This is probably a damn fool question, but here goes;

We've got plenty of information about the baking of special "horse breads" as an alternative to feeding grains in the medieval periods, using peas and beans as well as grains.

We know how much of this stuff they are feeding, what they are making it out of, all that kind of stuff.....

.....but what I'm not sure about is why they are bothering. I can't think of any advantage in baking the grain into bread for the horse, and several disadvantages (time, fuel, effort, shorter shelf life).

All of these adequately explain why we don't bother with using horse bread today, but (unless we assume irrational behaviour, which I absolutely HATE invoking as an explanation), why did they think it was worth doing in the middle ages?

Any thoughts?

Neil

I thought this was more for 13/14thC England? They also used to feed it to the hunting dogs as they also needed consistent urine for tanning.

My sources are mostly English, so I'm not sure whether it's an English phenomena, or whether it happens in the rest of europe, too.

Datewise, we're certainly still feeding it in the early c15th - whether it's more or less common than in the c13/14, I can't tell - the data is too obscure to have been analysed properly.

It seems to have dropped out of use by the c17th, but when exactly, I couldn't say - I'd guess sometime in the c16th, but we're getting to the edge of my period there.

I'd certainly assume that horse bread is using the coarser, cheaper flours.

Don't know of it being used on campaign, but that's just absense of evidence, not evidence of absense.

Separating breads out.

Manchet Bread or pain-demaine (baron's bread)
is highly sifted wheat flour. Still darker than our modern white/wheat bread.

Greyer or Browner bread was less sifted (course) and was for the general population but my thinking is that it may have actually been more nutritious as it might have contained more valuable parts of grain kernals?

Maslin (poor bread) which was of mixed course wheat and rye. Rye having problems of potential for toxic bacteria.

Horse Bread of barley, peas and beans also fed to paupers.

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Originally posted by Friedrich:
Oop! Thinking about it further sent me to my books digging for bread descriptions.

Separating breads out.

Manchet Bread or pain-demaine (baron's bread)
is highly sifted wheat flour. Still darker than our modern white/wheat bread.

Greyer or Browner bread was less sifted (course) and was for the general population but my thinking is that it may have actually been more nutritious as it might have contained more valuable parts of grain kernals?

Maslin (poor bread) which was of mixed course wheat and rye. Rye having problems of potential for toxic bacteria.

Horse Bread of barley, peas and beans also fed to paupers.

Brom Bread which is more of an oaten mixture for hunting dogs.

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hey all from AM
how do we know that "horse bread" was fed to horses? do the inventories specifically say "so manypounds for so many horses?" it occurs to me that "horse bread" may be so called just because "its so cheap only a horse would eat it. oh yeah, and those guys over there"

I mean, "friendship bread" isnt made of friends, right?

also, as apoint of reference, it is perfectly possible to get bread the color of good quality white bread (think the artisanal stuff at the store, not Wonderbread) by simply bolting the flour repeatedly. My reading suggests that the highest quality flour was reserved for the making of the hosts for mass, and then the bread for the upper classes.

poorer flours were the result of less bolting, as they contained more bran, etc. and would be used for poorer breads.

chaff and bran from the bolted flour would be collected and fed to livestock. In the 15th century, it was said "he who winnows his grain in the wind is a fool"

ok thats enough bread trivia for now

--AM, who teaches a class on agricultural practices in the middle ages

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how do we know that "horse bread" was fed to horses? do the inventories specifically say "so manypounds for so many horses?" it occurs to me that "horse bread" may be so called just because "its so cheap only a horse would eat it. oh yeah, and those guys over there"

I mean, "friendship bread" isnt made of friends, right?

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Um, actually, yes, we have several sources that say just that - purchase of baking of "horse bread" explicitly for feeding to horses, including how many loves were to be fed to which horses etc.

What would you call todays hard feeds and why do people bother to feed these to horses ?

Unfortunately, trying to answer your question rather ends up restating mine, from the opposite direction.

Hard foods used today are either grains (oats, barley etc), "mixes" of various foods in proportions tailored to the animal's age or workload (competition mix, calming mix etc) or "Processed" feeds.

All but the "Processed" feeds would have been available in the period, and are used.

Most of the modern "processed" feeds do have real advantages over simply feeding the ingredients separately, eg because some of the ingredients are unpalatable on their own, because the processed feed keeps longer (eg milk pellets), or to make them easier to store (eg sugar beet pellets).

Medieval "Horse Bread" is effectively a processed feed, but I can't work out what its advantage over the unprocessed version is....which is back to where we started!

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Barley for horse feed is crushed or flaked these days, so that the horse can digest it properly. Perhaps the medieval equivalent was to grind it to flour.

It might be difficult to get a horse to eat flour (....well, would you?), so you have to bake it into bread....

Yeah, that makes sense as a working hypothesis. Thanks.

On the subject of barley, "Food and Feast in medieval England" (Hammond) states that most barley was reserved specifically for the making of beer, and was not used for eating in any form. This would explain why we hear of the poor eating poor quality bread made of beans and peas, but not barley.

I'm not a brewer, so perhaps this is a stupid question, but could the used barley from beer making be baked into loaves for horses? Could it have been fed as is, like a "mash"? I can't imagine that it was simply thrown away after the beer making process.

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Originally posted by NEIL G:


Um, actually, yes, we have several sources that say just that - purchase of baking of "horse bread" explicitly for feeding to horses, including how many loves were to be fed to which horses etc.

Neil

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well, there you go then

on why would you bake bread for horses, it makes sense from a transport/freshness factor...

grain is easy to spill. Bread you can pick up when you drop it and doesnt leak out of bags as easily.

grain goes rancid as the germ is so oily. Flour less so, bread even less so. Bread goes stale, but I bet horses dont care.

neat thread, folks!
--AM
hey gwen, do you think they made bread out of leftover spent mash from brewing? its nice and tasty...

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I don't claim to have done a huge amount of in-depth research on the subject - it fell out of a project I'm working on about medieval warhorses - but we have several citations in household accounts etc.

Easiest commonly-available source is CM Woolgar "The great household in Medieval England", which looks at a number of households, and gives examples of (among other things) using bread to feed both dogs and horses.

If you are really interested, I can dig out page references etc, and probably a few other references in secondary sources, but I don't have them to hand. The notes in the book will refer you to the relevant primary source....though I have to confess (bad Neil! Bad Neil!) the point was so tangential to what I was actually rsearching that I didn't actually get hold of the primary sources themselves.

A thought that I had before is, would the bread provide more volume baked than it would in its raw material form, therefore being more filling meal for the animal? Could it be used for horses when grains are a little more on the rare side or just perhaps materials on the verge of "going bad" are baked so as not to be wasted?

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A thought that I had before is, would the bread provide more volume baked than it would in its raw material form, therefore being more filling meal for the animal?

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If you look at modern examples, that might be a possibility. I grew up not far from a gentleman who purchased out of date bread loaves from the local Wonderbread factory to feed his broodmares and yearlings. He said it kept them fat and he used less grain. I suppose the same might have applied during the 13th and 14th century.

Feeding a horse bread can be dangerous however if water is in short supply or the animal is a feed bolter. One can lead to severe impaction colics and the other can lead to choking to death

I am coming to this discussion very, very late. However, can anyone point me to some references about what types of peas/grains/beans would have been used for the making of horse bread?

Strangely, a friend ask me over the weekend if I had ever heard of its use during "the middle ages" (her quote not mine, so I don't know what actual century she was referring to) and I was ashamed to say I had not. I do know people who feed horses regular wonder bread type stuff now, but...

Anyway, any pointers on what was actually used would be very helpful

[ 03-08-2004: Message edited by: Angelique ]

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Thanks again.

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