bread trencher class?

[ppfuf]

For the West/AnTir cooks' symposium next spring, I'm going to co-teach a class on bread with gormflaith. She's covering the practical bread-making parts, and I'm doing an overview of the use of bread trenchers and portpains in the medieval feast hall. I might include the instructions for cutting bread at the table c. 1480's England.

If you were going to take such a class, what questions would you like to have answered?

Comments

[thread-walker.livejournal.com]

do you eat the trencher?

[ppfuf.livejournal.com]

Good question! I'l add soem notes about disposal to my class.

Not usually, although people did. Eating your trencher would be an insult to your host, implying you didn't get enough to eat. It also reflected badly on your character, as you would be a person without the self-control of an adult. Calling someone a trencherman would be like calling someone a piggie. Not the worst thing in the world, but not good.

Trencher bread, like some forms of pie-crust in the middle ages wasn't really meant to be eaten by the upper classes. It wasn't good enough for them to eat, as nobles had more delicate digestion than peasants.

Trenchers were collected and given to the poor (who ate them, poor people didn't have to worry about manners, apparently), or they could be fed to the pigs along with the other scraps. I can well imagine a number of the trenchers were eaten by the lowest servants before they ever got to the pigs.