Author: anj68

Alice uses cast iron pots and wooden utensils and keeps the recipes as close to the traditional recipe as possible. She even utilizes a fire pit located outside her home to test authentic recipes. For more information about Alice the Cook, visit her website at http://www.alicethecook.com In future blogs, I will offer recipes, kitchen hints, and historical cooking lessons.
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Two Bread Recipes – Rye and Rustic Peasant

Rustic peasant and rye breads baked on September 15, 2012.

This past weekend, we began demonstrating bread recipes for the Wood Fired oven at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival.  Most of our recipes this weekend turned out well.  We made a rustic peasant bread and a rye bread.  I usually don’t care for rye bread, but this recipe was quite tasty. 

Rye Bread Ingredients:
1 oz of dry yeast
1 and ½ cup of warm water
½ cup of molasses
6 tbsp softened butter
2 cups rye flour
¼ cup cocoa
2 tbsp caraway seed
2 tsp salt
3 and ½ cups of flour
Cornmeal

In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Beat in the molasses, butter, rye flour, cocoa, caraway seeds, salt and 2 cups all-purpose flour to form a stiff dough.

Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to greased top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1-1/2 hours.

Punch dough down. Turn onto a lightly floured surface; divide in half. Shape each piece into a loaf, about 10 in. long. Grease two baking sheets and sprinkle with cornmeal. Place loaves on prepared pans. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 35-40 minutes or until bread sounds hollow when tapped. Remove from pans to wire racks to cool.

Rustic peasant bread. It tasted as good as it looked. Baked September 16, 2012.

Rustic Peasant Bread
1 pkg dry yeast
2 cups warm water
1 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
4 cups flour
Cornmeal
Melted butter

Place yeast, water, sugar, and salt in bowl and stir until dissolved.

Add flour and stir until well blended. Do not knead. Cover and let rise until double in size (about 1 hour).

Remove dough from bowl and place in 2 rounds on a greased cookie sheet sprinkled with cornmeal. Let rise an additional hour. Brush top on dough with melted butter and bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes.

Reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees and cook for an additional 15 minutes. Serve warm.

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Love, Chocolate, and Romance Weekend schedule – September 15 & 16

 

Alice the Cook and her assistants, Rose (L), Alice, Rissa, and Olaf (R). Photo by Renee Neumann (August 26, 2012)

This next weekend is Love, Chocolate and Romance weekend at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival.  We will be performing 5 shows each day this weekend:11:00am – Spice making demonstration

12:30pm – Bread making – history of bread and how it was made back in the Renaissance  (we will be using wheat flour).

2:00pm – History of spices and their uses

4:00pm – Romantic meal: Cornish game hens along with field mushrooms with hazelnuts and port wine poached pears

5:00pm – How to season your cast iron pots, wooden utensils, and honing your kitchen knives.

We are always cooking up a storm!  We are located next to Como Cottage and near the Mead Booth and Mac’s Pub.  Hope to see you there!

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Making your own yeast for bread

Looking forward to the upcoming weekends are the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, we will be bringing a lot of period bread recipes to the festival.  Unlike modern bread making, they did not go to the store to buy prepackaged yeast, they would have to either make their own, or find someone who has.

Below are two ways that I know of making yeast from scratch and preparing it for bread.  This is not something that grows in a couple of hours.  It takes days, if not weeks, to grow yeast. I hope you enjoy these techniques.

  • At the turn of the 20th century, yeast was made from boiling grated potatoes with a little sugar and salt until it became translucent. A cup of the old yeast was added to make it ferment faster. This yeast mixture was set on the back of the stove to ferment. It would keep for 2 or 3 days before going sour. The mixture would be the yeast that would be used for breads.  When more was needed, bakers would add a cup of the “old yeast” to a new potato and sugar mixture.

 

  • Combine 1/2 cup unflavored yogurt and two tbsp of flour in a clean bowl. Cover and allow resting for 24 hours.  Remove any liquid that develops over the yeast.  Add two tablespoons flour and two tbsp water and stir every morning for a week. If too much starter grows, throw away half and replace it with an equal volume of the flour and water mixture.  If bubbles develop, begin feeding the yeast every six hours with the flour and water mixture. Continue to pour off any water.   Feed the yeast about an hour before you plan to use.
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Highland Fling recipes – Scotch Eggs, Haggis, and Shortbread

Traditional shortbread triangles. Made on September 8, 2012

This past weekend was the Highland Fling at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival.  With Highland Fling come men in kilts, people speaking in Scottish brogues, and the Highland Games.  We demonstrated a wide variety of dishes including Haggis, Scotch Eggs, and Shortbread.  You can see the recipes for the Haggis and Scotch Eggs by clicking on those words, the Shortbread was something that I hadn’t written about. 

Below is my family’s recipe for Scottish Shortbread.

Shortbread
Ingredients
6 tbsp or 1/3 cup confectioner’s sugar
5 tbsp or 1/3 cup castor sugar (finer grain than crystalized sugar)
1 and ¼ cup (20 tbsp) butter
1 lb plain flour all purpose flour (rice flour may be used instead for a gluten free option)

Directions
Set oven to 325F

Cream the butter, icing sugar and castor sugar together using a wooden spoon.

Lavender shortbread cookies. Made September 9, 2012.

Sift the flour 2 or 3 times, then gradually mix into the creamed butter and sugar using your hands, until a firm dough is formed.

On a lightly floured surface roll or press dough until about 1/2 inch thick and use a cookie cutter to make ’rounds’ or shapes, or slice into 3″ x 1″ bars and prick the top with a fork.

Bake in pre-heated 325F oven for for approx 20-25 mins, shortbread will be a light golden color when it’s ready.

We sprinkled other additives to the dough to enhance the flavor including lavender, Damascus rose petals, and lemon zest.  All of which turned out beautifully. 

 

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Highland Games Weekend – September 8 – 9

This weekend is the Scottish Highland Games weekend at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. We have a lot of interesting demonstrations lined up:

11am – spice making demonstration, learn how to make Garam Masala, Curry, and Ras El Hanout

12:30pm – Scotch Eggs and Shortbread

2pm – History of Spices and their uses

4pm – Haggis (yes, I will be making haggis from scratch)

5pm – seasoning your cast iron and wooden utensils.