Manchet

This was served as the bread course at the Ymir 2023 feast.

Introduction

Manchet — fine white bread, the highest-status bread of the period. The feast was themed as a royal progress around Shakespeare’s Hamlet, so high-class bread was appropriate to the occasion. This recipe produces a simple, slightly enriched white roll that serves well as table bread alongside the other dishes.

Source

Thomas Dawson, The Good Huswifes Jewell (1596)

Take two peckes of fine flower, which must be twice boulted, if you will have your manchet verie faire: Then lay it in a place where ye doe use to lay your dowe for your bread, and make a litle hole in it, and put in that water as much leaven as a crab, or a pretie big apple, and as much white salt as will into an Egshell, and all to breake your leaven in the water, and put into your flower halfe a pinte of good Ale yeast, and so stir this liquor among a litle of your flower, so that ye must make it but thin at the first meeting, and then cover it with flowre, and if it be in the winter, ye must keepe it verie warm, and in summer it shall not need so much heate, for in the Winter it will not rise without warmeth. Thus let it lie two howers and a halfe: then at the second opening take more liquor as ye thinke will serve to wet al the flower. Then put in a pinte and a halfe of good yest, and so all to breake it in short peeces, after yee have well laboured it, till it come to a smoothe paste, and be well ware at the second opening that yee put not in too much liquor sodenlie, for then it wil run, and if ye take a litle it will be stiffe, and after the second working it must lie a good quarter of an hower, and keep it warme: then take it up to the moulding board, and with as much speede as is possible to be made, moulde it up, and set it into the Oven, of one pecke of flower ye make ten caste of Manchets faire and good.

Discussion

• The original describes a warm rise with extensive kneading and fast shaping. I used a cold overnight rise instead — a practical choice driven by feast logistics and available labor. I usually have good results with overnight doughs, and it freed up the morning for other prep work.
• Rather than the extensive kneading Dawson describes, I folded the dough about twelve times with additional flour after the overnight rise. This develops gluten structure without the labor of prolonged kneading, and was adequate for a bread that didn’t need to be particularly light or fine-crumbed.
• For the feast, the dough was divided into 18 portions, then each portion into 8 rolls, for a total of 144 rolls. They were left to proof until puffy and baked at 450°F until golden.

Sources