The gentility commonly provide themselves sufficiently of wheat for their own tables, whilst their household and poor neighbours in some shires are forced to content themselves with rye or barley, yea, and in time of dearth, many of bread made with either of beans, peas, or oats, or of all together and some acorns among.” A contemporary writer in the reign of Elizabeth the First (from Harrison, ‘Elizabethan England’, 1890) wrote that bread was, “made of such grain as the soil yieldeth. Much of the flour, and therefore bread and pastry, made in medieval Britain and Ireland was of a mixed grain and pea/bean variety, (making the Maslin Breads). And although some contemporary writers describe this flour as ‘white as snow’ this is probably a romanticised description, the flourish of a writers pen, the best flour was still an off-white colour, but it was certainly far more bright white and expensively fine graded than the normal flour and breads being sold. Therefore, this whiter flour became a status symbol for those who could afford to make their bread with it. This finest grade of flour was more expensive because it involved additional boulting processes, and because a proportion of the grain (bran etc) was discarded, so that more grain was needed to produce the same amount of flour – in a 1588 Manchet Recipe, the author explains this type of flour was boulted twice, “Take two peckes of fine flower, which must be twice boulted”. Yet this whiter flour, described as the ‘finest’, was desired by Medieval and Tudor bakers because it made a lighter bread loaf, of a finer texture, and was sold at a premium (making the Manchet Bread). The best ‘extraction’ rates that could be achieved is thought (by the Miller’s Guild and other experts) to be around 80%. Medieval milling and boulting methods were never wholly successful in removing all of the bran from the grain, even the best flour produced in this period was an ‘off-white’ flour, rather than the pure white flour produced today by industrial roller milling. Medieval Pastry Dough - Eaten Or Not? Medieval Flour
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