Table of Contents

[Bread Making]

Name: Elizabeth Branscum

Date and Time: 

2021.[05].[12], 12]:[13][pm]

Location: Apartment Kitchen

Subject: Making the Dough

BnF Ms. Fr. 640, fol. 140v.

For casting in sulfur

To cast neatly in sulfur, arrange the bread pith under the brazier, as you know. Mold in it what you want & let dry, & you will have very neat work.

Molding and shrinking a large figure

Mold it with bread pith coming from the oven, or as the aforesaid, & in drying out, it will shrink & consequently the medal that you will cast in it -

·          As with some of the other recipes we’ve looked at, the operative phrase here (‘mold it’) is frustratingly vague. The reference to ‘the medal that you will cast,’ along with the instruction to use bread fresh from the oven, suggests perhaps that gravity and the softness of the freshly baked bread will do most of the work to ‘mold.’ It’s not clear how much of a given loaf must be devoted to making the mold – the phrasing almost makes it seem as though pith should be removed from the loaf and molded around the item, but that doesn’t make intuitive sense given that the item will have to be removed in such a way that the mold retains its shape. It seems that the crust of the bread should be retained to give the mold structure.

·          Given the above reflections, my plan is to bake a round loaf, remove it from the oven, quickly cut it in half and place my object in a soft-looking spot, then replace the other half and weigh the whole thing down slightly with a book or two. For my object I’ve chosen a small bronze model of a doe that has a few details and a little heft to it, so hopefully it will mold well. Other options I’m going to keep by include a larger stone heart (which will probably mold well but doesn’t have many details so might be more boring), a larger bronze model of a turtle, and a couple of smaller plastic figurines.

·          This will (hopefully) produce a two-sided mold of the object(s).

You it can, by this means, by elongating and widening the imprinted bread pith, vary the figure & with one image make many various ones. Bread coming from the oven is better. And the one that is reheated twice retracts more. You can cast sulfur without leaving the imprint of the bread to dry, if you want to mold as big as it is. But if you want to let it shrink, make it dry, either more or less.

·          Then, because I don’t want to damage any of my items, I plan to just let the mold sit for an hour or so, rather than reheating it as the above instructions seem to suggest.

·          I’m baffled by the instruction for ‘elongating and widening the imprinted bread pith.’ I think I will wait until pouring beeswax and sulfur into the mold to see what that could mean.

Materials: Bread flour, dry active yeast, lukewarm water, course sea salt

I don’t have a sourdough starter yet so am baking with yeast. Loosely following a recipe from online (https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/homemade-artisan-bread/) with additions borrowed from John Evelyn’s recipe. I’ve chosen this particular online recipe because it includes so few ingredients and leaves much of the particular methods up to the user. The online recipe prioritizes flavor and a light, airy texture to the bread, which does sound tasty, but doesn’t seem like it would be best for making molds. I suspect I ought to aim for a denser bread (which means kneading more and proofing less, I think), perhaps even a slightly under-baked loaf. I don’t have tons of experience baking bread, so I’ve opted to use bread flour to help things along.

After combining the dry ingredients and adding water, the dough is incredibly sticky – the online recipe advises against adding too much flour for airiness, but I can happily disregard that. I add more flour and mix the dough together with my hands, which eventually creates a fairly stretchy (and sort of spiky-looking) dough. Follow John Evelyn’s instructions to knead the dough. Replace in mixing bowl and cover with dish cloth, leave to rise for 3 hours. Even halfway through the dough has risen quite a bit - it is uneven in texture and still has some rough, spiky spots. I wonder if I mixed the yeast in well enough.

Name: Elizabeth Branscum

Date and Time: 

2021.[05].[12], [03]:[44][pm]

Location: Apartment Kitchen

Subject: Rising and Baking

After 3 hours, dough seems to have roughly doubled in size. I put the risen dough into a dutch oven and baked uncovered at 475 for 20 minutes, at which point I checked the bread and rapped it with a knife, rather than my knuckles, and found it to not quite be crusty enough yet (the online recipe recommended listening for a hollow sound, which was present, but not all around the loaf). Left in for five more minutes and then removed.

Unfortunately, I can tell immediately that the bread is well stuck to the dutch oven. I want to remove it while it’s still hot, so end up kind of hacking most of the loaf out of the oven with a knife (see photos). I’m afraid the loaf is now not deep enough to slice crosswise, so I slice it lengthwise, place the doe in the middle, and improvise light pressure with a jar and scotch tape (not very authentic to the early modern kitchen, but it will do for a first try)

First bread attempt, quick dry yeast

Name: (Also the name of your working partner)

Date and Time: 

2021.[05].[12], [5]:[30][pm]

Location: Apartment Kitchen

Subject: Mold Results

After an hour and a half or so, I open up my mold to see its status. Unfortunately, the placement I chose for the doe seems not to have been ideal – the most detailed part of it, tiny horns, were too close to the top of the bread, which was the most airy, and when pressing the figurine into the bread, I didn’t apply the pressure straight down, and the mold is uneven. Lots of detail is lost. I think I need to press the figurine in a little more firmly and apply more pressure throughout – will try to make the book plan work with the next loaf. I decide to cut away some of the excess loaf and try to make another mold with it, even though it’s cool by now. Even just firmly pressing the doe into one half of the bread does produce a reasonable replica of its shape, but the details are lost (see photos). Furthermore, the figurine has left little to no impression in the ‘lid’ of the bread, which doesn’t really make sense to me, because gravity would not have had that effect, since I had to modify my original plan.

 A mold of the doe made in bread straight from the oven, with light pressure created with a mason jar.

A second mold created with the bread once it had cooled, made merely by pressing the figurine firmly into the pith.

Lessons learned: Baking a denser dough does seem to help things along, but I need to refine my molding process. Using bread straight from the oven does seem to work best, but objects must be carefully pressed straight in. Bread needs to be kept from touching the pan directly to be able to create a stable surface on which to mold, and to allow gravity to help rather than hinder, stretching the mold awry.

Name: (Also the name of your working partner)

Date and Time: 

2021.[05].[16], [10]:[30][am]

Location: Apartment Kitchen

Subject:

Using the lessons learned from my experience above, I am baking more bread. I’ve been unable to get my sourdough starter to perform the way I want it to so am sticking with yeast, this time trying instant. This time I also dissolve the yeast in warm water as per the packet instructions before adding to dough, and add a little more flour as I mix in the lukewarm water. Knead and leave to rise.

As promised, the instant yeast has worked much more quickly, and the dough has more than doubled in size after about two hours. I put it into the dutch oven, this time lined with foil, and bake at what I think is 475 for 20 minutes – at which point I realize I accidentally set to 425 instead. Given that early modern ovens cannot have been terribly precise, I don’t worry too much, and just leave the loaf in for ten more minutes, and then conduct the knife rapping test – it is hard and sounds hollow. Even after that, it’s still a little undercooked in the middle, but I decide to roll with it and see what kind of mold it can produce. The loaf came out much more cleanly this time, so I’m able to slice it in half crosswise and position the doe figurine along with a large stone heart, a bronze turtle, and a plastic model of Squirtle, the Pokémon character. I press each in firmly, replace the top half of the loaf, and weigh the whole thing down with a couple of books (see photo).

Second mold weighed down with books.

After an hour and a half or so, I remove the books to find that the method has mostly been a success. The doe figurine and the heart have molded most clearly - the little brass doe in particular looks great, with lots of her little detail preserved, including her eye. Unfortunately, as before, the objects have left very little in the way of impression on the top loaf, maybe because of my book method, or perhaps because, as I initially suspected, gravity and the weight of the items help create the mold. The turtle seems to have been too large, or too heavy - I put it on its side hoping for a two-sided mold I could tape together, but it seems to have slid around and created an indistinct impression, perhaps due to the pressure of the books, and there’s little to no impression left on the top loaf. Squirtle’s tail, on the other hand, has left a lovely impression on the top loaf, while its other facial details did not really transfer to the bottom loaf. I wish I had had a big spiraled shell for this project.

Final results - the doe figurine, at the top, is the mold I will use for class on Tuesday.

Conclusions: I’m not sure I needed to weigh down the mold at all, although I’m still not sure how I could have achieved a better impression on the top half of the loaf to create a two-sided mold.