Trencher bowl with carved detail of fish. Vintage/Painted trim.
Hand carved dough bowls were used to mix ingredients and to give dough a warm place to rise. Dough rising tables—sometimes called dough benches or trunks—were high enough for kneading and throwing dough, and came with deep internal compartments that usually lay beneath the surface.
Trench bowls, also called trenchers, are a traditional craft that can be traced to historic folk craft of the late 1500s on through the early 1900s. Native Americans made similar wooden bowls with stone axes and adzes and burned away the depression with coals and scrapers. Colonists from new England to the Deep South, Appalachians and the Ozarks practiced this craft. Trench bowls were once a common household item. In the beginning this was the common dinner ware for most meals. Some trenchers were for eating and others were for serving. Some of the larger bowls were used for mixing and kneading bread dough. Then they were a place for the dough to rise under the cover of a cloth.
The process for making a trencher was not complicated but it did require some skill to be proficient at it. Required tools include a froe and mallet, hatchet, drawknife, (a hand plane is nice but not essential) a bowl adze, gouge, small mallet and a curved scraper for the smoothing. This process is essentially the same as it would be for someone from the 1800s.
