NAME: Giulia Chiostrini & Jef Palframan
DATE AND TIME: February 3, 2015 – 7:30 am
LOCATION: 2nd floor apartment, Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NY
SUBJECT: Bread Molding

Sourdough feeding

Beginning feeding the sourdough starter that Prof. Smith provided us.
After consulting several modern ‘sourdough feeding instruction’ online, including https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luPq0Sw9TFI#action=share
I built my own recipe. Planning to make the final dough on Wednesday night at Jef’s apartment, I decided to feed the sourdough three time every 12 hours starting this morning at 7:30 am.
Ingredients for feeding:

• ½ cup unbleached flour
• ½ cup of purified water at room temperature (using BRITA)

I poured the sourdough from the plastic container to a medium size glass jar, and I stir it with a wooden spatula.




These images (from left to right) show the sourdough growing in the jar immediately after the first feeding, and after 12 hours from the last feeding (Feb. 4th at 6:30 pm). During the procedure the jar was kept on the top of the refrigerator at room temperature.


there is no much difference in terms of growing between the first feeding and the last one. However, the three feedings worked well over the last 36 hours. They kept the sourdough starter live, and we obtained a good amount of it to use tomorrow and for future experiments.


In the case that the ‘sourdough feeding’ will be a failure, a modern recipe that requires beer for baking was selected:
http://m.allrecipes.com/recipe/220129/no-knead-beer-bread/?internalSource=staff%20pick&referringId=156&referringContentType=recipe%20hub&referringPosition=12

Searching for bread recipes from BnF MSFr640

I didn't find specific recipes to bake bread in the manuscript. However, bread is mentioned in recipes related to how to mold certain objects as the first step in the metal casting procedure. It looks like that baking bread is an obvious or known procedure for the readers of these recipes. In fact in http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodbreads.html#breadhistory it's mentioned: 'it is estimated that the art of making wine, leavened bread and beer was practiced more than 4000 years ago'.
List of recipes:

• P029r - Stucco for molding
• P0140v-b1 – to make a clean cast sulfur
• P0140v – b2 – Molding and reducing a big piece
• P156r – Quickly Moulding hollow mould and relief

This last recipe was the most useful in my research for a bread recipe.
(…)But to make this process go faster, if you are in a hurry, make the first impression and the first hollow out of the inside portion of the bread loaf, prepared as you know, and which will cast neatly.

Considering that I have no experience in baking bread and the time to complete this assignment was tight, these author’s words reassured me. In the indecision which recipe select from modern sources online, I felt allowed to choose that one that sounded familiar and easy to ‘prepare as I know’, feeling confident to achieve a successful result.
The recipe selected is described by this video from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luPq0Sw9TFI#action=share


NAME: Giulia Chiostrini & Jef Palframan
DATE AND TIME: February 4, 2015 – 6:00 pm
LOCATION: 20th floor apartment, Downtown Brooklyn, NY
SUBJECT: Bread Molding Reconstruction

I Session

Following the instructions of the recipe presented in the video mentioned above, Jef and I worked together to prepare the dough for the final baking. We worked in his kitchen at room temperature.
Ingredients

• 2 1/3 cup sourdough starter
• a little less than a 1 tablespoon of salt
• 3 1/3 cups flour
• 1 cup of water

Equipment

• measurement cups
• mixing spoon
• plastic bowl
• loaf pan
• olive oil to grease the loaf pan
• wooden cutting board

We stir all the ingredients in a plastic bowl


At 6:40 pm we started kneading the dough for 20 minutes. I COULDN'T UPLOAD THE VIDEO





During the process we checked the consistency of the dough stretching it.



At 7 pm we stopped kneading, and we divided the dough in two pieces.


We placed one of the dough piece in a small size loaf pan after having oiled it. Then, we covered it with a cotton cloth.




The dough will rise for 24 hours until tomorrow evening at 6 pm, when Jef and I we will meet again for the final baking.


NAME: Giulia Chiostrini & Jef Palframan
DATE AND TIME: February 5th, 2015 – 6:00 pm
LOCATION: 20th floor apartment, Downtown Brooklyn, NY
SUBJECT: Bread Molding Reconstruction

II session

When we met at Jet's place, he told me that the dough rise over the last 24 hours, but it collapsed over the last 3-4 hours.



I was concerned that it would have been hard to bake the bread using this dough. However, we moved on with the experiment, and at 6:20 pm the loaf pan was in the pre-heated oven at 400 degrees fro 30 minutes.
With our surprise, the bread baked quite well, and we were able to cut it in half, in order to obtain one-sided mold for each of the two selected objects: one key and one small size medallion


We took out the crust from the top side of the loaf when it was still hot, and we placed the objects previous oiled on the soft baked dough.

We apples pressure on the object for more than 5 minutes using a knife handle

We kept the objects in their molds for 30 minutes before removing them

At the end of the process, we had a deep hollow in the bread mold

We decided to keep the two molds at room temperature for another hour before freezing them and be ready for Monday class.

While the loaf for the first two molds was baking, we decided to prepare a big amount of dough doubling the recipe previously used in order to make a double mold for a three dimensional object. Considering the tight time we had, we decided do not let the new prepared dough rising for few hours. Instead, we baked it immediately on a baking sheet at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, after kneading it.

The experiment worked and once baked, we cut the bread in half, removing the crust on the top side from one of the half only. Meanwhile, we oiled our little statue before molding it

The image below shows the object encapsulated between the two piece-mold.

Observations

• During the process of kneading the dough, Jef and I discussed its consistency and how fast you develop tactile skills. You start feeling if your bread dough will be successful or not while you are making it.
• As mentioned at the beginning of this experiment, no recipe for bread was found in the early modern manuscripts. Even Scappi's treatise mentions bread in many of his recipes, but he doesn't give instructions to bake it from scratch.
• Other materials from which molds can be made in The Pyrotechnia by Vannocchio Biringuccio:
  
  

1. Powders made of different materials like vine ashes, tiles, straw, burned emery, ecc....This method is short and requires less time and expense
2. Moist clay. In this case, you must grease your relief with oil or pig fat. Clay has to be of the best quality, if you don't have a good one use the paste to make cake....(book VI, the first chapter)
3. green sand (burned sand bonded with flour and moisture) - similarities with our bread molding
4. Plasters of Paris: a white solid formed from a paste of water and partly dehydrated gypsum (OED)
5. Description of method used by Giambattista Pelori in Rome (Book VIII-page 332). Material used: mashed paper, , paste made with flour and hide scrapings, pieces of linen cloth

• Cennino Cennini in The Craftsman's hand book mentions clay as the material used to make mold, while he describes different methods to cast molds depending on the kind of objects.

NAME: Giulia Chiostrini & Jef Palframan
DATE AND TIME: February 9, 2015; 11:30 am – 1 pm
LOCATION: Columbia University, Chandler Hall Room 260, Manhattan, NY
SUBJECT: Pouring of sulfur

Pouring Sulfur

This morning Jef took out from his freezer both molds to bring them in class for pouring sulfur.
At 11: 30 am, after wearing an apron, goggles and gloves, we started the procedure brushing Linseed oil in the hollows of both molds as a separator




we proceeded pouring hot sulfur in both molds. We used:

• Pure sulfur
• Sulfur mixed with black lamp (black pigments)

This was the result

We left the sulfur dry for 10-15 minutes. After that, we started breaking the molds in order to remove the finished objects.

With the use of a wax carving tool we removed a thin layer of bread attached to the object


We repeated the same with the second object in sulfur mixed with black lamp



The experiment was successful.


Our bread molds worked well. Both sulfur objects caught physical details of the key and the medallion.

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ASPECTS TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN MAKING FIELD NOTES

• note time
• note (changing) conditions in the room
• note temperature of ingredients to be processed (e.g. cold from fridge, room temperature etc.)
• document materials, equipment, and processes in writing and with photographs
• notes on ingredients and equipment (where did you get them? issues of authenticity)
• note precisely the scales and temperatures you used (please indicate how you interpreted imprecise recipe instruction)
• see also our informal template for recipe reconstructions

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