Breadmaking

The man took a wooden cup and poured more water into the dip made in the flour; just a little bit, not to overdo it. Then the magic happened. Slowly and steadily, the spoon scraped the flour from the sides in whirly motion to the center, where the water was. Before she counted to ten, most of the flour was mixed with water; and after thirty, all of it has mixed into a soft glistening ball.

"Now, we let it rest. Let's go outside and play for a while."

History

Bread was in the history of the Saveni for millenia, although its form has evolved over time. Several varieties of grains were transported during the migrations. These were several types of wheats, which gave a strong dough, a few species of barley and rye.

There are two main types:

travel bread

home bread

Travel bread

The travel bread is characterized by several main features:

easily made (often fool proof)

easily packed

highly satiable

stable over long time

The recipe is rarely more than "mix the dry and wet ingredients, shape, bake". The bread itself is either baked while making a camp, or beforehand with provisions being readied. The former will typically be softer to be eaten on the spot, but hardtack type is sometimes made as well. The latter is either properly dried to form a hardtack or double-baked to hold the moisture for prolonged time. Double-baking is especially popular in Gáláwá, where rye sourdough bread is baked.

PLACEHOLDER MARMOTS by PxHere (edit by Angantyr)

Travel bread is typically shaped either flat or pseudorectangular, with the help of metal trays. The use of tin trays is fostered chiefly in the close proximity of Gáláwan mountains and Tænian Mountain Range. This practice is foreign to Cymrians, who by default don't use man-made tools to shape the dough during the baking process.

Travel bread is extremely satiable. It often consists not only of the flour, but often nuts and oily seeds as well. The additivies are almost always added in their natural form as grounding them would weaken the structure of the bread. In extreme recipies the flour is added only as a binder to hold the more satiable food sources together.

It is often more flat and contains additives that enable it to last longer. Rarely adorned with anything more than a sketch made of seeds, since that is not priority. The travel bread is furtherly divided into soft and hard, the latter made for very long journeys, especially through the mountains, where a light pack and densely pack energy sources are required.

Hithean opened the travel sack and took something out of the bag. The cloth was made a thickly spun nettle, dull in colour but finely embroidered. It coated something rectangular. Another wrapping landed on the first, giving away a low thump. He proceded to unwrap everything. The rectangular thing inside smelled a bit sour, but pleasent and thick. It had a very dark shade of brown, almost like the forest bed.

"What's the stone for?" - she pointed to the rectangular object

He looked puzzled and stiffened for a moment. "It's a normal bread. Shaped like a bread, smells like a bread..." he unsheathed a knife, easily cut away a slice and started to chew. "...and tastes like a bread. Why would you even ask? I thought Cymru was supposed to be famous for its grain and bread?"

"It looks nothing like a bread. Well, at least nothing like the one we make back home." She accepted a slice and nibbled a bit. The rind was very thick, but the inside remained moist and fluffy. It had a sour aftertaste but not enough to make it feel spoiled. It was good, unexpectedly good. "What's it made of?"

"Rye. Well, mostly rye. It's what grows best around here"

Home bread

On most parts of the Sávenian lands it is the home bread that forms a staple of most family food throughout the day. However, just as the lands and people are different, the way people approach to its making can be very different as well.

Home bread is more often shaped into loaves and is given more love and care. The loaves are often prepared in various shapes and the dough itself is often coloured and mixed with dried herbs to give it more taste. How the bread is formed, depends greatly on the grain, flour and the region but boils down to a distinction between the loaf-based or form-based.

Fifty shapes of bread by Wesual Click

The form-based loaves have been extensively used in Gáláwá to shorten the time needed for preparing the bread; and to quickly supply the miners and their expeditions to the mountains. This does not mean that loaves were not baked at all. It is very easy to make a round loaf with cracks, as rye flour results in a very weak dough. Round loves both look beautifully and break wonderfully on the cracks, so they are great for a feasts and celebrations of any kind. Sadly, these are the only times when they get a moment to shine.

At one point, the demand for bread became high and it became an unnecessary delay. People tried out various ways of baking, using leaves, clay molds among others. The best results turned out to come from the wooden brick forms. The wood had to be soaked in with various additives to make it fireproof, and this tainted the crust, altering its taste. A true groundbreak came with the discovery of tin and other plastic metals. Metallic forms enabled formation of the loaves, while not altering the taste of the crust and it soon became a preferred way of baking rye bread in the mountainous regions far and wide.

That practice is frowned upon in Cymru. To Cymrians the loaf (and food in general) are seen as a form of expressing affection and are generally given more care. The breadforms have made a few attempts of sneaking into the Cymrian culture but the practice never took a firm root and slowly faded away, only seldomly and even then only as a last resort at that. The tradition of growing wheat demanded forming loaves through folding and baking the loaf free-standing. Food was never a scarce resource in Cymru, be it grains, fish or a plentiful multitude of wild plants and mushroom in the lakes, rivers and woods. As a result, the travel bread had its place as a thicker form of a flatbread and the home bread had its place as a form of expressing love through everyday food.

Each loaf of bread tells a story of its maker and holds a message for those it was made for.

— a Cymrian saying

Speaking through taste and form

PLACEHOLDER MARMOTS by PxHere (edit by Angantyr)

A feast for mind and soul

Cymrians can differ in hundreds of little details on how the bread should be made but they all agree in what in the end it will stand for -- a story of form and taste.

Nothing tells care more than the first glance. While the very shape of the loaf is a testament of the finishing touches of the baker, the way it splits after being cut is the result of all the steps in between -- of how, when and how often the dough was folded; of how long did it rest in the end. The most frugal of all loaves are folded once or twice before resting and baking. But even then, in most cases they receive the finishing touches so the simplicity of the inside would be balanced by the beauty and the complexity of the outside.

Cymrian wheat loaves are often embroidered on the surface in two ways, either by seeds and herbs or through elaborate motifs of cuts. Now, perfecting that process is an art of its own, and Ceud mìle gearradh as it is called in Cymru can take years to be fully reproducible.

By looking at and inside the loaf, one takes a peek into the mind of the baker. A good eye will notice the traces of patience and diligence in the way the fluffy strings of the dough were formed or hastiness where they folded into a dense mess.

Art and pragmatism

The difference in how Cymrians and Gáláwans approach bread can come off as shocking at first sight. After all, rye is by itself a difficult grain to work with and one cannot compare it to the fluffiness of the wheat. If the differences are taken into account, then the mind becomes magically opened to the acceptance of how both should be compared and that is: they are the leagues of their own.

It is easy to see the beauty of generously embroidered Cymrian wheat loaves. Gáláwan rye loaves are typically dull on the outside, simply because people of Gáláwá put the taste and the inside over the outside looks. They are pragmatic to the core about it. Though the dough is not folded and rather mixed, the process is still visible to the end observer and the element of art is present; at least to extent the rye dough permits it. Several herbs, malt or honey are used as dyes to taint the bread with darker tones; the dough itself can become striped or spotted.

The lack of colorants for the dough is ensured with dried goods of all sorts: fruits, vegetables, even cheese and cured ham. Additionally, some give space to the practice of smoking the loaf, even just a little bit. This practice was especially popular in times of food scarcity. A whif of juniper or other smoking wood reminded people of the cured meat (and prosperity) of the previous seasons. Nowadays, with food being more available, this became a way of adding some flair to the end product and people enjoy it for the fun of it.

As the Gáláwan saying goes: "Do not judge the egg by its shell". Pragmatism forms a significant part of the Gáláwan culture but this is but the background of the big picture; one that makes special moments shine even more. Very often Gáláwans are judged by their stern and simple looks and more often than not these house a beautiful and generous soul with a big heart and even bigger stories to tell.

Artistic cuts by Yulia Khlebnikova

Seasonal delight by Tamara Gak

Celebrating the here and now

Typically the loaf will be dusted with flour or very fine ash. But when the season is in full bloom, especially during summertime and springtime, people will want to commemorate in one way or another.

By the end of the spring people will add remnants of dried fruit and nuts to remember the winter and fall. Then, slowly, as the spring sun rises higher and higher herbs will slowly take their place until the loaf gives its sweet and dry richness to the strong and waking fragrance of the spring herbs. Similar pattern will happen throughout the year with seeds overcoming herbs and root herbs overcoming the seeds. Yet another way of celebrating the season is using a big leaf, e.g., of a horseraddish as a support for the loaf. This not only gives a punch of flavour but also wraps the bottom of the loaf and makes it last longer.

In some regions the seasonality is smoother, in others it is more abbrupt to mark the transition with a firm line. On the slopes of Mount Gloine a very specific types type of loaves are baked, in which people use different types of ash to dust the stone on which the bread is baked. The seasonal difference will be appear in the form of spices admixed to the dusting ash and changing the flavour of the bottom part of the crust.

And then when a hundred thousand seasons have passed came the first storm and the earthen waves shook and folded the world until all was naught and no life remained, nor trees, nor water, for the water was all in the posession of the skies. But strong was the earth's will and it kept rising and rising, until the plains became hills and hills became mountains.

In a fit of rage, the storm rose and sent thunder and lightning, splitting the earth with jagged-edged cracks, creating the firstborn valleys, unsurfacing the thousand year history and a reminder of the cataclysm of the days gone.

And the valleys, now dry, reminded the goddess of rain of the times, when water could hide from the scorching sun in the earthen cracks and in the deep valleys; of how the moss sheltered the droplets, how trees sheltered the puddles, how bulrush shaded the lakes. And she used the sky's rage to her advantage and brought back the nourishing water to the world.

And the earth cooled down and drank until once again the river beds were filled and the lakes were formed once more. The firstborn trees appeared and bushes, and moss; and the world was hospitable once again.

— De tàirneanach is uisge

Traditional savenian loaf and the genesis ritual

There is an annual ritual in which the loaves are prepared in a very unique way. Two colours of the dough are formed, then folded and kneaded to form a pattern similar to the origin stone, supposedly coming from the birthplace of the first Sáveni tribe. When the loaf is formed and rested, several cuts are made to denote the valleys; the exact pattern differing from village to village. An extract of a blue-petaled flowers is made into tea and poured on the cuts to denote the nourishing rain and the revived flow of the rivers. At this point the loaf is either transfered onto a bed of white ash, intially made from a dense weave of Mountain grass. In some varieties a dried fragrant herb or a mix of herbs is sprinkled on the moistened dough to denote the rebirth of the green life.

PLACEHOLDER MARMOTS by PxHere (edit by Angantyr)

Essentials

Flour

Every bread starts with the flour, which determines the rest of the processes. And all strengths and weaknesses have their beginning with the grain.

Wheat is considered a staple and the first choice for all types of bread and pastry. It produces a strong dough, which can be furtherly strenghtened by folding and forming. The colour of the wheat flour ranges based on the species of the grain. The most popular varieties have warm colours ranging from creamy white to pinkish red. For this, wheat flour is often nicknamed "the sun flour" and the many types are narrowed down by their respective colour, e.g., sunset flour (for red wheat flour), noon flour for the creamy-white one.

Rye is the second most popular grain in the Sáveni and the most popular in mountainous regions, e.g., Gáláwan mountains, Tænian Mountain Range. It is very easy to make a leaven with and a very strong one at that; so strong that it can easily take away the strength of the wheat flour if given too much time. Rye flour dough, however, is not as nearly as strong as its wheat counterpart and thus needs more patience and skill to work with. Rye grains result in cool and usually dull coloured flours, ranging from dark greyish to light blue and for that are collectively called "the moon grains" or "the silver grains".

Some less popular flours are made of acorns, starchy roots (e.g., Mountain bulrush), coirce, eòrna, rus, muilt, seagal, cruithneachd, triticale, gràndhubh. While these are less popular for making bread on their own, each plays an important role for a dish of their own and occassionally as an additive or a food source in times of famine.

Kneading and/or folding

Kneading brings out the best and the worst of the flour used. With the right amount of stirring and time, the initial dough can gain additional strength. The dustiness of the flour used plays a significant role here as well -- the finer the dust the less time the dough will need to soak in the water and the more strength it will have afterwards. While wheat flour dough thrives when kneaded and folded, even several times, rye flour is very submissive and needs only a few gentle stirs. Given more, it will likely break apart and lose its strength.

Preparation

Rye loaves are the embodiment of frugality. Give them just enough water, stir a few times and they will be happy to grow into a simple but tasty loaf. Adding stuff to make them more tasty can be challenging though, since the dough may not be able to hold some of them. While rising, rye becomes even more frugal and the just right amount of water in the beginning becomes too much by the end of preparation; the dough can become sticky and difficult to handle. Seeds are a lifesaver of every household that bakes rye loaves, and adding even a small handful can do wonders.
Wheat loaves like to be left alone in a warm place, preferentially in a small basket, prepared especially just for them. This makes them get all rested and relaxed and additional wrapping up and tightening the dough will help them grow into a big loaf. The amount of tightening depends on the end result. For the embroidery by Ceud mìle gearradh too much of it will distort the imagery and too little will make precise cuts difficult.

Baking

There are several schools of baking bread. Some prefer to ash a bread stone, others transfer the loaf onto a big leaf, which will typically shrink and wrap the loaf on the bottom. The ash will add a visible mineral aftertaste if added properly -- it needs to be extremely fine, with no traces of sand in it. Optionally people sieve out the bran and use that instead.

The baking time and temperature depends on the dough and type of loaf, but typically take around "just about right" until done.

Resting

After baking the loaves should not be cut until cooled down. If not, they will quickly lose moisture and may easily dry off. For most of the loaves it is recommended to wrap them in a cloth and leave overnight. Needless to say, most people feel the bread is ready for consumption when it is not scorching hot, which takes about a long song or two.

"Is bready bread sleepy?" - the girl looked around curiously while her father covered the warm loaf with a folded cloth.

"Noooo... But all that time and fire have made its skin tough and it shut itself inside. Here, try knocking on it."

The girl knocked on the outer crust. "Hello. Are you there bready bread?" She turned towards the man with a frown. "Bready bread is grumpy!"

The man smiled and gave out a sigh. "Bready bread is tired and needs to cool down." He smoothed the cloth tracing the shape of the loaf. "If we are patient, it will tell us a story afterwards. Bready bread speaks through flavour."