Pumpernickel Bread

[DarkGold]

I recently learnt about the impressive shelf life of pumpernickel bread from this YouTube video.

One of the things I wanted while exploring in Vintage Story, after advancing to the iron age, while making my way through Chapter 1, were some more long lasting travel ration options. Pumpernickel bread seems like it could be one of these options; it has a strong historical precedent, and would utilise existing materials in game well with a little extention.

What does it use that's already in the game? Rye grain (not flour), water, the oven.

What would be added to the game to support it further? An iron baking tin (making it an iron age technology) made of sheet metal. A sourdough starter (that has a small time investment to get going, and can be fed to make more and keep it alive). Maybe a way for the oven to burn more low and slow.

What is the benefit of making this advanced bread? It has a much longer shelf life than normal bread (6 months in medieval times), making it a great travel ration. It's convenient to carry.

[DeanF]

I kind of like it.  Hard-tack should also be a thing, probably.

[DarkGold]

5 hours ago, DeanF said:

Hard-tack should also be a thing, probably.

Other historical travel rations like hard tack and pemmican are also things I'm interested in. Both are often rehydrated before eating, so I think there is an interesting mechanical opportunity for them to be more or less satisfying, depending on if they are eaten before or after rehydration (more effort, more reward, less convenient for uninterrupted travel). I suppose the inconvenience of rehydration might still be less than that of camping with a firepit (at which point porridge is relatively convenient, as grain is relatively long lasting), as it may not involve heat, but simply combining water and a dehydrated ration in a bowl. Either way, it requires the player to carry more things to get a greater benefit (water, a bowl).

Hard tack, presumably having a very similar recipe to the existing in game recipe for bread, I think might require some effort in introducing new preparation methods to distinguish it. Adding a low and slow mode to the oven, as suggested for pumpernickel bread, would help. It seems like it would be a pre-iron age technology, so I'm not sure how effective such an accessible long lasting food should be. Will it be worth a player's time to make it if it isn't very satisfying?

Pemmican seems like something that would be prepared in stages. The first step would involve drying meat by adding a low and slow mode to the oven or some sort of drying rack that sits over a firepit to the game, rather than curing with salt. Then rendered fat would be added in a recipe. If berries could be dried, dried berries could also be added through this recipe. This also is a pre-iron age technology, so quite accessible to the player. I worry that the intermediate ingredients (dried meat, dried berries) might not be strong additions to the game in and of themselves.

I think pumpernickel exists within a unique niche if it is gated behind the iron age, as it can be a more rewarding food since it is further down the tech tree. This lines up with some of the qualities the food itself has; unlike hard tack or pemmican, it doesn't require rehydration before it is more satisfying to eat. It can truly shine in its specific purpose without strongly competing with other food options due to being a later game food.

[DarkGold]

Stockfish is another well preserved food item that would be an alternative to salting fish. It takes a long time to produce (3 months), is made outdoors over winter, and would require a drying rack to be added to the game. It probably acts as an ingredient more so than food, so would require rehydration or would be added to a cooking pot meal.

A lot of time invested for not a significant benefit to the player when compared to salting or fishing fresh perhaps, but nice if you want to take meat on long inland journeys and haven't found salt yet. You spend more time and production is limited to a certain time of year (opposite to that of farming) rather than use salt to preserve the food.

[DoctorSnakes]

We sort of have hardtack already in the form of charred bread

[Bruno Willis]

Maybe instead of adding pumpernickle bread explicitly they could give rye and rye bread a longer shelf life but a slightly lower nutritional value than spelt bread. It'd give the grains a little more identity. It could be quite a small difference initially, just enough to hint that rye lasts longer, and then charred rye bread could have a crazy long shelf life.

I wouldn't worry about an iron baking tin, or sourdough, as a gate to pumpernickel since, IRL, if you can make a type of bread in an iron baking tin, you can make it in a clay tin, or without any tin at all, with very little recipe change, and bread currently doesn't use yeast to make, which implies that we're already making sourdough bread or using natural yeasts, and the method has already been simplified for gameplay purposes.

Actually, as another option the devs could add an extra stage to rye bread, so that it goes from: rye dough -> part baked rye bread -> rye bread -> pumpernickel -> charred pumpernickel. The pumpernickel stage would have decent nutrition and a very long shelf life, and the charred pumpernickel would be essentially useless as a food. 

 

[DarkGold]

I agree...

4 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

I wouldn't worry about an iron baking tin, or sourdough, as a gate to pumpernickel since, IRL, if you can make a type of bread in an iron baking tin, you can make it in a clay tin, or without any tin at all, with very little recipe change, and bread currently doesn't use yeast to make, which implies that we're already making sourdough bread or using natural yeasts, and the method has already been simplified for gameplay purposes.

...it certainly does seem like the normal bread recipes assume natural yeasts and that a clay container could replace an iron one, so it shouldn't inherently be gated behind the iron age.

I would say the only reason that pumpernickel should not use exactly the same recipe as normal rye bread is because the pumpernickel with a 6 month shelf life is distinguished by a few things in its creation not present in the standard bread recipe:

Grain instead of flour, a closed vessel the bread is baked inside to prevent the exit of steam, significantly more patience than normal bread (more like making charcoal than baking bread and watching it rise).

For these reasons, even if we were to say the player did not need to make an iron tin (and assuming natural yeast), I still think it would be interesting to have a method that puts water and rye grain (rather than flour) in a lidded clay vessel, and cooks it over a much longer period.

The problem with simply sticking that in the oven is that the oven doesn't currently have a low and slow mode, so normal oven temperatures are either too high for the creation of pumpernickel or not held at a low enough temperature for long enough. Perhaps the oven might be upgraded through the addition of an iron hatch (as used on the coke oven), so that it can gain a second cooking mode that operates with the door closed?

I want the strong benefits of historical pumpernickel (incredible shelf life, nutritional density) to be present in game without making it the only strategy worth pursuing in the early game. By increasing production time (and maybe fuel costs), I hope there will be sufficient reason players don't default to it when not travelling, rather than by reducing nutrition compared to spelt. When one is at base, storing flour and making bread on demand (rather than pumpernickel) should be preferable.

Edited Friday at 04:44 AM by DarkGold
Correcting typos

[Bruno Willis]

1 hour ago, DarkGold said:

Grain instead of flour, a closed vessel the bread is baked inside to prevent the exit of steam, significantly more patience than normal bread (more like making charcoal than baking bread and watching it rise).

For these reasons, even if we were to say the player did not need to make an iron tin (and assuming natural yeast), I still think it would be interesting to have a method that puts water and rye grain (rather than flour) in a lidded clay vessel, and cooks it over a much longer period.

Oh sick, yeah that's worth bringing up!

Okay, here's an option: 1. the payer would fill a cooking pot with  2 slots of rye grain, and 2 slots of water, then leave it for 12 hours, after which it would become pumpernickel dough. 2. they would "seal" the cooking pot with a daub of clay, and put it in a hot, but not too hot, clay oven. 3. the tool tip would note the heat of the cooking pot, and it would stabilize at the good temperature, and stay that temp a long time (that'd be a special property of putting cooking pots in the clay oven, simulating extra thermal mass). Up to four cooking pots could go in the stove at one time. 

That seems hard enough to justify a good high nutrition value and long storage time, but interestingly enough, it doesn't even require metalworking to get to that stage, just patience and lots of grain.