Horse bread

[davidb]

I came across this posting by Ruella Yates on Facebook, and thought people might find it interesting and may add some information about its use in our period:

In medieval England people consumed two to three pounds of bread every day. But their appetite for bread was likely nothing compared to that of medieval horses who, after a day spent lugging cargo at high speeds across the British Isles, would often devour coarse loaves of horse bread.

Today, feeding bread to a horse might seem like the whimsy of a sentimental pet owner. But in pre-industrial England, it was the best technology available for powering the horses on which English society relied.

Horse bread, typically a flat, brown bread baked alongside human bread, fueled England's equine transport system from the Middle Ages up until the early 1800s. It was so logistically important that it was more highly regulated than its human counterpart, with commercial bakers adhering to laws dictating who could bake horse bread, as well as the bread's price, size, and occasionally even its composition. The ubiquitous bread was made from a dough of bran, bean flour, or a combination of the two, and typically was flat, coarse, and brown.

According to some estimates, medieval horses consumed about 20 pounds of food per day. These huge animals were responsible for hauling people and cargo across England at high speeds. After a long haul, exhausted horses had to rebound quickly for another trip, so they needed carbohydrates and protein, fast.

Bread solved this problem in two ways. First, it saved time and energy because it was "pre-digested," says William Rubel, author of English Horse-bread, 1590-1800 and a leading historian—and baker—of this functional bread. "Bread, where you've ground the food and baked it, pre-digests it, so you get more calories released more quickly."

Second, horse bread concentrated, in a travel-friendly object, nutrients that owners would otherwise have to gather from vast quantities of grain and grass. "I am convinced that horse bread is a very reasonable solution for the ongoing problem of how do you feed your horses. They require a massive amount of feed and in a medieval economy, it must have been a logistical nightmare, especially while traveling," writes Madonna Contessa Ilaria Veltri degli Ansari, a medieval reenactor who baked horse bread for her own modern-day horse based on ancient English recipes, in a paper on the topic. "I consider that horse bread is the period analogue for the pellets we use today."

[Duncan Head]

That's very interesting, I knew nothing of horsebread. Thanks, David.

[Erpingham]

That's very interesting, I knew nothing of horsebread. Thanks, David.

If you want to know more, the full article the Facebook author quoted is here

For a more focussed look on feeding medieval war horses, this article (which mentions horsebread ) is interesting.

[Duncan Head]

And Madonna Contessa Wosserface's(*) observations are here - with remarks on actually making, and taste-testing,  the stuff.

(*) it's her re-enactment name, obvs.

[Erpingham]

It does make her sound like a Monster Raving Looney candidate in a byelection.  The article is interesting, though.

Another recipe, this time for the peasant foodstuff and meant for human consumption here.  Looks quite nice - I wonder what it eats like?

[DBS]

I am reminded of William Kapelle's fascinating proposal that the reason that NW England and SW Scotland were so late in Normanisation after 1066 was not just because of the harrying of the north - which if anything could be seen as a strong motive for imposing castles and knights on the area - but because they were not suitable for wheat, and no self-respecting Norman was going to accept a fief where he could not get decent bread whilst there was so much other land in England to exploit.  It eventually falls to the likes of de Brus, from the poorest part of Normandy, and less fussy about their daily loaf, to take on the job of repressing Galwegians, some three decades or so later.

[Chuck the Grey]

That's very interesting, I knew nothing of horsebread. Thanks, David.

Neither did I. I first thought "bread" was a typo for "breed." Live and learn.