My S.C.A. group at one time (White Buck Forest) was hosting “Walt Wars”. My buddy Ollie told me he had a Journey Bread recipe that was “older than the bible”, and that we would be making some for the event. He had arranged for us to use the kitchen at the local National guard armory, so we gathered our implements of destruction and set to work.
Journey bread was the medieval equivalent of C-Rations. It was intended to be carried on long journeys and to provide most of the nutrition one would need.
This particular recipe had lots of sweet fruits in it as well as nuts.
The plan was to make a starter batch and use that to make the larger batch rise. Our starter batch made about 2 gallons in a 5 gallon pot. This would have worked out fine, but it was closer to the weekend of the event than we would have liked so we added a little yeast to the dough to make sure the starter would start rising soon.
I know now that was a mistake, but I wasn’t very experienced in baking bread, so it sounded good to me at the time. We put a lid on the pan in case it popped a few dough bubbles and went home to let it rise overnight.
The next day my section chief called me over and told me in no questionable terms that I was going to report to the national guard armory after work to clean up my mess. Ollie had received the same message, so we showed up together to clean up our mess.
We were stunned when we walked into the room. We had no idea how destructive dough could be.
The Journey Bread dough had not just bubbled up, it had climbed out of that five gallon pot and assaulted the room. There was dough everywhere, the table the pot was on, the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the racks of dishes across the room, everywhere!!
We cleaned that kitchen from top to bottom, including all the dishes and utensils in it. After we finished cleaning we decided to try and tame the dough still in the pan. We took all but about half a gallon of it and froze it for future use, and made a batch of dough using the half gallon we saved as a starter in the same five gallon pot. We put a lid on it and agreed to bake it the next night.
The next day I was again told that I would report to the armory after work to clean up my mess.
Now, I would have thought that after the great battle for the kitchen the night before the dough monster would be too tired to cause any more problems, but I would have been sadly mistaken. When we arrived we saw that it had re-claimed the kitchen (and a bit of the hallway) as it’s own. We again battled the dough monster most of the night, until we had the hall, kitchen, and everything in it clean.
We decided that the dough was probably too yeasty to use at this point and used a small amount of what remained in the pot as starter for yet another batch, and froze the rest to be use as starter at some future time. (That time hasn’t arrived yet, and Ollie’s spirit has since joined the Great Mystery.)
We put the lid on that five gallon pot, and tied it down to make sure the dough monster didn’t escape again.
That time the monster behaved and we made lot’s of journey bread for “Walt Wars” (originally “Salt Wars”) .
