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

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Shape of trenchers? Did the wooden ones echo standard bread shapes? How thick were they? (Did the sauces mark up the table linens?)

[ppfuf.livejournal.com]

Most of the pictures of people eating show square or rectangular trenchers. Occasionally, you see round trenchers. Carver's manuals describe rectangular trenchers, so that is the shape I use/recommend.
Wooden trenchers are usually also rectangular or square. Surviving late period examples (for example, the ones from the Mary Rose) seem to be larger than (usually about 4x4 or 5x5) bread trenchers.
Thickness is really hard to determine looking at paintings. :) One to two finger-widths is my usual guess, although some trenchers look much thinner than that.
I have not yet had trencher failure in my testing, but my linens have no shortages of spots from other sources. :) I think if bread trenchers failed, they would have used something else.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

So... if they were square or rectangular, that would mean no crusts on the edges, as they were cut down from a natural loaf shape?

[ppfuf.livejournal.com]

There are no side-crusts because they are trimmed away by the carver. Trenchers are cut from small loaves the size of a large hamburger bun, so each trencher has a "bottom" crust.
First, look at this blog of someone who came to the last feast and took pictures:
http://www.simbelmyne.us/sca/collegiums/col-2010-nov/trencher.jpg
That's a single trencher for an ordinary person.
Next, look at this idealized feast with trenchers in this late 15th century woodcut: http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/90005948 Notice only the King at the high table has trenchers (Three, stacked together for extra protection and conspicuous consumption), the Queens at the lower tables appear to be eating from small circular plates.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Aha! Hoist by our own super-sized-plates petards!

[ppfuf.livejournal.com]

::giggle:: Yup. Your grandkids will be eating out of bathtubs.

When I find modern commercially-produced plates that can pass for medieval, I tell people to buy the lunch plates, or the dessert plates. A modern dinner plate is the size of a serving platter.