two for joy

Valentin

avian august: underrated birds edition

This is a modern approximation to the average Anglo-Saxon’s hlaef (loaf)

“. . . the Anglo-Saxons held their own feast of the opening of the harvest upon 1 August, the hlaef-mass, or loaf mass, from which derived its Medieval English and Scottish name of Lammas. As such it appears regularly in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, explicitly (in 923) as the feast of first fruits. The same name and title are echoed in another early English text, the Red Book of Derby. It was clearly by then the custom to reap the first of the ripe cereals and bake them into bread which was consecrated in church upon that day: a book of Anglo-Saxon charms advised the division of this holy bread into four pieces and the crumbling of each one in the corner of a barn in order to make it a safe repository for the grain about to arrive there. The festival was also known in medieval times as the Gule of August, a term which has vexed linguists, who have only been able to suggest that it signifies the Yule of August, a period of rejoicing similar to that of December. The difficulty evaporates if it is simply an Anglicization of the Welsh gwyl meaning feast, the Welsh name for 1 August being gwyl aust, the feast of August. Certainly the arrival of the time when the first of the harvest could be gathered would have been a natural point of celebration in an agrarian society, and the importance of the first day of August was already so well established by 673 that the Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus decreed that the annual synod of the newly established church in England should be held then. It would seem very likely therefore, that a pre-Christian festival had existed among the Anglo-Saxons upon that date . . .”

—Ronald Hutton Stations of the Sun

This is my favorite part of the recipe for cooking the “bread” that an average Anglo-Saxon (aka a poor one) would have eaten: “each side will probably take as long as it takes to say nine or ten Lord’s Prayers. This is how they measured cooking time in the medieval period.”

The Lord’s Prayer in Old English (I do actually recognize some of the words!):

‘Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum: si þin nama gehalgod to becume þin rice. Gewurþe ðin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofonum. Urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg. And forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum. And ne gelæd þu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfele soþlice.’

I used 130 grams of all-purpose flour (not at all authentic but what I had) and added enough water to make a dough. Then kneaded it for 5 minutes and shaped it into two rounds.

“When the Anglo-Saxons were rich enough to own metal objects, they made brooches, not measuring spoons.”—The Early English Bread Project

I then went ahead and measured the time by chanting the Lord’s Prayer as mentioned above because this didn’t seem like simply a practical element to keep time, but you know, magic! Incantation! And since I planned on eating one of these to test it, and saving the other for Lammas rituals, the magic seemed like an essential ingredient.

Eight repetitions was plenty.

And I can’t help myself, a little syncretism with my Slavic Děduška blessing the bread for me.

Did I like this hlaef? No, I did not. I’m a spoiled lady of modern times, I guess. 🤷‍♀️

The Early English Bread Project said that traditionally the butter and cheese that would have been eaten with it was very salty which is why it was made without, but our modern butter and cheese probably didn’t make up for the lack. If I make it again to eat, and not just for ritual, I will probably add salt.

Do visit The Early English Bread Project for the types of flour thatwould have been used depending upon your degrees of poorness. And for such pithy comments as:

If you want to have an authentic stomach ache, you could add cockle, a troublesome weed that grew among the grain. Excavations in York showed that tenth-century bread had enough cockle to have given the eaters digestive discomfort.

Next I made the leavened rich person version based on the recipe at the bottom of this post.

I cut the recipe in half as I knew no one else in the house would be interested in experimenting. I divided it into two loaves (hlaefs?). One to taste test and one for Lammas rituals.

Maybe I should have adjusted cooking times since I made smaller loaves. The outside was quite crusty.

This was much more to my refined tastes, however! 😜 I had it for second breakfast with butter and honey.

If anybody actually reads this and experiments, I’d love to hear your results/opinions.

Drinking horn with gilded copper mounts, Europe, 15th century

you look down