Blame Phillippa Gregory. The trouble began when I read The White Queen. It’s a fictional account of the life of Elizabeth Woodville, the commoner who married Edward IV and became a key player in the House of York’s participation in the Wars of the Roses. The medieval atmosphere is captured in intimate detail in Ms. Gregory’s novel, right down to the food. But, knowing little of English history, I became lost in the maze of characters. There are so many, they are all related, and they all have at least two names – counting their titles such as ‘the 16^th Earl of Warwick” (for Richard Neville, father of Anne, who married Edward of Westminster, who then unfortunately died in the Battle of Tewkesbury, so then she married Richard III, the Duke of Gloucester, to whom she had been originally betrothed anyway…well, you get the picture).

“So,” I reasoned, “maybe if I reinforce what I know of these characters with another book, I won’t be so confused.” I liked Phillippa Gregory’s style, so I went with The Red Queen, the story of Elizabeth Woodville’s main antagonist, Margaret Beaufort, representing the Lancasters in the battle for the English monarchy. That was fun, a lot of the same characters, but seen in a different light. Next up was Figures in Silk by Vanora Bennett, an indirect account of Jane Shore, a mistress of Elizabeth Woodville’s husband Edward IV, as seen through the eyes of a fictional sister, Isabel, who gets involved with Richard III in the process. Finally, I finished off the fictional aspect with The King’s Grace, a historical detective story by Anne Easter Smith, in which a fictional bastard daughter of Edward IV solves the mystery of the pretenders to the throne who masquerade as the missing “Princes in the Tower.” Then I decided it was time to get into some real history, so I read The Last Plantagenets and The Three Edwards, both by Thomas B. Costain who does a wonderful job of debunking some of the myths about Edward II (the first gay king!) and Richard III (he wasn’t the SOB Shakespeare made him out to be). 

  All of this happened before 1492, so the food is kinda plain. No chocolate, no peppers, no potatoes, no squash, no corn, no tomatoes, and a very limited palette of beans. So they ate a lot of bread and mutton if they were rich and gruel and porridge if they weren’t. Forks were waiting to be invented and they didn’t use plates! Food was generally served “by hand” directly on the table or placed atop a trencher. I became fascinated by this latter bit of dinner ware and wanted to recreate it. Medieval chefs were reasonably more concerned with keeps their heads attached than scribbling down recipes and, even if they were so inclined and knew who to read and write, the printing press was still a novelty and pretty much dedicated to printing Bibles which could be sold for 30 florins – about 3 years salary for a clerk! So, naturally, there were not a lot of recipes documented, and so there is little detail about the humble trencher to go on. The bread used was probably stale, a standard rectangular loaf that was sliced by the host for each of the guests. Each “plate” would be two slices placed end to end and possibly a third slice to cover the seam. In some cases, there are flat round loaves, kinda like pizza crust, which are sliced horizontally to produce two plates, used crust side down. Both are shown in a famous woodcut by Michael Wolgemut from Das BuÌŠch der Schatzbehalter. After the meal, the soggy trenchers could be eaten by the guests, but more likely they were given as alms to the poor, making them the first recorded example of a trickle-down economy (or, if they were served with golden syrup, “treacle-down”). If there didn’t happen to be a starving serf lingering outside the cottage door, the used trenchers would be given to dogs.

There are a few recipes for trenchers floating around the internets, usually using hearty grains in an attempt to recreate pre-bleached medieval mojo, but none of these really satisfied me on my quest. I went to my bread bible, the New Complete Book of Breads: Revised and Expanded by the recently deceased Bernard Clayton, Jr. but found nothing there. A couple more books (I have a lot of bread books), but still no luck. Then I checked the index of Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman and found “Oval Platter with Four-Strand Rim” – say, that sorta sounds like a plate of some sort. Oh dear, what have I gotten myself into? As soon as I saw the picture I knew I had to do this, but the technique alone was eight pages long with illustrations and you had to make large amounts of two separate doughs: one light and one dark. If you’d like to try this, I suggest getting the book – there are other fantastic recipes and techniques as well – for the details, but I’ll cover the basics here.

Light decorative dough

8 cups bread flour
6 Tablespoons powdered milk
3 Tablespoons sugar
2½ teaspoon salt
3½ Tablespoons soft butter
1/8 teaspoon yeast
2 3/8 cups water 

Dark decorative dough

7¼ cups bread flour
7/8 cup cocoa powder
6 Tablespoons powdered milk
3 Tablespoons sugar
2½ teaspoons salt
3½ Tablespoons soft butter
1/8 teaspoon yeast
2 7/8 cups water

 Mix ingredients for each dough and use the dough hook on your stand mixer to knead for at least 5 minutes. There is so little yeast that there’s no immediate danger of fermentation, but you’ll want to complete this project the same day you make the dough or it will rise Jim Lahey style. Do not refrigerate.

Divide the light dough into about 24 balls each weighing 2.25 ounces (or 64 grams) and the dark dough into 1.5 ounce (43 gram) balls for a total of around 36. This is not as tedious as it sounds, you’ll get the knack for each weight as you persevere.

  As with pretzel dough, rolling out the balls into strands is easier if you work in two stages. Roll each out to about a foot in length and, when all are done, roll out to about 26” (light dough) and 22” (dark dough). I found it easier to do all the light strands and lay them out and then do the dark strands one at a time as needed when the weaving begins. Misting your hands with water occasionally will make the rolling out go much faster and easier.

Now, the fun part!

 

Lay out the light strands as shown, in alternating 2-strand rows to the right and left. Place a dark strand at the intersection as shown.

 

 

 

 Bring the light strands across the dark strand.

 

 

 

 

 

 Lay down another dark strand to the left of the first and cross the light strands over it as in the previous step.

 

 

 

 

 Continue with this process until...

 

 

 

 

 

...it is finished.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then cut a parchment oval to roughly match the dimension of the woven mat and cut the dough with a pizza cutter.

 

 

 

 Transfer this carefully to a sheet of parchment and place on a sheet pan.

 

 

 

  

 Using two dark dough balls for each strand, roll out 4 strands long enough to encircle the woven mat and weave using 4-strand technique.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Brush the edges of the woven mat with egg wash and attach the rim. Brush the top with egg wash and bake in 350 F oven for about 1 hour,rotating at 15-minute intervals for even browning

 

 

Allow to cool on a rack overnight, This isn't supposed to be eaten (the cocoa in the dark dough makes for a strange taste), so I sprayed it with a few coats of shellac. It should keep for several months...

 

 Credits:

Hat tip to FusunA, who got me thinking artistically with her beautiful loaves of challah…(which, unlike this, is edible).

Top picture: The Pancake Bakery, by Peter Aertsen