Category: Medieval

Using a dough box or kneading trough

Classic dough box sloping sides, and legs that have been turned on a lathe. Photo by Nicholas Ford

If you’ve ever made bread, how much flour did your recipe call for? One pound? One kilo? Just enough for one or two tasty loaves? You need to get into a different mindset to understand a dough box. (Also called dough bin, dough trough, kneading trough or tray, with or without a lid and/or legs.)

Baking used to be an important weekly task in many households. Bread was a staple food in Europe and North America. People depended on having plenty of it: not just medieval peasants with scant resources, but 19th century middle-class families too. These might be big families, active, with farmhands or servants to feed as well.

A family of ten needed “three pecks” of flour for a week’s bread, according to Eliza Acton‘s advice around 1850. Three pecks is roughly 27 litres or 7 US gallons, so we’re thinking big sacks of flour for many households. The flour was tipped into a dough box or trough to start bread-making. It held the flour more tidily than a bowl. If the trough was on legs it didn’t need to sit on a table, and could be moved to a part of the room where the temperature was right.

Warmth

Danish woman c1929 kneading dough in a wooden trough.

The flour had to be warmed in winter if it had come in from a cold barn or cellar, and a dough box was a good place for that. Once the yeast was added the mixture had to stay quite warm for the dough to rise into a nice “sponge”, which would make light bread. You could knead the dough thoroughly in a box-shaped trough without spilling much flour.

The box’s position (near the fire?) was important. The lid was good for keeping in the warmth, and it protected the dough from mice, ash, or other horrors: especially useful if the dough was left to rise a long time. Overnight was not unusual. Slow rising generally improved flavour and texture, and did not require temperatures near to blood heat.

The lid offered a surface for shaping the risen dough into loaves and then leaving them to rise again after being handled. Some lids had tray sides to make carrying the bread to the oven simpler. A kneading trough with no lid was covered with a cloth. A lidded box could be used for storing bread.

Why not bake every day or two?

  • There are many other jobs to do.
  • Getting an old brick or stone oven hot enough to bake bread took time, a couple of hours or more. You used valuable fuel, and had to rake hot ashes out before putting the loaves in with a peel.
  • In New England and Europe some people used a shared bakehouse, and had their turn once a week.

To make Bread … Put half a bushel of good flour into a trough, or kneading tub; mix with it between four and five quarts of warm water, and a pint and a half of good yeast, put it into the flour, and stir it well with your hands till it becomes tough. Let it rise about an hour and twenty minutes, or less if it rises fast; then, before it falls, add four quarts more of warm water, and half a pound of salt; work it well, and cover it with a cloth. Put the fire then into the oven; and by the time it is warm enough, the dough will be ready. Make the loaves about five pounds each; sweep out the oven very clean and quick, and put in the bread: shut it up close, and two hours and a half will bake it.
The Domestic Encyclopedia, Willich & Cooper, Philadelphia, 1821

In Making Authentic Pennsylvania Dutch Furniture John Shea says:

In practically all the colonies, dough tables and bins were essential items of kitchen equipment. Without them, how could the colonists’ “daily bread” have been produced? Usually, these items were made of pine, poplar or similar softwoods. Some of the most handsome models were made of walnut.
One interesting point about the design and construction of Pennsylvania dough tables and bins is that you rarely see two of them that were designed exactly the same.

He says a typical dough box from that part of the world has curved handles spanning the lid. Slanting sides are the norm, and the box shape doesn’t vary much, but if the box has legs their designs can be quite different. A photograph of an exceptional 18th century box shows fine painted floral decoration, with a German folk art look.

Swedish dough trough in a kitchen 1889 (detail from Andreas Zorn painting). 15th century German baker. 2500-year old terracotta woman (Greek?) from Munich Museum of Antiquities.

And…

  • Some French dough bins have ornate carving and are polished on the outside.
  • Some Eastern European “kneading troughs” were bucket-shaped and used with a paddle.
  • No soap was used for cleaning a dough box for fear of tainting the flavour.
Thank you, and photo credit

Thank you to Rebecca who asked a question here that got me to write this piece.

I always link to any photographer who’s licensed their work for reuse, and thanks go to Nicholas Ford for his great image of a dough box. (I wish I knew its date – antique or repro.) Other pictures are from Wikimedia: Danish woman, Swedish girl, German baker, terracotta woman (photo by Matthias Kabel).
More picture info here
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Medieval and Renaissance combs

H-comb France 1500
French boxwood comb made c1500. Letters say "por vog servir", "to help you". ("Pour vous servir" in modern French) Photo by Thomas Cowart.

The most beautiful combs owned by ladies in late medieval and Renaissance times were highly ornamented in between their two rows of teeth. They look special, and they are. Some of the best were given as love tokens, and the fine, lacy carving included mottos, hearts, dates or initials. Did the young ladies use their admirers’ gifts? Or did the real hairdressing get done with plainer combs? The simple comb in the 17th century painting below looks easier to hold than a really gorgeous piece of carved wood.

H comb for combing hair 1600s
Combing a young lady's hair in 1633. From a Jan Miense Molenaer painting with various titles: Woman at her Toilet, Vanity, or Lady World.

And would you use your romantic, artistic comb for everyday hair hygiene? Apologies to anyone who is squeamish about infestation, but the fine-toothed side of the comb helped people deal with nits and lice, which people used to take more for granted than today.

H-combs

The H-shaped structure framing the teeth means that some people call these H-combs. Archaeologists call them double-sided. In Northern Europe there were double-sided H-combs in the early medieval period, while in the Middle East they go back more than 2000 years.

In late medieval Europe, especially France and Italy, beautifully decorated combs were considered a desirable gift from a knight to his lady. They could be teamed with a matching mirror and hair parter, and fitted into a dressing case (trousse de toilette), typically made of leather. Boxwood, bone and ivory were the most common materials; in all of these the teeth needed to be cut along the grain for strength. Boxwood is probably the only European wood dense enough to allow a special saw (a stadda) to cut fine teeth into the comb. These saws had two blades set close together and could cut 32 teeth to the inch or even more.† There are numerous pictures from medieval times onward showing ladies using plain H-combs, like the one from the Luttrell Psalter below right. Yet I don’t know of any showing an elaborately carved and pierced comb being used.

Medieval lady hold H comb as maid helps with her hair
A lady and her comb, with a maid helping arrange her hair. Early 14th century.

The most decorative combs started to become less popular as love gifts around 1600, though opinions vary on exactly when the fashion faded away. Plainer wooden H-combs were handmade up to 1900 or so. In the later 17th century there was a fashion for engraved tortoiseshell combs of this shape in the West Indies. Incised patterns with white filler, and frequent use of tulip designs, suggest combs there were influenced by Dutch craftsmanship.

†Information about the saw and other historical details come from Edward Pinto’s Treen and other wooden bygones. He casts doubt on the idea that many surviving combs were “liturgical combs” for priests to use when preparing for church rituals. Some of these were undoubtedly secular combs, made for rich people, but not for the clergy, he believes.

A lover may freely accept from her beloved these things: a handkerchief, a hair band, a circlet of gold or silver, a brooch for the breast, a mirror, a belt, a purse, a lace for clothes, a comb [pecten], sleeves, gloves, a ring, a box, a keepsake of the lover, and, to speak more generally, a lady can accept from her love whatever small gift may be useful in the care of her person, or may look charming, or may remind her of her lover, providing, however, that in accepting the gift it is clear that she is acting quite without avarice. Capellanus, De Amore, Book 2, c1180

Pivoting carved comb from 16th century France
Comb with two flat sections that pivot into a cross shape, from 16th century France. Photo by Kotomi Yamamura
boxwood comb 16th century French
French boxwood comb, 16th century. Photo by Kotomi Yamamura
Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: First comb, Other combs, More picture info here

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Trundle bed or truckle bed?

trundle bed 18th century
Trundle bed from Massachussetts, late 1700s.

What do trundle beds mean to you? The last one I saw was in a hotel where a small child’s rollaway lived under the main bed in daytime. This is exactly how they were used in thousands of American homes in the 19th century and before. And their history goes back much further too. For some people, trundle beds say “pioneers” or “log cabin” . You come across them in stories evoking that way of life.

By the time the dishes were all wiped and set away, the trundle bed was aired. Then, standing one on each side, Laura and Mary straightened the covers, tucked them in well at the foot and the sides, plumped up the pillows and put them in place. Then Ma pushed the trundle bed into its place under the big bed.
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods

They were certainly used in more prosperous homes too, like the 18th century Lexington MA house in the first picture. Their origins are actually in the grandest homes of all.  Royalty and noblemen used to have a servant sleeping at the foot of the bed. Their high bed draped in fine fabrics easily hid a small, simple rollaway during the day. These rolling or trundling beds probably first came into use in late medieval times.

trundle rope bed
19th century cabin in Georgia with trundle. Both beds strung with rope. Photo by Beneteau Sailor.

Truckle beds are just the same thing by another name. Both truckle and trundle originally meant rollers or castors or little wheely things. There are a few other names around: trumble beds in some parts of the US, hurly beds in Scotland, and sometimes simply rolling beds, or the modern rollaway.

American trundle beds

In the log cabin pictured right, both the big and small bed have cords to form a base for the mattress. Mattress covers were filled with corn husks, straw or any suitable plant material that was available, and spread over the rope “netting”. Surprisingly often, songs in the USA of the later 1800s and early 1900s mentioned trundle beds. They evoked a sentimental image of life back home, a cosy childhood with Ma and Pa. (See sheet music below.) But as life got more prosperous for many, with bigger houses, space-saving trundle beds had other meanings too, and some American children from small homes got called “trundle bed trash”.

European trundle beds

trundle bed 1930s
Oklahoma c1939 - trundle bed in a one room cabin occupied by tenant farmers.

In Europe, truckle beds or trundle beds were less likely to summon up visions of a warm, cosy family life. They were rooted in a master or mistress and servant tradition, where it was not at all unusual to have a valet or maid sleeping in a small bed near the big one, ready to be of service when required.

The medieval picture below comes from a French romance where the wife is in the servant’s truckle bed, unbeknownst to her husband, to find out about his goings-on in a story which is more risqué than The Little House on The Prairie. In 17th century London Samuel Pepys’ maidservant slept in the room with both him and his wife, on occasion.

So all to bed. My wife and I in the high bed in our chamber, and Willet in the trundle bed, which she desired to lie in, by us.
Pepys’ Diary, 1667

trundle bed 15th century
Trundle bed for a nobleman's valet. Black and white sketch of illustration in 15th century French manuscript: Roman du Comte d'Artois.
victorian trundle bed
"Nestled in the trundle bed" sheet music with sentimental 19th century picture. USA, 1880s
Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: Rope bed, or see more picture info here

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