Bread and Porridge in Iron-Age Finland

Bread in Denmark in the Middle Ages

Skaarup has studied the account books of Queen Christine from 1496 to 1521.The grain most commonly cultivated for bread in medieval Denmark was rye. It seems that the queen ate mostly purchased bread, made from wheat. (Skaarup, p.41)

Bread in Europe in the Middle Ages

Hagen writes about bread from the Anglo-Saxon England, that wheaten loaves were regarded as superior, white bread being preferred for the Eucharist. Those who chose to eat barley bread did so from ascetic motives. On feast days, at least in religious contexts, the ordinary bread was replaced by a finer kind, or by spiced cakes. Feast-day bread may have been made from enriched dough mixtures. There are instructions for making a cake of finely sifted flour into which cumin and march seed was to be kneaded, so perhaps seeds were incorporated in the dough. Such enriched loaves could have been kneaded with milk instead of water, or cream, and had eggs, butter or other fats incorporated in the dough. They may have been sweetened with honey, or contained fruits, preserved in honey or dried. (Hagen, p. 19-20)

Yeast was potentially available to the Anglo-Saxons from three sources. Wild yeast is present in the air, and a mixture of meal and water left to stand will begin to ferment, and can be used as yeast. Fermenting liquor from brewing produced lighter bread that had evidently been made on the continent before the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon period. The Anglo-Saxons may have also used the sediment from bottom-fermenting yeasts – produced by the fermentation at a low temperature of light beers. The yeasty sediment was slow-acting, and resulted in heavy, damp, sour bread. (Hagen, p. 15)

There are some recipes that have survived from the Middle Ages. Different kinds of bread are mentioned in medieval cookbooks, for example: Pain de Maine, Pandemain, Wastel Bread: Paynman or Manged brede in Harleian MS, 4016 about 1450, Paynemayns or Elles of tendre brede in Douce MS.55, about 1440, Floure of pandemayn in Liber Cure Cororum about 1420. (Hess, p. 118) Bread was made of the most delicate flour obtainable, two or three times sieved through woollen and linen bolting cloths. Bakers often stamped their pandemain loaves with the figure of Christ. (Wilson, p. 217)

Manchet: Manchet was a small, tender loaf made of the finest whitest flour, leavened with yeast or barm, not of sour dough. See the recipe from 1615 at the end of this article. (Hess, p. 118-119)

Cheate bread (Markham) was made with about 85 per cent flour: the ’sowre leaven… saved from a former batch is broken into bits in warm water, strained, mixed with flour into a sponge as thicke as pancake batter, let sit all night, mixed with a little more water, barme, salt to season it enough flout to make it stiffe and firme, then kneaded and turned into loaves. The same method may be used for any compound graine as wheat and rie, or wheat, rie and barley, as well as for wheat alone, as here.´ (Hess, p. 18)

Yeoman’ s bread from Emmison’s Tudor foods and Past times. (Hess, p. 18)

Carter’s bread was agreeable enough for labourers, says Emmison in Tudor foods and Past times (Hess, p.18). Browne bread or bread for your hinde servants, which is the coarsest bread for mans use (Markham), includes barley, peas, wheat or rye, malt and sour dough. (Hess, p.18)

Breads baked to coarse flour were usually leavened with sour dough, alone or in conjunction with ale yeast (Hess, p. 18).

Bread in medieval Poland

Different kinds of bread flour were available in Poland during the Middle Ages. There were two types of rye flour, one coarse and one finely ground, as well as common and speciality wheat flours. According to king Wladyslaw Jagiello’s accounts common wheat flour was used for loaf or trencher bread, while the white flour was used for baking manchet rolls, cakes and better quality baked goods. The third kind, the best grade of wheat flour was the most delicate of all and was used for only the highest quality cakes, cookies and pastries. From the listings of bread in the royal registers we know that there were nine broad categories of bread. Common rye bread, black rye bread, common white bread, wheat or manchet rolls, bagels or ring pretzels, crescent rolls, flat cakes and tortae. Common rye bread would equate roughly to a modern whole meal rye bread. This type of bread was commonly used for trenchers. Black rye bread was a fine-grained bread very dark in color. When baked down-hearth in kettles, as was often done in rural farmhouses, this bread resembled a dense pudding like German pumpernickel. One kinds of bread are first baked, then sliced and finally dried at a low temperature in the oven. They are not necessarily made of fine quality. The earliest references to this sort of bread comes from the early medieval accounts of requisitions for soldier’s rations. It was called Soldier’s bread and anise seeds was normally added not so much for the flavor as for health reasons. Large quantities of this kind of bread were consumed also in the royal court, perhaps as a servant’s food. Trencher bread and white wheat rolls were the most popular. (Dembinska, p. 114-115)

Porridge made with finely ground millet or millet grits was the staff of life for all Poles, princes and commoners alike.

Ovens have been excavated from 10th century sites. They were all essentially the same beehive type. In medieval Latin texts there are breads baked under ash, in hot coals opt between two hot stones. . During periods of famine, the peasantry made ash cakes from knotgrass (Polygonum aviculare). The seeds were gathered and ground into flour, while the greens were used in pottages. The early use of yeast was widespread in Poland. (Dembinska, p. 119-120)

Unleavened bread

Archaeologists have also found some kind of baking pans. They think they were used to bake unleavened bread on fire. Many possible recipes for these can be read from the modern Viking and open fire cookbooks. It is also possible that some sort of cakes were baked on the hot stones over a fire. Obviously leavened bread was more important, while unleavened bread and cakes were used as ”fast food”.

According to Hilkka Uusivirta towards the end of the Iron and Viking Age people living in Western Finland had already moved their baking oven from inside the house to out. That means they heated them more seldom and baked more at one time compered to people living in the eastern part of Finland where the baking oven stayed inside the house.

Grain

In Iron Age Finland all the species of grain that are nowadays common were used. The youngest was rye, which came here with Teutons (Uusivirta, p.)

Cultivated Durum and Turgidum are derived from wild emmer wheat. From durum all bread wheats derived: Triticum vulgare, T. compactum, T. sphaerococcum, T. spelt. Spelt appeared in south-central Europe from Roman times. The Romans used for most of their breads durum and turgidum. The Roman bread was so heavy that it sank into the water. The best of the Roman breads were made from T. compactum and T. vulgare. T. compactum probably originated from Iran in in the 4th millennium B.C.. T. spaerococcum is primarily in Indian wheat. The bread wheats T. compactum and T. vulgare spread over Europe from South Russia beginning about 2100 BC. (Storck & Teague, p. 33, 34, 87)

Wheat

According to Rousi the oldest archeological finds of bread wheat in Finland are found in Paimio and Salo from about 300 AD. Some of these wheat is Triticum aestivum subsp. compactum, which is primitive autumn grain with better winter durability but weaker fertility. According to Rousi emmer wheat (Triticum turgidum) were used in Finland half a millennium earlier. Emmer wheat was common in Europe until Middle-Ages. From Finland there are no traces of its use anymore in the Middle-Ages. (Rousi, p. 73)

Spelt wheat (Triticum aestivum subsp. spelta) is known from Hildegard Bingen’s writings from the 12th century Germany. I have not found evidence of its use in Finland in Iron Age.

Bread baked from wheat stays well together and does not crumble apart when cut.

Rye

The oldest archeological find from the baking of rye is from Paimio, western Finland, from 100 AD, but it is supposed that rye came from east (Tolonen), where it had been used as the main grain for a very long time (Rousi, p.79). Rye was cultivated in burnt-over clearings.

Because rye does not stay together well, it is baked by souring. Rye has been scientifically reseached recently and it is said for example to prevent heart diseases (Helsingin Sanomat). Rye needs to be baked in high temperature, so it cannot be made into quickly cooked fire cakes.

Barley

Barley is the oldest raised grain in Finland. From Niskala, Turku, in the very west, grain from 1500 BC has been found.This so-called many-facited barley was still in 16th century Finland the only barley type. Barley was a main grain in Finland until 19th century. (Rousi, p. 61)

Barley can change into starch and sugar, which is why it was used, besides bread, in beer making. The choir of barley stays well together when baked. Barley preserves extremely badly, so it is mostly used in unleavened bread eaten warm. If you want to bake leavened barley bread which also preserves, use honey for leavening. When the grain is souring, the bread stays together and preserves better.

It is possible, that the poor preservation qualities of barley are the cause for the bad reputation of the barley bread. In the Häme castle 16th-century servants ate mixed barley-rye bread while the better people ate rye bread (Vilkuna, lesson).

Oat

The oldest find of oat grain from Finland is dated to about 300 BC from Salo, western Finland. Oat came to Finland from the east, which means that its earliest use was in the eastern parts of Finland. (Rousi, p.88).

Oat stays together very badly and bread baked from oat flour spoils quickly. Oat includes a lot of fat, for example linol fat, which lowers blood cholesterol (Luomuleipojan käsikirja, s.19). Oat also needs a pretty high baking temperature.

Flour

Flour in Iron-Age was mostly whole-meal flour, and included all the nutrients that are today separated into brans and others. Today they are sold separately for an expensive price. Grain crust has many minerals, trace elements, magnesium, phosphor and silicide acid. The grain pith includes mostly starch and protein, which have good baking possibilities but less nutrition.

Ground grain is rarely recoverable from archaeological contexts. Evidence of flour comes from York where quantities of bran were recovered together with parasite ova, indicating that elements of that population probably ate 100% flour; flour from which nothing had been removed by sieving. (Hagen, p. 15)

The writers of Luomuleipojan käsikirja (p.40) write that after it became normal to separate the grain parts, after steel mills became common in 1950’s, the amount of heart and intestinal disorders increased rapidly. Today the flour is milled to be too fine, and the bread from it is not the best possible. Modern bakeries use flours that are milled coarser than the ones sold to consumers in the markets. At least so it is in Finland.

Preservation of grain

The grain was trashed and some of it was smoked, dried or roasted. The grain was preserved in whole. Israelsson writes that in Sweden some tall pots were found that were used in grain preservation.

Heating increases the preservation ability. The grain is easier to be crushed after heating, but heated grain can not leaven any more. Every time flour was needed only the needed amount was crushed, not more. It ensured the freshness of the flour. The whole-meal flour cannot be preserved longer than one week. The good taste disappears very quickly. (Luomuleipojan käsikirja, p. 41).

Anneli Schöneck gives a receipt for heating the grain (p. 23): A damper full of watered rye is put into an oven for an hour, temperature 80-100 Celsius. After this the rye is crushed. This makes a tasty porridge. The method can be used also with wheat and barley. Oats are prepared the same way as rye, but the temperature is higher, 125 Celsius: Put about 1 kilogram of oats into a damper; sprinkle some water so that the grain becomes moist but not wet (if wet, the taste would not be good). Put the damper into an oven but do not close the door. Mix the grain now and then. In time it starts to smell and gets a beautiful, golden color. The grain should not be roasted. Put the temperature to 100 Celsius, close the door and leave the damper in the oven for 30 minutes. After this put the grain into tight boxes, where no air can enter. This flour does not get old and loose its taste as easily as ordinary flour. When baking, only some of the flour that will be used is to be heated this way.

Milling

The Romans had water mills (Jacob, p.124) and they brought them with them every place they conquered. Water mills were built in Viking-Age Denmark (Birkebaek). Anglo-Saxon England had them (Hagen) but not yet Iron-Age Finland (Uusivirta). Not even milling stones were common. The grain was milled between two stones (saddle stones, handstones) by crushing or flattening (Uusivirta). These kind of stones were found also from the graves of late Iron Age graveyard of Luistari, Finland (Lehtosalo-Hilander).

The earliest Celtic querns in Britain, dating from the 3rd century BC are small and have conical grinding surfaces, the upper stone merely being centered on a peg. They were rotated slowly, since the grinding surfaces are almost, if not actually, in contact. Gravity was relied on to carry the rather heavily ground meal out of these slant-faced implements. At the beginning saddle stones outnumbered querns ten to one; by the first century BC querns were more numerous by two to one. With the coming of the Romans in 55 BC the stones became thinner and increased in diameter, until some of them were mere discs, but better balanced and supported. In medieval times the querns became smaller, and were almost invariably worked by women, except in monasteries. (Storck & Teague, p. 90-91). This was in Britain, not Finland.

The bread the master of the house ate was commonly made of finer flour than the one the rest of the household ate. Hagen writes (p. 14), that according to English literature different coarseness of flour existed even in Anglo-Saxon times, but probably only the richest members of society would be able to use the finest qualities. Kurt Genrup claims that the Viking chiefs ate fine, white bread and imported wines from Rheinland. White and fine flour-bread is also mentioned by roman Plinius. I believe that the food history of Iron-Age Finland can leave this kind of fine bread without a notice. Even our milling techniques show it.

The usual flour was coarse and unevenly ground; it could include even unmilled grain. There were some unclean items left, such as sand and husks. This can be noticed from the skeletons teeth that are found from graves (Birkebaek, p. 60). During winter preservation mouse faeces undoubtly caused illnesses and more cleaning work. Though during Iron Age cats and dogs were domesticated, they could not always go everywhere.