Dark Ages farming in Europe had to adapt Mediterranean Roman techniques to a different climate and soil. At first, fields were planted one year and left fallow the next, to avoid exhausting the soil. Roman farmers had discovered crop rotation to replenish soil nutrients, and gradually these methods came to Northern Europe. But the soil was wetter and heavier in the north, and the traditional Mediterranean plow was too shallow.
A new plow came into use during the Dark Ages, apparently invented in Eastern Europe. Instead of cutting a line in the soil, it cut into the earth, sliced off the grass roots, and flipped the slice over. The furrow it cut was much deeper, and the plow itself was much heavier. It had to rest on wheels, with handles to allow the ploughman to steer or force the blade into the earth deeper. The whole thing was so heavy that at least two oxen, and usually more, were required to pull it. As use of the new moldboard plow spread, the standard model generally required eight oxen. This reorganized farming so that groups of farmer teamed their oxen together to plow everyone’s land at the same time; it was more convenient to own long strips of land that ran parallel to other strips, than to own separate squares as we do today.
Seed was sown by hand, so it did not grow in rows. It was rarely pure. We can talk about a Dark Ages farmer sowing wheat or rye, but in reality, the seeds in his bag may have included wheat, rye, barley and millet. A poorer farmer with worse soil grew more barley, rye and millet. When they harvested, the grains were all cut and milled together. The resulting flour, called maslin, made coarse, heavy bread.
Mills tended to be small and local. The simplest mill was built on a wooden bridge over a fast creek; a sideways paddlewheel at the end of a pole was let down into the water. It directly turned the millstones. Small mills like this could even be maintained by the community for self-serve use; larger ones were run by millers. It depended on how settled an area was, how much grain was grown, and how much the resulting grain might be sold at market, as opposed to just feeding one’s own family.
All bread was sourdough, started with a soured lump of old dough in water. Actual loaves of bread also depended on village organization, since baking ovens required some investment. Isolated home bakers made some version of the small or flat bread we find all over the world, baked on a hot stone or in a clay pot buried in ashes. But a real village baking oven had a large, insulated chamber in which the baker built a roaring fire while preparing dough. He raked out all the coals very quickly, put the loaves in, and closed it up before the oven cooled. The baker’s oven could be used as a service, like a laundromat: bring your dough, let the baker cut a piece off, and take home a baked loaf. The baker added your dough to his own supply and sold bread to those with more money and less grain of their own.
A lot of grain never made it into flour, but instead was boiled up as pottage, what we’d call hot cereal. The advantage of pottage is that it could be kept overnight and have more material added the next day, whether it was the same stuff or not. Pottage changed its taste and composition from day to day. As long as it came to a boil each day, the food didn’t spoil, and the pot didn’t have to be cleaned. Some days it was more like soup, some more like stew; some pottage got thick and could be eaten off a trencher. It was the universal fall-back food of early Europe. It might be a stretch to call it “comfort food,” but in early Europe, the idea of “comfort food” was redundant, like “hot fire.” Food was comfort, as opposed to starving. Pottage went nicely with some wild game roasted next to it, or stewed in it.
Barley also turned into ale. The barley seeds soaked until they began to sprout, then were dried. The half-sprouted grain, now dry and ground, was called malt. The malt soaked in hot water so that its carbohydrates leached into the water. The solids, called mash, got strained off and fed to animals, while the liquid, called wort, was boiled with herbs and then allowed to ferment into alcohol. This was the daily drink of most of Europe throughout the Middle Ages.