Gave waybread a go today..

A lot of reenactment level work is about learning appropriate historical crafts and skills. This board is for all general skills that don't have their own forum.

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Elleth
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Gave waybread a go today..

Post by Elleth »

I started with I started with Ursus' recipe as a baseline:
2 cups oats
1 1/2 cups powdered milk
1 cup sugar
6 Tbl honey
Things I changed:

Since I had such success with oat groats in my cordials, I used the remaining groats here. Most I through in our flour mill to get a coarse "whole wheat" type flour, and withheld a half cup or so I ground more coarsely to give a bit of texture. Trying to stick with period materials, I cut the sugar out entirely. In retrospect I perhaps should have added more honey for the sake of energy, but the oat groats are sweet enough to my taste as they are.
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I did the usual "try a couple different things and see how they work" - I tried with and without a touch of lard cut in, and with and without some currants, for a total of four trials:
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They're drying now, but fresh out of the oven..

1. All sit fairly heavy in the stomach - I don't know if one is enough for a day, but it could easily make the better part of a meal.

2. The lard I find makes it paradoxically a little crunchier, with a bit more of a doughy aftertaste. It's a subtle difference, though I find I slightly prefer the version without the lard. That said I want to keep the energy if I can, so if it stores as well that's the way I'll go.

3. The currents totally are worth it - they make a fairly plain ration yummy!

Once they're out of the dehydrator tomorrow they start the "sealed vs pouch" shelf life test. I've not got enough waxed bags to store them separately, so I'm afraid I'll be resorting to plastic. But I am curious to see if either the lard or the dried currants affect shelf life.
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Next attempt will probably be back to wheat flour - and perhaps try some powdered jerky or the like for a bit more protein.
I may even eventually get to a hardtack/pemmican crossover - we'll see.
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Straelbora
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Re: Gave waybread a go today..

Post by Straelbora »

You've inspired me to give this a try.
Vápnum sínum skala maðr velli á
feti ganga framar því at óvist er at vita
nær verðr á vegum úti geirs um þörf guma
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Taurinor
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Re: Gave waybread a go today..

Post by Taurinor »

Elleth wrote:2. The lard I find makes it paradoxically a little crunchier, with a bit more of a doughy aftertaste. It's a subtle difference, though I find I slightly prefer the version without the lard. That said I want to keep the energy if I can, so if it stores as well that's the way I'll go.
I've heard that lard is used in pie dough to make the crust more flakey, so maybe something similar happened to make the waybread more crunchy? Butter is used for tenderness in pie crusts, but I don't know how butter would keep, relative to lard.

I'm looking forward to your findings regarding how the versions with lard last - I'm always hesitant to use much fat in trekking food for fear of spoilage, even though it's the most calorie dense macronutrient.
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Elleth
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Re: Gave waybread a go today..

Post by Elleth »

Two week update:

I've not cracked open the stuff in sealed bags, but don't see any issues with it yet through the plastic.

The bread I've had in unwaxed linen bags is still quite yummy, and doesn't taste off. It's been quite humid here lately, and I can tell the moisture is starting to get to it.
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The no-lard bread is still mostly crunchy, but not cracker-crisp. The larded stuff is more chewy/crumbly.
Neither tastes at all off, so I think it's still got a fair amount of life yet.
We'll see how it handles the humidity for the next week or two.

(location: usually comfortable finished basement craft room. So it's usually mostly cool for mid-July, but not air conditioned. )


Onward!
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Greg
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Re: Gave waybread a go today..

Post by Greg »

Two weeks is certainly plenty long enough for a batch to survive our needs here. Cool!

Did all of your trials include the powdered milk?
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SierraStrider
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Re: Gave waybread a go today..

Post by SierraStrider »

This looks great! Way closer to the look of the thing from the book than my attempt. If you're not enjoying the 'doughy' flavor you mentioned the lard giving it, you might try substituting with clarified butter. It's got a plesant caramely/buttery flavor that might be a bit better.

It's also very easy to make and very shelf-stable. Just put a handful of sticks of butter in a saucepan and cook it until it mostly stops bubbling, then pour it through cheesecloth. The crunchy bits left on the bottom are great on ice cream.

Taurinor, you mentioned a hesitancy to put fats in trail foods for fear of spoilage--there's a trick to this. Unrefined sources of fat like butter, meat, or cheese will spoil due to their moisture content. Get the moisture out by rendering the fat and you dramatically prolong the shelf-life by making them inhospitable to microbial life. In the case of butter, you do this by clarifying it as mentioned above. In the case of animal fats it's much the same process--melting and skimming them and then boiling out any residual moisture. This results in rendered fats like lard and tallow.

These animal-derived fats, along with vegetable shortening (crisco) and coconut oil are comprised predominantly of saturated fats. Saturated fats are very, very stable since the whole lipid chain is filled out with hydrogen atoms. Unsaturated fats are usually liquid at room temperature and are less shelf-stable since they have gaps in their molecular chain which aren't occupied by hydrogen and can therefore bond with oxygen, resulting in rancidity. Keeping them in an airtight container prevents this.

So if you make low moisture-content foodstuffs with saturated fat, the shelf-life can be nearly indefinite, especially if you keep it sealed in an airtight container. In the American Colonial period, people would make pemmican by grinding bison jerky into a near-powder, mixing it with bison tallow, and sewing it up in a bison hide. This was a staple for Natives and European explorers that would keep for years to decades.
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Elleth
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Re: Gave waybread a go today..

Post by Elleth »

Greg wrote:Two weeks is certainly plenty long enough for a batch to survive our needs here. Cool!

Did all of your trials include the powdered milk?
Yes - all used powedered milk. I've since learned the process of powdering milk is a 19th c. one, so I might experiment to see if there's an equivalent thing one can do at an earlier tech level. I think it might still be *defensible* on the grounds of it being a fairly simply mechanical process rather than a complex chemical one, but I'd still like to experiment a bit. Maybe once we get a cow next year. :)

As to the time - yup! They might not do *as* well in the weather, but I think in a waxed bag they'd be fine. I'll have to try it and see. :)
If you're not enjoying the 'doughy' flavor you mentioned the lard giving it, you might try substituting with clarified butter. It's got a plesant caramely/buttery flavor that might be a bit better.

It's also very easy to make and very shelf-stable. Just put a handful of sticks of butter in a saucepan and cook it until it mostly stops bubbling, then pour it through cheesecloth. The crunchy bits left on the bottom are great on ice cream.

That's an awesome idea! I'll have to try it - thank you!
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Greg
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Re: Gave waybread a go today..

Post by Greg »

Been meaning to give this a go myself for quite some time. My new version of a need-wallet is still under construction, which is on hold, waiting for a piece of leather that's in the mail, but the rest of it so far is coming together nicely.

Posting this in Elleth's thread because she's contributed largely to this. A short while back, I commissioned a bit of stiching from her: two waxed linen pouches of near-identical dimensions, and a new snapsack to replace my old beat-up one. It took its maiden voyage on the last Indymoot with Udwin, Odigan, and Straelbora, and performed flawlessly. The other two, however, are waiting on that leather. All the stitching is gorgeous, and flawless.

So this is how it all went down this afternoon.
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My beautiful, hand-drawn map of middle earth that I commissioned sometime last year I chose to fold, as the best means for transporting it within my kit. Rolling it would've just been asking for getting smashed, so I folded it into fourths. The measurements of this folded map were the basis for the two waxed linen pouches; one for the map, and the other for some documentable need-wallet waybread.
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After some careful measuring and manipulation before baking, my waybread is a perfect fit.
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The recipe I began with was Ursus's, as did Elleth, but I changed a few things. I wanted it to be more of a bread than a nutri-grain bar, which seemed to be the result of using oats, so I swapped out the oats for Whole Wheat flour. Keeping the measurements the same down the list for the other ingredients, the dough was WAY too dry, since honey isn't nearly wet enough to handle that much dry powder/flour, etc. What I wound up doing was doubling the honey (so it's now 12 TBSP), and tossing in a half cup of water after it was all mixed as far as the honey would go. Now it was doughy enough, but too sticky to make a nice, neat bread-wafer out of, so I took a large dollop on wax paper, and rolled it lightly in more of the wheat flour until it could be patted out smooth, and shaped, rather than being chunky looking. I formed it to the necessary dimensions, and scored it with the dull side of a floured butter knife. Baked it for 25 or so minutes at 350 degrees, and the end result is what you see above.

Very pleased. Tastes great, and is VERY dense. I made two batches, one to nibble on immediately, and the other for the pouch. I accidentally skipped dinner because I ate too much of the former, and completely filled up. Mission accomplished.
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