How to Bake Medieval Rastons | The Life of a Miller

These buttery stuffed loaves would be served alongside a hunk of meat at a medieval feast. They're a great twist on a typical loaf of bread.

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RASTONS
ORIGINAL 15TH CENTURY RECIPE (From Harleian Manuscript 279)
Brede and Rastons: Take fayre Flowre and the whyte of Eyroun and the yolke, a lytel. Than take Warme Berme, and pute al these to-gederys and bete hem to-gederys with thin hond tyl it be schort and thikke y-now, and caste Sugre y-now there-to, and thenne lat reste a whyle. An kaste in a fyre place in the oven and late bake y-now And then with a knyf cutte yt round a-bove in manner of a crowne, and kepe the crust that thou kyttest, and than caste ther-in clarifiyd Boter and Mille the comes and the botere to-gederes, and kevere it a-yen with the crust that thou kyttest a-way. Than putte it in the ovyn ayen a lytil tyme and than take it out, and serve it forth.

MODERN RECIPE
INGREDIENTS
- 450g flour (All-Purpose, Whole Wheat or Bread Flour)
- 2 egg whites, 1 egg yolk (plus an optional yolk for an egg wash)
- 2 heaping tablespoons (25g) brown sugar
- 1 cup warm ale
- 1 packet (7g) dry yeast
- 1 stick (113g) butter
- 1 teaspoon salt

METHOD
1. Warm the Ale to between 90°F and 100°F (32-28°C), then mix in the yeast and allow to bloom. Once foamy (about 10 minutes), add the egg whites and 1 yolk and the sugar and mix together.
2. Sift flour into a large bowl and whisk in the salt. Add in the ale mixture and combine. Once the dough comes together, turn out onto a surface and knead until dough is smooth. Set in a bowl and cover and allow to rise until doubled in size (about 1 hour).
3. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).
4. Once the dough has risen, punch it down and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide into 3 equal pieces (or as many rastons as you would like), and form into round loaves. Place loaves on a lined baking tray and allow to rise another 20 minutes.
5. Once risen, brush the loaves with the extra egg yolk (optional) then score the top of the loaves and bake in the oven for 25 - 30 minutes. One baked, allow to cool on a wire rack.
6. Melt the butter over a low heat or in the microwave.
7. Once the loaves are cool, cut a zigzag pattern around the top of the loaf and remove the lid. Pull out all of the inside and crumb it into a bowl, then pour melted butter over the crumbs and mix together. Return the crumbs and any remaining butter to the hollow loaves and place lid back on. Warm in the oven for 5-7 minutes. Then serve it forth.

VIDEO CREDIT

#tastinghistory#Rastons #bread #baking #medievalfood

[kellyhiggins]

Millers and bakers were both suspect. There were strict laws standardizing how many loaves of bread could be yielded by one standard sack of flour. If a baker stretched his four and produced undersized/underweight loaves, he could find himself docked (jail), pilloried or even lose a finger as punishment. To make sure that they didn't accidentally get caught doing this (selling underweight) and as bread was bought in large volumes in days of olde, the prudent baker would add an extra loaf to each dozen, just to be sure the weight was OK. And that is where the tradition of the baker's dozen (13) comes from.

[thisbushnell]

I recall a story told in my childhood (grandmama?, auntie?) about a case brought before a French magistrate of a widow who was accused by the local baker of cheating him out of a full measure of butter from her one milk cow. She protested her innocence, declaring that she knew she was giving him a full pound of butter, because she always weighed it out against a full pound loaf of the baker's

[SANDMANN]

Interesting fact about the Washburn Mill explosion. The Owner of the mill, Cadwallader, felt so bad about the death of his employees that he payed a lot of money designing a filtration system for the mill and shared his patent with mills around the world free of charge to prevent it from happening again.

[mjp]

Former fire fighter here - the dust explosions Max describes here can be quite terrifying. When I was in my second month of training our instructors wanted to illustrate this to us - so they put a bag of flour on top of a small explosive charge and poured out a small puddle of gasoline around it. The idea is that the charge simultanously spreads out the flour so it mixes with air and ignites the gasoline - and the open flame then ignites the flour.
Told us to get 50m back and then they set it off. Biggest fireball I have ever seen. Then we did it again because it was also awesome.

[scottlee]

"That's why scarface loved flour so much" & the Raston song... This man is a national treasure

[VenerabIe]

"I love bread... and that is why it PAINS me that-"

Clever... very, very clever. (:

[carons]

3:17 Max: I need a history hat.
A million besotted viewers instantly start sewing, crocheting, knitting, carving history hats.

[merlgray]

The Raston song had me dying! You're killing me with all these great recipes.

[kentuckylongrifle]

Bakers and Millers also suffered from "Baker's Lung". This was caused from breathing in all that suspended flour particulate matter. My best friends father worked in a bakery all his life and died in his early 50's from it. This was the late 1980's. As always, Great Episode!

[stevemanart]

I have since tried this recipe, but I added some caramelized onion jam to the filling. Had it with a simple skirt steak. It was one of the best meals I've had in years.

[wy]

That song was wonderful and the addition of Gaston's muscles on the bread was hilarious!

[rkstevenson]

Fun fact: when I was a combat engineer in the Army, one of the things we learned to do was use a package of flour to create an implosion. We called it a flour bomb or dust bomb. It was pretty effective at taking down small buildings, lean-tos, etc.

[WabbitHunter]

My ex-mother-in-law used to work in a biscuit factory in London. She once told me that they regularly evacuated the site if too much flour was in the air. It's surprisingly easy for it to cause an explosion.

[manon_]

Fun not-so-fun fact, one of my ancestors or close relative of a direct ancestor was a miller and died when he got sucked into the milling contraption by accident. I thought it was a stupid and horrible way to die but didn't know it was that common without the protective stuff around the mill. I know about this ancestor because a cousin of my grandpa spent his life researching and looking into reports and townhall registries in order to rebuild our family tree. He got all the way back to 1610 so he did a pretty good job!

[johnjacobjingleheimer-schm]

Musical geek here, and your Raston song made me snort laugh so loud my sleeping dog jumped, lol. So stupid and yet so damn funny. It made me a subscriber, and I now have your channel playing while building minecraft stuff with my nephew. Keep up the great content, I'm definitely a new fan.

[mj]

Fun fact: the surname Miller is pretty common in America but pretty rare in Britain. Because of the stigma against millers, they began to change their names in England at about the same time as people were going to America. For some reason, Millers who went to America chose to keep their names, so it survive there even though it has mostly died out in the UK.

[fynworld]

It's hard to believe such a professional and well presented channel has so few subscribers.
I hope this blows up eventually. Thank you for the recipe and the history lesson.

[Lu-vozv]

I just made these to surprise my mom, she loved them so much she asked me to make them again tomorrow! Thank you so much for this video! :)

[TheMimiSard]

I have to say I appreciate the little detail of explaining the older meaning of the word "corn". I spent most of my life thinking of the word as a synonym for maize, so when I was looking deeper into Lord of the Rings deep lore (meaning stuff that you need to dig into the "History of Middle-Earth" series) I was confused by the phraseology of the origin of Lembas talking about the corn it is made from originating in Valinor. Now yes, it is well-known that Tolkien has some mentions of New World foods being in Middle-Earth - a land often considered to basically be a mythical prehistoric Europe - but the lembas story did not sound like it was talking about maize, so it sent me looking into the word "corn" to find it's older meaning is basically a synonym for "grain" - that is the generalised use to speak of multiple types of grass seed cereals.

[hazel]

A year later and these have remained in my standard rotation. I use them for breakfast a lot, but instead of liquid butter I toast the insides in the pan with butter, scrabbled eggs and some crumbled sausage. Twice a week at minimum I do this.