Dr. Jerry A. Hedrick's HIStory

The origin of the word "buccaneer" leads you down the barbecue trail! A " Buccaneer " was a type of privateer or pirate who typically roamed the Caribbean Sea during the 17th and 18th centuries.  The origin of the name comes from a corruption of the name used by the French to describe the hunters of wild boars and cattle in the largely uninhabited areas of Tortuga and Hispaniola. The me at from the animals they caught was slowly smoked over a low fire on a wooden framework or hurdle the native people called a “buccan” or “boucan.” The French called them boucanes which were used to make viande boucanée – what we would call jerked meat or jerky. The Spanish called the same process "barbacoa," which later became known as "barbecue." The illustration to the right is a depiction of a "Buccaneer of the Caribbean" by famous pirate artist Howard Pyle.  The most popular meat for smoking on the boucan was pork, but any meat wo...

The Art of Chipping Away at a Block of Maple Until Something Useful Appears The finished bowl, ready for use. A dough bowl, also called a kneading trough, is a wooden vessel traditionally used for mixing, raising, and kneading yeast dough for making bread. It was hand carved from a single piece of wood. It could be oval, round or rectangular in shape, and vary in size and width—typically from 24" to 36" long, 10" to 18" wide, and 3" to 8" deep. It often had small handles or grips on either end. Ancient Egyptian tomb paintings often depict bakers using a similar vessel to knead dough for bread making; in literature, they are mentioned as early as 1386 in Chaucer’s The Miller's Tale. This type of dough bowl was typically used by home bakers for small batches of bread; large scale commercial bakeries or bread makers for large households used a much larger, lidded, framed container called a dough box or dough trough. A good dough bowl ...