Lots and lots of pictures.

The start of our oven.

Walls mostly completed.

Starting to balance the roof.

Building the fire. Using grass and matches. Much harder than lighter fluid and a lighter.

Bags 'o Beer Scum. And their lovely creator.

A skull. Things you find in the forest while looking for sticks and dirt.

Heating the water to add the barm to.

Kneading the dough.

First batch of bread, into the oven.

The other bag of barm.

It's a bun in the oven. Shortly after this, we discover our failure. There isn't a picture of that though.

Mud.

Lots of mud.

Our good Samaritan. Piling cans of ash on the oven for better insulation.

Starting to re-fire our baby.

Grass. And logs to keep it from blowing away.

The bread, the book, the axe.

HA!

Success! A bread oven has been made from rocks, and bread has been baked in said oven! 

Saturday, the K's went and built our oven. It took 12 hours, from start to finish. It was hot. It was dirty. Funniest part? We totally failed the first attempt. No, really. The first incarnation of our rock oven was simply that, rocks. We filled up the gaps in the rocks as best we could, and left a few holes for ventilation purposes. We had limited space, and a potential fire ban to contend with, so our oven got constructed in a pit at a campground. 

We built the oven, we fired the oven, we baked the bread (barm included for your tasting pleasure), and we timed the bread with a very anachronistic blackberry. We kept children from touching the hot rocks, and we waited. We removed the loaf of bread a little less than an hour after insertion, and found that the very outer layer skin was slightly cooked, and the innards were all gooey still. This was the third time we had checked the bread, and we knew that something was wrong. Our oven wasn't holding the heat like it should have been. Which totally sucked. 

So, Karen went to dig in the forest for dirt so we could make some mud (Yes, I am serious, we did in fact do all of these ridiculous things) and I sat and watched the rocks some more. She came back, we made the mud, and with the mud we patched all the cracks and holes in our oven. Also, I realize I failed to mention we did all of this in dresses. Medieval dresses. With long trailing bits of cloth to drag in the soot and dangle in the fire. Anyway, we were in garb and covered in mud, our oven was covered in mud, and just before firing it again, along came a simply wonderful gentleman whom we shall call M. For all intents and purposes, M was our James Bond Q equivalent.

M took a can and brilliantly covered our muddy oven with leftover ash from previous fires, for even better insulation. He then told us we should go pick a bunch of grass to cover the ash for another layer of insulation. Which we immediately went and did. Likely taking pity on us, he even built our second fire. M is the ultimate good Samaritan. His parting words of wisdom were about fire. If you burn something in say, a rock oven for an hour, the rocks, properly insulated, should then retain heat for about an hour. 

This advice was taken as well. We fired the oven for about an hour, hour and a half, and then put in our second batch of bread. And hour later, we pulled out edible and rather delicious bread. (bread with barm, not as tasty. The bread with the raisins was quite popular though) Having more wood, dough, and frankly, time, we fired the oven a third time, and baked another two loaves with the remaining dough. It was very yummy.

So. What did we learn from this? It's hard to carry rocks while wearing a bodice. Barm is bitter, as is failure. Our oven got hot. It set an oven mitt on fire. Shade is much prized at an outdoor event when you toil over a fire for long hours. Everyone at the SCA is extremely friendly and helpful. Even if I can't bow properly to save my life. And, it is much, much easier to just go buy bread from the store. But it probably doesn't taste as good as ours.

--K1

Pictures to arrive later! 

Early Morning Baking

Top of the morning to you, devoted followers!

As many of you will know, today in class we will be making brief presentations that will inform and update the class on the goals and progress of our projects. Like you'll need it! I'm sure alllll of our classmates await each addition to "the Great Bread Experiment" on bated breath...But just in case you haven't been following the blog religiously, today will be your chance to talk to us directly about our passion for medieval bread and ovens, and we will be happy to answer any questions you may have - including what it sounds like when a piece of slate explodes, what it smells like when you indadvertedly set a towel on fire and leave it burning unnoticed in the front yard, what the expressions on the faces of onlookers look like as your wheel an orange shopping cart 5 kilometres, and what it feels like when a dog steals 75% of your bread. In short, it will be a tantalizing preview to our upcoming website!

AND, as you may remember, Team Bob discussed the possibility of bringing in some freshly baked bread to class for the presentation. And today that possibility becomes a reality! I have been up baking all morning and I am happy to say that after carefully guarding the dough from the rouge Theft-Lord of a dog I live with, all 6 of the loaves I prepared have actually made it into the oven this time! 

While the experimental side of our project is pretty much over for my part, this bread is not exactly the same recipe as we used earlier, and unfortunately, because I didn't reeeeally feel like getting up at 4 in the morning so I could heat the terra cotta pot oven and bake each loaf individually for 35 or so minutes (I know...not an A triple plus there...but you get bread and I had an annotated bibliography to work on!), they are currently baking in the regular oven. 

So I am not 100% confident in how this bread will turn out because I had to make quite a few changes to my materials and methods. I used the oat bread recipe rather than the rye one because it was unanimously declared far superior to the rye bread recipe, but as I said before, this recipe, while not from a primary medieval source, only contains ingredients that would be available to medieval bakers - flour, salt, sugar, water, butter, oats, eggs, and yeast. 

I decided to triple the recipe, so had to make a few alterations to the recipe because I didn't have enough of some of the ingredients to keep the original proportions. I didn't have quite enough butter, so I used a bit of oil to top the fat content up. I also didn't have quite as much flour as the recipe calls for, but actually when I put it all together it was still super dry, which was weird because that didn't happen when we made bread on Sunday. I am still not sure exactly why that was the case, but I added a bit more water, and then added some honey when the dough was still rather crumbly. The dough was not as soft as the first batch, and again I am really not sure why, but I hope that the end product won't be too dense. Also, I decided to bake these loaves at 375 because in the last batch the loaf baked too fast on the outside. These guys are all in together, so that will affect things as well. So I am really not sure how these bad boys will turn out, but they are baking as I type this and they smell pretty good! Hopefully we will end up with something edible to tempt the class with today, but I am a litter nervous! As my grandmother always says when I flip out a bit about cooking, "Well, everything that went into them is good, so how can they not be?" So let's hope she's right! (She is 90, and bakes like a champ, so she's got experience on her side).

UPDATE: I had a look at the bread and it is getting quite brown on the outside, but doesn't seem quite done on the inside. It seems avoiding the hard exterior/mushy interior is to me as turning left is to Zoolander. I lowered the temperature, so cross your fingers!

what a tease

:) You only get a couple pictures, that way hopefully our loyal followers will stay intrigued...

burn baby burn, disco inferno 

Gotta keep the fire dry!

RIP 2/3 of the rye bread

One loaf in the oven! yay!

The infamous beast who gobbled 3 of the 5 raw dough.  Needless to say,  she preferred the medieval rye loaf.

Yum!

It disappeared quickly

Getting into character? Pale ale & bread with a princess and unicorn? 

Well you got more than a teaser,  hope you enjoyed the pictures.  We definitely had fun making the oven and the bread!


--J 

A Plan!

So...we have a plan. *evil laugh*

We (Krista and Karen) are going camping this weekend. If the weather remains vaguely icky, there will not be a campfire ban, and I got permission from the event organizer to build the oven and fire it at the event (in a campfire pit).

Up sides:
-don't have to haul stones to Sooke.
-can spend a whole weekend building the thing and baking bread in it.
-can get some input from other experimental archeologists who might have done this before!

Down sides:
-probably not going to be able to transport it afterwards - will probably have to destroy it.
-dependent on campfire ban.
-will really suck if it's raining.
-can't bake bread for class.
-will have to find mud on site to hold the thing together...probably. I don't relish mucking around goldstream with a bucket of mud.

At any rate, it should be interesting.

I will have to remember to charge my camera and such first though, as we'll have to video log this stuff.

Um yup. That's all for now.

-Karen

We are STILL Alive!

Not to worry friends!


We have just been boggled down with constructing the ovens/making the bread and other seemingly minuscule things (that actually end up being huge projects).  We do, however have much to blog about in the next couple days, Karen and Krista have chatted about going and building the stone oven, and we finally get the BARM! Hurray!!  Get ready for some beer-tasting, bready goodness! My palette is already salivating...tmi?  Anyhoo, we are presenting a powerpoint, and hopefully some samples, to the class on Friday.  Key word *hopefully*


That's all for now, dearest friends


-J 

Attention Bread Connoisseurs of Victoria - Nay, the world!

Good evening bread-connoisseurs, one and all,

First, I must of course offer my sincerest apologies for not updating our devoted followers for the last few days. But I have a good excuse- I completely forgot. AND, of course, today was a HUGE advancement in the "Great Bread Experiment" because today Jessie and I ACTUALLY BUILT THE OVENS!!! As I am sure you all already know because she has also posted and update. 

So, as Jessie has already relayed the tragic setbacks our oven and baking adventure faced earlier today, the focus of my blog will be on the actual product we were able to create.

We began our work today at around 1pm, heading down to Cook Street Village to go to a health food store for some stone ground rye flour. On a side note, it's a great store with a lot of vegan, organic, and natural products that can be trickier to find. I'm a vegan, so I was definitely pretty excited about the store and probably could have spent more time perusing. Getting the wood and pot back to my house along with the ingredients was cumbersome, and there were moments when I doubted our safe return (there was one point where we were stuck behind a gang of elderly, blind, motorized wheelchair driving people and had we not found a brief opportunity to circumvent them we might still be trailing along behind as I write this). Anyway so we made it. 

We will devote an entire post to the actual bread-making and oven-building processes later because there are associated pictures. For now, it will only be said that we originally had six loaves of bread. Three were made using the original medieval recipe that Karen and Krista first made a few days ago (see blog for details), and three were made using a more modern recipe for oat bread from Bernard Clayton Jr.'s book The Complete Book of Bread, but still using ingredients that would have been available to medieval people (except maybe the yeast, but that was also in the medieval recipe so I think we're covered there). 

Once the oven was hot enough, which was an adventure in and of it self that included explosions - true story - we put our first loaf in to bake. It was one of the medieval recipe ones. So as it was baking we went inside and were just chillaxing while we waited for the bread to bake, planning to check on it after it had been baking for about 15 minutes. So we go back, and lo and behold there are only TWO loaves left: they had been STOLEN! And, in fact, the only two remaining were from the modern recipe batch, so thank goodness we got one in to start with because I would have been helladisappointed. Silver lining? The dog seems to think our medieval bread recipe is fantastic, although she might no longer think so if the three loaves of unbaked bread in her stomach start to rise in there. Which in some ways I hope they do because it would serve her right for her heinous act of thievery! 

Despite this tragedy we did succeed at creating a fully cooked, edible loaf of bread! Three, actually, but once the first one was a success the success of the rest was a bit less exciting. Anyway, here are my observations on the product we created. Note how my keen observational skills  and bread know-how have elevated me to the position of "Official Chief Medieval Bread Connoisseur of Victoria"* It should also be noted that I sacrificed my veganism** to conduct this research in an authentic manner. If that doesn't scream A+, then I just don't know what does... 

1st Loaf: Medieval rye bread recipe 

Oven used: terra cotta pot 

Baking time: between 30 and 35 minutes

Results: We have ourselves a functioning oven! Overall, this bread was pretty good. I would give it a 6 out of 10 on the Buttress Bread Scale***. 

Texture:The bread did not increase in size much as it baked, and the end product was a very dense bread, but those qualities are characteristic of rye bread anyway. The bread was quite hard on the outside, but inside it bordered on under-cooked. I don't know if we would have wanted to bake it much longer though, because the outside was quite well done. 

Taste: The taste was pretty good. It was pleasant, but not on the level that you tried it and thought I WILL be making this again.

2nd Loaf: Modern Oat Bread

Oven used: terra cotta pot

Baking time: between 30 and 35 minutes

Results: This bread was very good! I would give it an 8.5 on the BBS.

Texture: This bread also was well baked on the outside and perhaps slightly underbaked baked on the inside. However, it was not to the same degree. The loaf did enlarge while baking, and the result was a much softer, more airy bread, which personally I found more enjoyable, but again, rye bread sets itself up for failure on the BBS by being rye bread. 

Taste: It was really good. It was a nice combination of salty and sweet. Definitely worth making again (probably in a real oven though).

3rd Loaf: Modern Oat Bread

Oven used: normal oven (in wall Kitchenaid Superba if you want to get specific).

Baking time: About 28 minutes

Results: This was also a very nice loaf of bread. It gets an 8 on the BBS.

Texture: The curst was quite brown and crisp. It might have been better to take it out a few minutes earlier than I did. Even so, the inside was soft and overall the texture was quite pleasing.

Tatse: The taste was basically the same as the 2nd loaf

Conclusions: I am kind of surprised to report that my favourite loaf was the 2nd one baked in the terra cotta pot. I think that the pot must have been lower than 400 F because the 3rd loaf baked so much faster, but we don't know what the exact temperature was. When we first heated the oven we used the thermometre we bought, and it shot right up to 400 and exploded. Soooo we could not longer accurately determine how hot the thing was. We did try and measure the heat, but the other thermometre we had only measured up to 200 F so we don't know how much hotter than 200 it was. The second loaf must have baked at a lower temperature, and as a result it was less crispy on the outside, which was better. The good news is that the oven definitely was capable of holding enough heat to bake not one but two loaves of perfectly edible bread. They were all tasty on their own, but we also tried them with butter, honey, and almond-hazelnut butter, which was also delightful. 

I think the plan is to have another baking day later in the week so that we can bring the class some samples of our wares. And now that I've said it...there's not baking out. (GET IT!?) 

Today was a glorious success. I now realize that when the apocalypse comes, if I am provided with a large terra cotta pot and something to start a fire with, I will still be perfectly capable of nourishing my loved ones with delicious baked goods. This was such good news that I felt I needed to let my mother know about her good fortune (come the apocalypse). Her response was, 

"Yeah, well my grandmother had a wood-burning stove." 

To which I said, "Yeah...but that doesn't really help you in the apocalypse then, does it?"

Judy Buttress: "Well your dad had a wood-burning stove [when he lived on a hippy commune] in the Okanagan in his 20's."

Angela Buttres: "Right...but yeah...still doesn't really help with YOU in the apocalypse..."

Judy Buttress: "Well. Obi-wan Kenobi (our dog) just got sprayed by a skunk. I guess he'll be sleeping outside tonight."

Angela Buttress: "Okay. Well. That's no good. But yeah, I can bake you bread come the apocalypse."

Judy Buttress: "No. I think I'll just use my barbecue. I'll improvise."

Angela Buttress: "Okay. Well I just wanted to tell you about my bread..."

Judy Buttress: "Oh, well. Four years of university and you finally learn something useful."

GEE THANKS MOM. 

No. She doesn't have Alzheimer's. She's just insane. 

Angela out.

* This is a self-ascribed title

** Now, before all the self-righetous vegans who frequent our blog get all up and armed about my flaky fake veganism, y'all should know that I don't refrain from eating animal products for moral reasons so I am really not quite so hypocritical as it might seem. I just feel sick when I eat meat or dairy products, so about 99% of the time I keep a strictly vegan diet. So, one might say I sacrificed my personal health and comfort for this project. Now, if that doesn't scream A-triple-plus, I don't know what does. 

*** This is a self-established scale. 1 would be a charred lump of inedible material, whose taste, based on its overwhelming, pungent malodour, one doesn't even dare investigate. Should one day someone decide for some reason to sample this bread, they would die, although, in a single ray of light upon the whole situation this bread creates, the repulsiveness of the "loaf" prevents this from ever occurring. Conversely, it could be some sort of puddle of glueish-consistency that has the same characteristics. 10 is the most exquisite bake-for-a-dinner-with-your-new-bf's-family-whose-mother-you-are-trying-to-convince-of-your-cooking-"skillz"-becasuse-he-may-just-be-the-one, soft, sweet kiss upon the pallet, with a buttery, crisp but not too hard crust and fluffy, warm, cloud-like crumb**** that almost melts in your mouth. It is delicious alone, for even the most delectable of spreads, butters, preserves, etc. can augment it in no way. 

****Crumb is 100% the actual term for the fluffy insides of a bread. Trust. I am the Official Chief Medieval Bread Connoisseur of Victoria. I know this stuff - it's my job*****.

***** Na, I googled that.