(no subject)

[camwyn]

Another way you know you're me:

The mental argument of the day with yourself contains the line, "There's no such thing as whole wheat lembas!", and shortly thereafter includes a comment to the effect of, "Hmm, I'd better clarify a whole bunch of butter as long as I'm making this- now where's the waffle iron?"

Comments

[eevieivy.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, clarified butter.

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

*mutters lightly in the background* Are you sure there's such a thing as wheat lembas?

[camwyn]

Well, whole wheat lembas really wouldn't work, mostly because the bran present in whole wheat flour would cut through whatever light gluten had been formed and result in a remarkably dense texture inconsistent with things Elvish. I mean, let's face it, if anyone exists who refines all their stuff- even their flour- it's Elves. As for lembas made from wheat in general, I've worked with rye flour and flours made from other grains before; you couldn't get a waybread answering to lembas' description from millet, barley, rye, or anything else but refined wheat.

Unless...

[drharper.livejournal.com]

Unless the Elves had access to an entirely different bread grain which is now lost to us since the Last Ship sailed. ;)

Re: Unless...

[camwyn]

Entirely possible, since the Numenoreans were described as educating the men of Middle-earth in the planting of 'corn', which under the usage of Tolkien's day referred to 'pretty much any grain crop used for human consumption really, except that dreadful stuff on cobs, that's maize and only pigs, Americans and Portuguese willingly eat it'. So we have no real way of knowing whether even the Numenoreans had wheat as we know it, let alone the Elves.

But King Arthur bread flour (13-14% protein by weight) will do in a trice when you haven't got semolina (14%) or elven-grain, I think.

Re: Unless...

[drharper.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, Elven flour may not have been made from any relative of grain as we know it. After all, grains require a considerable amount of cleared land to grow and the Galadrim (lembas bakers extraordinare) didn't seem to have much, if any in Lothlorien. What do you want to bet that lembas flour was made from some kind of nut? Mallorn nuts, maybe? We know from ROTK that the Party Field mallorn was grown from a nut Sam found in the box of earth Galadriel gave him.

Re: Unless...

[camwyn]

Well, I wouldn't be overly surprised if it were at least partly nut-based, but let me check something... *flips through Silm, checks Encyclopedia of Arda* Yeah. Okay. The recipe originated with Melian of Doriath, which was, again, a forest kingdom. And according to my copy of FOTR:

"[Lembas] was mostly in the form of very thin cakes, made of a meal that was baked a light brown on the outside, and inside was the colour of cream... [Gimli] broke off a crisp corner and nibbled at it... 'Why, it is better than the honey-cakes of the Beornings!'... 'The cakes will keep sweet for many many days, if they are unbroken and left in their leaf-wrappings, as we have brought them.'"

So here's what we know for sure:

1. Lembas has to be produced by means available to elves who live in forest country. Granted, they may import flour from somewhere else, but it's unlikely there was much involved in the original recipe given the difficulty of getting into and out of Doriath.
2. The majority of ingredients used in it are pale, which rules out rye and most whole grains. If nuts are involved, they're almost certainly dehusked and blanched, so it's probably not hazelnuts given the notorious difficulty of getting the husks off.
3. The stuff cooks up crisp and thin; it's probably got a fair amount of some kind of fat to it, too. Long keeping is characteristic of breads and quick-breads containing fat; low-fat breads go stale very quickly.
4. It's sweet, and better than honey-intensive cakes. Given the extreme unlikelihood of access to sugar cane in the forests of Doriath, this implies the use of either honey or tree sap.

Potentially, this could mean that lembas are, in fact, made with maple syrup, but to comply with the colour requirements it would have to be Grade A rather than grades B or C, which are more commonly used in baking. (The grading is not done on quality, but on colour- the darker the syrup, the further along in the alphabet it gets graded.) It does seem to be consistent with nutmeal, though. It's unlikely to have been acorns, given the need to leach the bitterness from them before use. Given the likely climate of Doriath, the nuts used could be mallorn, pine, walnut, or chestnut- possibly others, I'm not up on my nut-bearing trees. Which is why I'm rather glad that the recipe I found calls for almonds; it's probably going to be at least a little closer in texture...

oy. Food geekery and Tolkien geekery. I'm so bloody doomed.

Re: Unless...

[drharper.livejournal.com]

oy. Food geekery and Tolkien geekery. I'm so bloody doomed.


*snickers madly*

We're both doomed. Seeing we have an absence of mallorn nuts to experiment with, I would propose trying almond flour. Almonds make a light and relatively sweet flour when ground. Given, almonds generally require a milder climate than Doriath's latitude implies, but elves seem to be masters manipulating plant growth and probably can do some minor tweeking to the weather within their domains.

*snickers*

[drharper.livejournal.com]

Mind if I metaquotes you?

Re: *snickers*

[camwyn]

Sure, go ahead.

(For reference's sake, the recipe I'm working from may be found here.

Re: *snickers*

[derien.livejournal.com]

Sounds delicious. But didn't you decide the semolina didn't work? I was sort of hoping you'd find a recipe which didn't include anything related to wheat because eor is gluten-intolerant. The flours I currently have in my kitchen include:
gram (real gram - ground from the dried leaves of some type of plant that grows in India, I believe)
chick pea
moong (which might be almost identical in characteristics to the chick pea flour)
soy
rice
corn
Do you think any of these would work? Perhaps with the addition of some xanthan or guar gum for cohesiveness?

Re: *snickers*

[drharper.livejournal.com]

*points to discussion above*

Try substituting almond flour. That's gluten free and probably closer to what the Elves actually had available.

Re: *snickers*

[derien.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read the discussion above, but the referenced recipe already used almond flour AND semolina, so I figured that was what she'd ended up using.

Re: *snickers*

[camwyn]

I didn't use semolina because I haven't got any use for the rest of the bag, should I buy a bag of it. I made it with bread flour instead, which is about 13 or 14 percent protein by weight, same as semolina. It worked out okay, but didn't really seem like what I was expecting, and didn't cook up especially crisp either. So I'm going to be working from nut flour next time, I think. I just didn't have enough almonds on hand to do that in the blender.

Like as not the next recipe will be done using grade A maple syrup, too, because while honey is perfectly acceptable and Elven and all of that, the honourary Canadian in me has an urge to see maple syrup involved in more foods.

Re: *snickers*

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

On general similar note, other ways of getting cohesiveness than gluten? Curious.

(I'm moderately wheat intolerant, but not totally gluten intolerant, so I usually bake with spelt.) (And thankyou! Camwyn for all the help with my bread clumsiness, it's working now.)

Re: *snickers*

[derien.livejournal.com]

Xanthan gum and guar gum can help give that cohesiveness that's usually given by wheat gluten, and can be bought in a powdered form - comes in bottles that look like big white plastic pill bottles with orange lables. Only problem - one or the other, and I can never remember which, disagrees with my stomach and gives me almost like a touch of the runs. So for someone like me, who's only very slightly gluten intolerant, it's not neccessarily better than eating something made of wheat. (Although seeing as the long run effect of eating wheat if you're gluten intollerant can include getting intestinal cancer, it MIGHT still be better.)

Re: *snickers*

[camwyn]

That would probably be the guar gum. Guar gum has a higher amount of fiber to it and as a result tends to have a laxative effect. Xanthan gum, unfortunately, costs three times as much.

... yes, I have a lot of gluten-intolerant or coeliac friends.

Re: *snickers*

[camwyn]

Side note: sorghum flour, esp. mixed with soy flour, is supposed to be quite a good substitute for wheat flour, so long as you add in the usual gums for structure.

it is entirely your fault that I'm coveting this...

[derien.livejournal.com]

I never had much interest in "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" before your Sgt. Preston fic. NOW look what you've done to me!

Check Monkey Brain Books (http://www.monkeybrainbooks.com/) and look for
HEROES & MONSTERS:
THE UNOFFICIAL COMPANION TO THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN
by Jess Nevins

This is what comes of reading the reviews in Asimov's (http://www.asimovs.com/) (current print issue - probably not up on their site, yet).

Of "Heroes & Monsters" Paul di Filippo writes:
Forget the trauma of watching the inferior film version of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and return to the first sequence of the Alan Moore / Kevin O'Neill comic that inspired it. Now be prepared to double your original enjoyment ... this is an exhaustive and enlightening annotation of all the sources, literary, cultural and visual, which Moore and O'Neill employed in their creation. Nevins has amazingly ferreted out hundreds of obscure Victorian icons and other allusions that went into the composition of this steampunkish comic. On top of this fewast of referentiality, Nevins also delivers cogent essys on "Archetypes," "crossovers," and "Yellow Peril," as well as a fascinationg interview with Moore, in which the scropter reveals, for instance, his indebtedness to Philip Jose Farmer.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Sorry that last post was comletely OT to the thread on this post, I just couldn't find a post on LoEG quickly enough to satisfy my desire for immediate gratification. *is a twerp*

[camwyn]

That's okay, hon. You've just prompted me to do what I was considering all along, and get the next bit of Sergeant Preston's diary (found as loose pages in a folder that was never submitted to Inspector Moore) up on my web site.