Ancient Egyptian Baking Update! For those who don’t know, as a hobby that’s now ridiculous, I started trying to learn to make ancient Egyptian Old Kingdom (~5000yo) bread. 
For everyone who is thinking, “what the hell is that,” see the thread below from this summer. Even so you may be thinking “what the hell is that.”
The Old Kingdom Egyptians (the badass ones who figured out how to build, and then built, the pyramids) didn’t bake bread in ovens; they used special pots called ‘BDJ3’ or “bedjah” that were conical and were placed directly on a fire. There are two of these on the left here.
Here you can see some dudes carrying the conical loaves. I have started making these loaves using some of the yeast samples we have taken so far. It works but it’s not like normal modern baking! (@drserenalove is my partner in crime on this part.)
While this is going on, by the way, @rbowman1234 at @uiowa, with help from @PacBio, is sequencing DNA and RNA from our samples, which we continue to collect. Beware that none of this could be ancient! That’s science! But we are still having fun.
To get these loaves (which are delicious and also a super fun shape) I had to learn a LOT about baking in ceramics. Humbling, especially because I’m a fairly experienced bread baking, um, nerd. There was lots of tragedy. But we figured it out. Much of it is seasoning the pots.
Next step is to make some purpose-built BDJ3. (@drserenalove will tell you the next step then is to make them with crappy pottery) So, here is a home-made BDJ3 pot, out of the kiln and then being soaked and oiled for seasoning.
Well, progress has been slow due to, like, my DAY JOB (which is super entertaining and distracting) and my Dad having the nerve to die on me, but yesterday I gave a shot at baking with Emmer and the Yeast in this new BDJ3...
And here it is, looking very much like the breads we see depicted on tomb walls from the Old Kingdom! Old Tech!
OK so that’s where we are as of now. That loaf was under baked and it stuck. I need to fix those things. Next up are more BDJ3 and some outdoor baking on coals. And the hieroglyphs spell “bdj3” shockingly. The “3” is a glottal “a.” Look it up 😂
