As my regular readers will be aware, one of my great pleasures is to light our firepit in the garden, set up my cast iron cauldron over the flames and enjoy a bit of experimental medieval cooking. But on a more day to day level I’m also a keen baker, and we make all our own bread. For me, the act of making one of the most ancient and ubiquitous foods of the human diet evokes a timeless connection with the past. Recently, while kneading the dough for a rustic cob, I found myself pondering the types of bread our medieval forebears made and ate, and of course how it would have tasted. So I decided to set out on a mini bread quest to find out.

Making the daily bread

Consumed by everyone from kings and knights to monks and peasants, bread was one of the key staple foods of the Middle Ages. Right across the land the familiar, comforting aroma of baking loaves would have wafted from the busy kitchens of castles and abbeys, and from scores of town bakeries and village ovens. At a time when much of England’s land was given over to the cultivation of cereals, bread formed the main source of nutrition and calories for the vast majority of the population.

The type of bread you’d have eaten would depend on your status and the type of grains available. The finest of them all was a white loaf called pandemayne, from the French pain demesne, or ‘lord’s bread’. Made exclusively from wheat with most of the bran removed by ‘bolting’, or sieving, this classy loaf was reserved for the tables of the elite. Wheat was expensive to grow as it required good soil, cultivation and land maintenance, and only the rich could afford to employ the necessary workforce to attend to such a high-end crop. Another bread of status was wastel, made from slightly less finely sifted flour with added butter, giving a more cake-like consistency. Then there was cocket, a cheaper and harder wheaten bread that was more like a cracker.

The smell of freshly baking bread would have been part of daily life across the land.

Most ordinary people ate maslin, a bread made from a mixture of wheat and rye grains grown and ground together. Poorer folk had to contend with darker loaves made entirely of rye, or a brown bread made from unbolted flour, called tourte, both of which, ironically, would have been much healthier than the dainty white breads so favoured by the nobility!

Further varieties were available depending on the grain used and its degree of quality, many with wonderful names such as cheat, clapbread, pouffe (a light French bread), and finally horsebread, a basic coarse loaf made from any available grain mixed with ground peas and beans. As its name suggests, this was normally intended as animal feed rather than for human consumption, although it would have done in an emergency.

There were many different types of bread in the Middle Ages, and they came in all shapes and sizes.

In these modern times we bake mostly with wheat, but they had a wider repertoire of grains in the Middle Ages. Depending on where you were and what crops were at your disposal, you may have baked with barley, rye or oats. For example, in some places such as Derbyshire’s Peak District wheat and barley were scarce, so instead the locals made oat bread. In monasteries, where the consumption of posh white bread was generally frowned upon, barley bread was the staple. Wherever monks brewed ale, barley was available to make an alternative nutritious and sustaining loaf. 

Barley bread was a suitably nutritious and filling loaf for hard-working monks.

The ubiquitous loaf featured, in one way or another, in pretty much every meal in every household. Medieval people only ate two meals a day, starting with the main dinner taken between 10am and noon, followed by a light supper in the early evening before dark. Breakfast as we know it didn’t exist, but the inhabitants of castles might take a little bread and ale after attending morning mass, and a householder with a busy day ahead of him might eat a little bread and cheese on rising. For the most part, early morning eating was considered self-indulgent, as contemporary literature shows. In the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer tells how his hedonistic Franklin:

‘loved right well his morning sop [bread] in wine’.

As a portable food, bread could be taken on travels and out into the fields to provide much-needed sustenance and energy through the labour-intensive harvest. In fact, so important was bread to the vast majority of households that, as historian Christopher Dyer puts it, ‘medieval meals consisted of bread, with some smaller quantity of meat, fish, dairy produce or vegetables, called generically companagium, literally that which is eaten with bread.’

Bread featured in virtually every meal in every household.

In the kitchen, bread had a wide range of culinary uses. Crumbs were used to thicken sauces, custards and baked puddings. Very wealthy households could enjoy a delicious seasonal confection called gingerbrede, made by heating honey with spices (strangely not always including ginger!) and stirring in enough breadcrumbs to make a firm dough. This was then rolled, cooled and cut into slices, then decorated with cloves or painted red with sandalwood, sometimes even gilded for the delectation of the guests.

Nothing went to waste, and even stale bread would be put to good use. A popular light dish was payn perdew, or ‘lost bread’, a medieval version of French toast made by dipping leftover slices into beaten egg yolks, frying them in butter and serving sprinkled with sugar. Slices of day-old bread were even used as plates. Known as trenchers, this edible crockery absorbed the juices from the meat and sauces consumed during the meal before being handed out to the poor and needy, or devoured by the household’s dogs.

Slices of older bread were used as plates, or trenchers, which may be given to the dogs after the meal, as this eager pup clearly knows…

Bread making was a tightly controlled business in medieval England. In the countryside, villagers were obliged to take their corn to be ground – for a price – at the manorial mills. Doing your own thing was forbidden, punishable with a fine or even by branding on the hand with a hot iron. Very few dwellings had a built-in oven, so the dough was prepared at home before being taken to the ‘common oven’, again controlled for profit by the local lord. In the towns, most people bought their bread from local bakers who were subject to strict laws known as the Assize of Bread. Created in the 13^th century and enforced by the town authorities, these regulations controlled the price, weight and quality of bread so that even the poorest folk could always afford a loaf. The legal size and weight changed with the price of wheat and other grains, so in a good year your daily bread would be generous in size, whilst a poor harvest meant smaller portions.

As an early form of quality control, bakers were required to stamp their produce with their own seal so that bread could always be traced back to its maker. However, this didn’t stop unscrupulous bakers trying it on in lean times by inserting stones or nuggets of iron into their loaves to make up the legal weight, or selling bread made with good dough on the outside concealing the foul dough within. Punishment for such offences would see the baker end up in the pillory, or being dragged through the streets on a hurdle (a kind of sled) with one of his fraudulent loaves hung around his neck.

An unscrupulous baker is publicly exposed and punished by being dragged through town on a hurdle with one of his illegal loaves strung around his neck.

Having learned about medieval bread I wanted to make some myself. Ever keen on immersive historical experiences, I was keen to feel the dough in my hands, smell the loaf as it baked, and best of all, get that evocative taste of the past.

The first challenge was finding some recipes. Frustratingly, barely any have come down to us from the Middle Ages, although thanks to contemporary sources we do know about the types of bread that were available, the variety of grains used and who ate what and how. Thus, with much detailed research and experimental archaeology undertaken by historians and experts, a few recipes have been created to get us as close as possible to an authentic medieval loaf. This involves practices such as mixing grains and the inclusion of honey and ale, while in the absence of a nearby brewery that was so common and widespread in the Middle Ages, the ale-barm they used as the raising agent has been replaced with the modern equivalent of ale mixed with fresh yeast. So with a few well-researched recipes and all my ingredients gathered I rolled up my sleeves and got down to work.

Barley Bread

I started in the cloister, with a sustaining bread for those who spent many hours working and praying. Monks and nuns weren’t supposed to eat posh white bread, so this was the next best thing. It mixes wholemeal and barley flours with a little salt, water, ale and honey together with our modern version of ale-barm, before the dough is kneaded for 10 minutes and left to rise. Once doubled in size, the dough is knocked back, divided into two loaves and left to prove again before baking.

Kneading the barley bread dough

The Verdict: a new discovery for the Templeton household! I wasn’t sure I’d be that keen, but I was very pleasantly surprised. Barley bread is a dense but delicious loaf that I’d fight any monk for, and we all devoured it with glee. It made delicious picnic sandwiches, and is the perfect accompaniment to soups and stews, and anything else you can think of to eat bread with. As soon as it was gone there were requests for more…

The finished loaves quickly became a family favourite.

Wastel Bread

Going up-market, wastel was eaten by the more affluent sections of society, from nobles and wealthy gentry to the higher-ranking clergy. In fact, Chaucer’s Prioress shows her rank and status by feeding it to her dogs:

‘Of smale houndes hadde she that she fedde
With rosted flessh, or milk and wastel-breed.

(She had some small hounds that she fed
 With roasted meat, or milk and fine white bread.)

For this, I used mainly white bread flour with a little added wholemeal to represent the slightly less finely sifted flour than the top, all-white grade used for pandemayne. To this I added salt, ale-barm, honey, more ale and warm water to make a nice, soft dough. Once kneaded and left to rise, I divided it into one round loaf and six bread rolls, leaving them to prove before baking.

Wastel bread was another great discovery.

The Verdict: it’s easy to see why this was a high-status bread, as it’s not only fine in appearance and flavour, it has an appealing, almost cake-like texture that is a delight to eat. Again, the rolls made for excellent picnic fayre, while the loaf swiftly disappeared as an accompaniment to soup, with some slices reserved as the main ingredient of my next experiment: a very indulgent brunch!

Payn Perdew or ‘Lost’ Bread

Medieval people didn’t waste anything, including stale, or ‘lost’ bread. If it wasn’t cut into trenchers for the table, bread that was past it’s best could be made into an early version of what we now know as French Toast. I managed to reserve a few slices of wastel to try out a surviving fifteenth century recipe. With great anticipation, I beat four large egg yolks (saving the whites to make a meringue, in keeping with the medieval practice of zero waste) with a little salt, and poured them into a large flat dish, popping in the wastel slices to soak it all up. Once all the egg had been absorbed, I fried the bread in lashings of butter until it was golden-brown on both sides. Then, going for the high-end version, I served it sprinkled with sugar, cinnamon and a pinch of ginger.

Frying the ‘lost’ bread in lashings of butter…

The Verdict: gone in seconds, we’ve all agreed this is a scrumptious, highly indulgent – if necessarily rare – treat. The likelihood is that ‘Lost’ Bread will be appearing on our Christmas breakfast table this year…

We devoured the indulgent and delicious ‘lost’ bread, which will be our Christmas breakfast this year…

Maslin Bread

My final experiment was to produce a maslin loaf, the bread eaten by most medieval people. The word maslin comes from the French ‘miscelin’ meaning mixture, referring to the mix of wheat and rye grains grown together. The result is a dense and moist loaf that lasts longer before it goes stale, perfect for filling a hungry family throughout the week.  

The methods used to produce this loaf are quite different to the other recipes in that it can’t be rushed. Traditionally, maslin is made with a sourdough starter, so I used my own made from rye, adding it to a blend of wheat and rye flours. After a thorough kneading, the dough needs two extended fermentation and proving stages to develop its full flavour and texture. I started preparing it on Sunday evening, and it was ready for baking by Tuesday tea time.

Maslin bread is made with a sourdough starter, so I used my own made with rye.

The Verdict: Maslin is another absolute winner. With the tasty tang of sourdough and the rich flavour of the mixed grain, this was both a delicious and filling bread that will feature on the Templeton table for many years to come.

Worth the wait: our authentically made maslin bread

For centuries, bread has famously been described as ‘the staff of life’, and it seems this was never truer than in the Middle Ages. As we’ve seen, bread featured in every meal across the entire social spectrum, with production tightly controlled by laws and landowners alike, reflecting its importance both as a food and as a commodity. It’s almost as though the simple loaf is baked into the very essence of medieval life. My little quest has given me a whole new appreciation of home-made bread, and has added a delicious new range of loaves to my repertoire. Now I feel even more connected to the past, and I don’t think I’ll ever look at our daily bread in the same way again…