Thread by @SeamusBlackley

Here are two cultures of natural yeasts. The one on the left was collected on a hike behind @NASAJPL, and the right is called “Son of Popidius,” and was cultured from scrapings of an actual ancient Roman bakery. Today I’ll make bread with both, using two ancient grains.

I thought you’d like to see the differences between ancient wheat and modern. On the right is modern soft white wheat. Moving left we have Farro, Kamut, and Einkorn, in order of ancientness. Today I’m going to mill and use Kamut and Farro. Why?

First up is Farro. This was the wheat of the Roman Empire, and as such I’m going to make some loaves with it and the Roman cultures. These will be rustic and made without baskets, the idea being a simple soldier’s meal to eat with the big GOT battle today.

Then I’ll make some shaped basket loaves with the JPL cultures and the Kamut. Kamut is a commercial name; it’s really called Khorosan wheat, and it’s very old. It’s twice the size of other varieties, and I don’t know it well. I’m trying it out with my most trusty yeast, the JPL.

Again, I’m sorry this is so insanely pedantic and nerdy and boring, but for the .0005% of people who somehow are interested, check this out: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khorasan_…

I’m very excited to see how it bakes, and tastes!

Farro is also called Emmer. Read this please: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmer

There’s a great passage in that article that I hope is true:

Ok we are milling flour. Khorasan is very hard and behaves like Semolina.

Emmer/Farro behaves much more like a modern wheat. I’m making extra Farro for dusting and such. Are we bored to death yet?

Ok let’s make some Ancient Bread. This is 100% of the ingredients needed. That’s about 1/4 of the flour I milled earlier, olive oil, salt, filtered water, and the Son of Popidius culture.

In case you were wondering (and I’m sure you weren’t) THIS is what PSYCHED YEAST looks like. That’s a yeast orgy. We are ready to go. This is the ancient Roman culture, so we will start with the Emmer/Farro flour we made earlier...

Water, olive oil, ancient yeast culture, and flour. That’s it. This is as close to Imperial Roman bread dough as I know to make. #SPQR

Now for the Kamut/Khorasan flour on the @NASAJPL wild yeast. The COLOR of the Kamut flour is beautiful- and the SMELL is amazing. I dare say it reminds me of @RealCapnCrunch cereal. It’s great. I’m very excited to see what comes out.

Here are some pictures of 10g piles of salt. I know that you know that these will be added to the dough in a bit, but honestly, consider what’s gone wrong in your life that you’re looking at pictures of salt. It’s a lovely day outside. Go have a walk or something.

While we take 45 minutes to let the water distribute throughout the dough, why not alienate yourself from polite society and have a look at this article on Roman bakeries: ancient.eu/image/955/a-po…

Now that things have stabilized (asymptotically) I add the salt. This is hardcore naturally collected sea salt, which is what the Romans had. I flatten the dough (look how lovely- and the smell!) and fold the salt in. I do around 20 folds which always gets me thinking about...

Now we enter the first fermentation. At 30-60 minute intervals, we do a folding/stretching process in the bowl, as demonstrated below by our highly paid hand model.

Another 1/2 hour, another stretch. WHY AREN’T YOU BORED YET. Consult a therapist please.

One note here, which hopefully vibrates your phone to wake you from the deep vacant slumber this thread has induced, is that when baking Roman and Egyptian breads, I do every operation in a hard bowl or pot, just to keep things honest. No granite countertops in antiquity, guys.

I’m sure you will be relieved to know that initial fermentation is complete! After one final stretch, I shape the dough a bit and pop it into a well-floured reed basket. The flour coating is bronze-age Teflon. Don’t worry about the ugly top, it’s actually the bottom! You’ll see.

So those were the Roman loaves, with the Farro/Emmer flour. I decided to do the Koharasan/Kamut loaves (with the @NASAJPL yeast cultures) as simple hand-shaped loaves. And by “simple” I mean my brain.

OK now things actually get even more dull, and I know that’s hard to picture, as we wait for secondary fermentation. The oven is on 500F, all is ready. For context, here’s a 1969 Fiat 500F.

The Roman Bread is going IN!

My oven is closed, so it’s a mystery if we succeeded or failed. 25 minutes more at 450F. Then second two loaves go in, the Kamut. And I must say- first I make you watch bread rise, now you’re looking at a steel door. Sunday nights must have been more exciting at some point.

Roman Soldier’s bread: Popidius the Baker’s yeast with stoneground Emmer/Farro, all done here today. Now it cools, and magical things happen inside with steam and polymers... in 20-30 minutes it will be bread. The aroma is incredible.

Here’s what the Roman loaf looks like inside.

Finally, here’s what the JPL/Lamut loaves look like! You can see how much difference it makes! Now, go do something interesting! Get off my lawn! 😘😘😘

An important note about quality, and nerdiness. There have been a lot of comments on this thread about projects that have made ancient beer and bread, with “interesting” results: flat loaves, weak beer. Etc.

Beer was incredibly important to the ancient Egyptians (as was bread). So I have to assume that an Egyptian soldier, after training in the army that literally controlled the known world, would not put up with weak, flavorless beer.

Similarly, these guys were not going to be happy if served flat, hard tasteless bread filled with grit. And you don’t want guys like this unhappy with you.

Many ancient food projects end up with essentially terrible food and beer that’s “accurate.” People say, “taste changes.” I think it’s a bullshit excuse.

My goal here is to make bread (and beer) using these ancient ingredients that is GOOD. That gives us some glimpse into the PEERLESS MASTERY of these technologies that our ancestors had, which we have LOST. Ancient people were as smart as us, let’s show them respect.

I want to be clear that I love, respect and would gladly help anyone working on this stuff. When results are untasty though, my personal reaction is to assume I’m a moron, and keep working until I make something that I’d be brave enough to offer to a Centurion. 😘😂👊