Kingdom Arts and Sciences documentation 2014

Here is my documentation for my Royal Baker entry. I've included links both back to older entries in my blog and to the original sources were possible.

Who: Lady Isabella Mea Caterina D'Angelo
Competition: Royal Baker
What: Simple Bread, Apple Pie, and Fritters


Greetings! With winter's grasp upon us, it is hard to thing of spring. However, soon it will be Lentyn time again and with that, I wish to show all the wonderful variety of foods that one may sample during a time of fasting and prayer. First, a simple bread.

The bread is made in accordance to Jean le Renaud de Pyraness of the Canton of Stowe-on-the-Wowld within the Kingdom of Lochac' instructions . I used a starter that I created from nothing more than a good flour and water during the Christmas season. I also used olive oil, honey, additional flour, a small bit more water, and Mediterranean sea salt. All the ingredients would be acceptable, according to the Church, during Lent. If you would like to know more about the use of honey during lent, please see Two Fifteenth Century Cookbooks for a recipe that calls specifically for honey during Lent.

With this mixed, I kneaded the bread dough and waited for it to rise. Upon it's doubling in size, I beat it again and waited for it rise again. Upon this second rising did I bake the bread and it is good.


Apple Pie

For apple pie, I have found numerous recipes for apple pie during Lent. Two of my favorites are as follows:
Source [The Neapolitan Recipe Collection, Terence Scully (trans.)]: French-Style Apple Tart. Cook whatever apples you want, whether in water or in must syrup, whether in a baking dish in the oven or under the coals; then get pinenuts that have soaked a night in water, and are not rancid, grind them up with the apples; get a lot of sugar, a little cinnamon, a little ginger, a little saffron and a beaker of ground and strained pike eggs, and mix and strain everything with rosewater or some other water; then make a dough of sugar, flour, oil, water and salt, mix them together to make the dough, spread it over the bottom of a low pan, and put the mixture in so that it is no more than a finger deep; cook it in the oven or on the fire as is directed for the other tortes; when almost cooked, get wafers, crumble them over the Tart - those wafers should be made with good sugar; when cooked, garnish with sugar and rosewater. (Italy, 15th C)



124 To make a very good apple tart

Peel the apples, and remove the cores, and them be afterwards be finely chopped. After that put a half pound of sugar and a half ounce of finely ground cinnamon thereon and make a dough for a tart and spread it on top.(German, 16th C)
There are also several other recipes from around Europe on the same theme. Given that this apple pie is for Lent, I used the following recipe.

Given this, I used the following:

For the Crust:

2 cups flour
Generous 1/2 cup of light brown sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup of water with a pinch of saffron

I mixed the following together to get a basic dough. I kept adding more sugar to make it sweet so I'm not entirely sure how much really went in. I split the dough in half after kneading it for a few minutes - one pile for the bottom crust and the other for the top. I smoothed out the bottom crust and finger pinched it into the pie pan. I set the oven to 375f and baked it for 10 minutes.

For the filling:

4-5 apples
1 tablespoon of cinnamon
3/4 a cup or so of brown sugar
1 teaspoon ginger

After slicing and peeling the apples, I put them in a pot to boil. Once they boiled for about ten minutes, I drained the water and placed them in the bottom crust. On top of this, I sprinkled the sugar/ginger/cinnamon mixture. I placed the top crust on the pie and baked it at 375F for a half hour.

Fritters (The link will take you back to an older post on how I came to this recipe. There is also this post from when I first started playing with the idea of eating the medieval diet during Lent)

Fritters should be warm but that probably is not possible given the travel necessary to compete. Hopefully, they shall still be good.

XXIV Apple fritters for lent.
Take apples and peel them, then cut in the way of the host (thin circular slices). Make a batter of flour with saffron (and presumably water), and add currants, and put the apples in this batter; then fry them in sufficient oil for each. Powder with sugar when they are cooked, etc. (Italy, 15th C)

My recipe:
For the batter:

1 cup of almond milk
1 cup of flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon (although not in the original recipe, it is a period spice that was known to be used with other apple recipes and it tastes good!)

Mix it together. Peel the apples (2) and cut them into thin slices. Once you have a nice thick batter, coat the apple slices. Heat up a pretty thick amount of olive oil in a frying pan. Enough to cover any slice almost half way. Cook the apple slices covered in batter about five minutes, each side on medium high heat. Basically, the batter will turn a nice brown. If you don't cook them well enough it will taste doughy

Sprinkle a good amount of powder sugar on the fritters once they've been cooked both size and taken out of the pan.

Please, if you have any questions, feel free to ask or visit my blog at isabelladangelo.blogspot.com where I have a LOT more information on food practice during fast or fish days.