ingredients/medieval-peasant-s-blend-flour.html
Lammas Fayre's Medieval peasant’s flour is milled from a blend of heritage wheat (Triticum aestivum), rye (Secale cereale), barley (Hordeum vulgare) and oat (Avena sativa) varieties. In time of scarcity, medieval peasants and serfs also mixed roasted broad bean (Vicia faba) and pea (Pisum sativum) flour into their flour to make a hearty, and flavourful loaf rich in protein. Our cereals are grown organically in Buckinghamshire and Glocestershire. As in the past we grow mixtures of varieties that are well adapted to local growing conditions. The grain is stoneground on the farm to produce a unique, and delicious, dark brown flour ideal for baking artisan-style bread, particularly sourdough – the staple bread of the medieval period.
The recipe from their website https://www.bakerybits.co.uk/resources/medieval-sourdough/ is as follows...
Proving time: Dependent on room temperature; the warmer the environment the quicker the prove.
Total weight of loaf: 450g (1lb)
Specific flour used: Lammas Fayre Medieval Blend Peasant’s Flour
Ingredients:
50g Levain (refreshed sourdough starter)
170g room temperature freshly filtered water
50g mixed seeds, plus extra for scattering
250g Lammas Fayre Medieval Blend Peasant’s Flour
1 tbsp lard or butter, for greasing
Method
Whisk the levain with the water until frothy, add the salt, seeds, flour and stir. Mix into a dough, until everything is fully incorporated. Expect the dough to be sticky and pliable.
Grease your tin with the lard or butter and place the dough into the tin. Scatter a few more seeds on top. Leave until it is risen by 25%, the dough will be approaching the top of the tin.
Preheat the oven to 180C and bake for 35 minutes. Check to see if baked with a skewer. If it doesn't come out clean then turn down to 160C and bake for a further 5 minutes and test again.
Well I must say this turned out more of a success then I anticipated. The oven spring I got was excellent and the crumb is lovely. It's seriously delicious too. Very happy with this bake and glad my friend introduced me to this flour.
Are these heritage flours similar to ancient grain flours (einkorn etc). Despite the romantic ideas of using these types of flours at least in my experience, producing a loaf that tastes and feels good in you mouth is very tricky - the dough behaves in weird ways, flavor can seem off and you often feel like you have just baked sustenance rather than something that you'd elect to eat. Looking at this and considering your comments on spring seems like you have tapped into something special here ?!?!
The heritage wheat flour is wheat but not modern wheat. It's not einkorn, khorasan, spelt or emmer etc. It's the same species as modern wheat but untouched/changed for thousands of years. I believe it's a sort of pedigree if you will. Well that's how I understand it.
So while you might not like the more ancient wheats like einkorn (for all intense purposes while they are all under the umbrella of wheat they're a different grain rather like music where renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic and modern are all classical but classical is a style within classical music) this heritage grain is wheat.
Heritage wheat does tend to behave differently to modern wheat but is more tasty and wholesome. This flour is a mix so you've got the heritage wheat plus barley, oats, broad beans and peas just like peasants would eat in medieval times. I've gotta say the peasants did eat some tasty bread.
Thanks for the explanation - personally I don't like ancient grains mostly since I haven't been successful with them but that's what spurred my interest here. The loaf looks amazing and I believe you regarding the flavors etc. Btw regarding that except from the miller I am huge fan of adding bean flours especially fava and or garbanzo. Of you are planning on refining this recipe you may want to consider adding for example 1-2% bean flour, I find that it adds a bit of character to the crumb and crisps up the crust just a tad and as you know with bread the tiniest subtleties can have huge impact on overall eating experience...just a thought !
This was a premix that came in one 1.5kg bag. Not something I can treat myself to too often. My first time using bean and pea flour. But now that I know it adds something special to the bread I can source these flours separately and come up with my own ideas. I can add these into my other breads. Thanks for the advice and I will certainly experiment.
This bread was surprisingly easy. Because the gluten is weaker in these flours and there's a mix of non gluten flours to-boot you treat it like making a cake. Mix and pour into the loaf pan. Many find ancient grains more difficult only because they try to treat them like modern grains. Myself included! But when I stopped thinking of them like modern wheat bread flour then I began to have successes.
Einkorn is Triticum boeoticum, and although its the original Wheat from where all others descended from, it not the same as Triticum aestivum which although has been around for a while, is simply common wheat, not really an ancient grain nor a heritage grain.
Is also a common wheat but is a heritage grain. Depends what you call ancient. Although wheat Triticum aestivum (common wheat) is not as ancient as Einkorn its been around for thousands of years. While einkorn, spelt, khorasan and emmer are all wheats they can all be classed as their own grain. Wheat too. And there are many types of Triticum aestivum with different characteristics.
loaf!
As someone who actually prefers bread to be "sustenance" and not "cake", this one is really calling my name. I'm giggling a bit that the crumb is basically still your "signature" style - just with some seeds tucked in to some of the regular holes.
It is so true that you just can't treat all grains as "modern wheat", and that the approach needs to be different, and --- most importantly --- the expectations need to be different. This in no way resembles a picture-perfect modern sourdough loaf or fresh yeast leavened baguette, with open and airy crumb and crisp, shattery crust --- and it is going to really, really disappoint someone who is expecting that. Personally, I think that this would be more along the lines of a low-fat quick-bread in overall texture, but with a stronger structure and so more toothiness and chew. The mix of grains is actually pretty close to what I often use for muffins (although I more often use black beans, red kidney beans, garbanzo beans, or lentils instead of the peas), so I already know that it will be mighty tasty.
Thanks for sharing - and for the education, too!
using bean and pea flour but I'm a real convert now. I've often wondered why a bread is only judged (or often judged) on just the gluten level and holes. So a certain type of flour can't rise so much or produce gaping holes but it can sure be very tasty. I've been introduced to another style of bread baking and I'm sure loving the results. It toasts up so well too.
It seems that because the peasants couldn't afford white flour they actually ended up with tastier bread. My friend has had an idea that way back then they might not have even used water due to it being unclean but rather an ale or cider to make the loaf. Next on my list :)
What we call "gluten free" these days just used to be called "bread" by the majority of the world. Wheat was non-existent or scarce. Barley, rye, peas,etc were the grains used for bread. White, refined wheat flour was the bread of privilege and royalty while peasants chewed through the chaff and bran of mostly non-wheat flour and sometimes sawdust. Most grain was wholegrain, yeast was a natural levain and usually it was baked in a woodfired (or dried dung) fired oven-possibly a communal oven. Look how far we've come!
What a chuckle! I have had people lament that they could not make any delicious bread without wheat. Nonsense! One man's peasant bread is another's artisan bread-wheat or not. All kinds of deliciousness can be baked non-wheat. I know your flour had some wheat but it is a step backwards to a tie when, perhaps wheat was just becoming available or just available to a lower lord's house.
Carry on! Keep baking all kinds of deliciousness!
Whenever I came across recipes with these kind of flours I skipped over them. Now I have to double back. To think I've missed out on all that deliciousness.
I wouldn't have even tried this if not for my friend recommending it.
I am fascinated by ancient wheats too. Actually don't like to refer them as wheat because they're so different to each other and peoples reaction is - oh they're just another type of wheat. As if the common wheat is what everything is compared to. When in reality the common wheat is a late arrival and these earlier grains are compared to wheat?
A lot of other grains which were grown were not forgotten because of their poor quality or taste worthiness. Rather because of their yield, ease of harvesting and hardiness. Nothing to do with popularity or taste. Or even health for that matter.
While ancient (wheat) grains have made a comeback and I've delved a lot into them I have now a whole lot more to explore.
Watch this space :)
I wish this was available on my side of the pond but I'm afraid the cost to order would be sky-high. Keep posting your experiences with this interesting ingredient.