We succeeded in recreating a Neolithic flatbread!

This is about as close as I can figure out how to make bread as it would have been baked in one of the first daily bread-making cultures, ca. 9,000 years ago. I’ll let you judge the authenticity…but the taste is fantastic.
Bread thread 🍞🧵 follows...
I should start from the beginning. A year ago, I went to the Çatalhöyük site in central #Turkey. A proto-urban Neolithic community, pop. as high as 8,000, inhabited for 1000+ years starting ca 7200 BCE. ImageImage
In the excavations, I saw the placement of the beehive-shaped ovens and the storage bins that almost every dwelling had. Helpfully, replica houses showed exactly what these looked like. ImageImage
Lacking though was the means of grinding the bread. This was a saddle quern, which consists of a slab of andesite and a (usually) oval-shaped grindstone. This I found in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in #Ankara. Image
For months I tried to find an equivalent, checking with museums all over. Finally I reached out to an archaeobotanist at the British Museum who'd done her own Neolithic bread-baking experiments. She said the closest equivalent was a Mexican metate—she used one with good results.
I tried to source one through Mexican chefs in #Montreal, to no avail. So I ordered one with Etsy. (Yeah, I know.) It arrived from Oaxaca, 22 x 30 cm, on three legs, made of basalt. Image
The next step was to find the ancient grain used by Çatalhöyükans. This is emmer, which they probably first gathered in the wild, but then grew near the settlement. Latin name Triticum turgidum subsp. dicoccum. Italians call it farro—which I found at a grocery store near my home. Image
I'm going to have to sign off for today...got to make my kids dinner! But this will be continued. (Making it a Cereal Serial, I guess.) Tune in tomorrow for more...
The Neolithic bread thread continues...
I wasn't completely sure about the emmer from Italy (sometimes it's another "ancient" grain, spelt), so I ordered some from an organic supplier in British Columbia, Canada. Image
Emmer is a beautiful grain! Very hard, silky and glistening between the fingers. Each grain is about the size of a…mouse turd. (A non-beautiful analogy, it’s true.) Image
I’ve been making sourdough for the last six or seven years, but I’ve never ground my own grain. So I took my emmer and my metate to Marc-André Cye, #Montreal’s knowledgable “Baker on the Go” (His handle on Instagram). Here we are at his HQ! Image
Marc-André was really intrigued by the project. He’s ground grain mechanically before, but never on a quern. ImageImage
Here are the first passes with the grindstone (or “mano”) on the metate. It is clearly designed to roll over corn (maize) rather than wheat.
The pores in the basalt were huge, but they quickly filled with flour, providing a smoother surface. Marc found tiny flecks of stone in the first batches of flour, so we threw those out. Ancient Egyptian teeth were worn down by microabrasions, probably for this reason Image
Marc had taught me the technique, so at home I got to work grinding enough emmer to make the flatbread. I found 4 tsps, about 20 grams, was a good amount to do per batch. Each batch could take up to 7 minutes to grind into flour.
The technique is pretty intuitive—back and forth grinding. (Almost like the quern was a set of molars, part of the pre-digestion process.) But it's physically demanding. It worked better when I put it on the floor, kneeled, and put my full weight into the mano-grindstone. ImageImage
I averaged about 120 grams per hour. My back was sore for days; the spasms in my upper arms have just stopped; I got blisters on my palms! Making bread was time-consuming and exhausting—people must have really wanted it. Image
It took me four hours, in two sessions, to grind enough for a “daily bread” make. The flour smelled great, by the way, woody, complex, nutty.
Grinding grain seems to have been a gendered activity in Egypt; wear-and-tear on skeletons suggests it fell disproportionately on women. Not in egalitarian Çatalhöyük, where evidence suggests men and women might have shared in grinding tasks.
journals.ed.ac.uk/lithicstudies/… Image
According to archaeobotanists (hey Lara and Amaia!) who have excavated at Çatalhöyük, bread there was unleavened. That is, no sourdough starter. The dough may have been left out for several hours to collect natural yeasts from the environment. I mixed the flour with water... Image
I didn't use any oil. However, I did add a few grams of salt. This is controversial, as no salt storage has been found at Çatalhöyük. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (and there are many saltflats in the area), so I erred on the side of flavor. Image
What archaeologists did find in abundance at Çatal was wild mustard grains. Descurainia sophia is known in Persian cuisine as Khak-shir. I tracked some down at an Iranian supermarket. Like mustard without the harsh bite, and quite refreshing. ImageImage
A handful of Khak-shir went into the mix. Overnight, the dough swelled slightly, remained wet and sticky.
Now I had to figure out how to bake it. I considered making my own Neolithic firin (wood oven) out of clay, which is what one archaeobotanist did... Image
Instead I decided to turn to an expert for help. I took my emmer dough (including a control batch made with bread wheat, T. aestivum) to Bika, a farm-to-table Turkish restaurant outside #Montreal. Image
I was welcomed by chef Fisun Ercan and her husband Tulga. Fisun grew up in a village near Izmir, where her family baked flatbreads regularly. Image
She also has a large version of a firin, with clay walls. It’s like a big, communal version of the dome-shaped ovens you’d find in Çatal. At 730 that morning she started a fire using logs from ash trees. Image
Fisun rolled out the dough and cut it into pita-sized breads, the way she used to in her village in Turkey. We made a control batch with bread wheat, and did versions with and without wild mustard seed. ImageImageImage
Then into the oven on a peel! The emmer ekmek (bread) is on the right. It puffs up more than the bread wheat version. In a Çatal firin, by the way, the dough would probably have been stuck to the oven wall, and removed when it fell off.
Here it is coming out of the oven…
First tastes…
We liked the bread-wheat flatbread.
But we loved the hand-ground emmer flatbread!
The enzymes were still active, so it really felt alive. A lot of bran, it's true, but the flavor was nutty, maybe even woody. Best flatbread I've ever had! Fisun wants to use emmer for baking now...
The best of all was the emmer flatbread made with wild mustard (in the dough, upper pita). It brought a slight crunch, but also a subtle, mild mustard flavor. Must have been a welcome dose of flavor to daily bread in Çatalhöyük. Image
Full disclosure—in the end, we dipped some of the breads in olive oil, and accompanied them with zaatar and feta cheese to make a lunch of it.. Image
Interestingly, this was a really ephemeral bread. It was at its most delicious within seconds of coming out of the oven. Within a few hours it had hardened, and all the bran in it made it a bit of a chore to eat. I reheated some, but it wasn't quite the same as fresh.
Authentic? Nah, that's never really possible. Next time I'd like to use a real saddle quern rather than a metate, a smaller firin, maybe skip the salt. But I feel like I know, at a very physical level, what went into making Neolithic bread.
I have the blisters and backache to show for it...I guess my next challenge will be threshing and raking my own wild grass...like ol' Jack Harlan did... Image
Thanks to Fisun, Marc for their enthusiastic help on this, and the archaeobotanists I consulted for their patience and good humour. To everyone else: Afiyet olsun!
More of my adventures in ancient flavor coming in my next book, The Lost Supper, which will be published by Greystone in 2023. (UK rights are still available, but probably not for long...)
PS I sifted, separating the finest flour from the bran. Then I reintroduced about 40% of the bran into the flour. There's evidence that Çatalhöyükans sifted their flour, using reeds from the nearby river.
PPS I also enlisted the help of my family. (Pictured here: Second Son, dressed as Ash from Pokémon.) He seemed to enjoy the process, though I'm not sure how much grain he crushed. I like to imagine bread-making in Çatal as a family affair... Image
Whoops, Marc-André Cyr, not Cye, sorry for the typo, Marc!

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙻𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚂𝚞𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚛 📘

𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙻𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚂𝚞𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚛 📘 Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @lostsupper

Feb 9
We succeeded in recreating Neolithic flatbread!

This is about as close as I can figure out how to make bread as it would have been baked in one of the first daily bread-making cultures, ca. 9,000 years ago. I’ll let you judge the authenticity…but the taste is fantastic. 🍞🧵
I should start from the beginning. I went to the Çatalhöyük site in central #Turkey. A proto-urban Neolithic community, pop. as high as 8,000, inhabited for 1000+ years starting ca 7200 BCE.
Image
Image
In the excavations, I saw the placement of the beehive-shaped ovens and the storage bins that almost every dwelling had. Helpfully, replica houses showed exactly what these looked like.
Image
Image
Read 30 tweets
Feb 5
Why has olive oil suddenly become a luxury item?

Since I took this photo, in a supermarket on #Italy's Lago di Garda, prices have doubled, sometimes tripled.

Reasons: drought. Bad storms at harvest time. In some areas, a labour shortage.

But another tragedy is happening... 🧵 Image
It's a bacteria that's sickening trees in the south of #Italy. Some of those that are dying are monumentali, thousands of years old...
Image
Image
The disease, Xylella fastidiosa, is spread by the sputacchina, or spittlebug, and causes the tree's canopies to blacken and wither. Image
Read 7 tweets
Feb 2
It took 4 months of fermentation, but I made my own garum (or more accurately, liquamen)—the ancient Roman fish sauce

To avoid botulism, I did it under the supervision of Sally Grainger, the British author of The Story of Garum. Some of the key steps...
🐟 Image
I started with small, whole sardines, purchased frozen and then left to thaw (from a Portuguese grocery in #Montreal) Image
It was necessary to make couple of cuts to the salted fish with a sharp knife to expose the viscera, permitting the process of autolysis to occur... Image
Read 15 tweets
Sep 29, 2023
The disappearance of silphion is one of the great mysteries of food history. The plant's resin was a secret flavor enhancer, like garum, and worth its weight in silver. But it vanished 2,000 years ago—Nero was said to have eaten the last stalk.
We think we've found it...🌼🧵

Image
Image
Image
Not to boast, but I do believe that I was the first person from west of the Bosphorus Straits to have tasted Silphion in 2,000 or so years when I chewed on the (pleasantly bitter) resin from the root-ball on the flanks of an extinct volcano.
OK, kind of boasting...
Image
Image
I'm telling the story in a multi-part dispatch on my Lost Supper Substack. You can find it here: Image
Read 4 tweets
Sep 27, 2022
It took 4 months of fermentation, but I made my own garum (or more accurately, liquamen).

I can now confirm it was under the supervision of Sally Grainger, world's leading authority on the subject, author of The Story of Garum.
Here's how I did it...
🐟🧵
I started with small, whole sardines, purchased frozen and then left to thaw (from a Portuguese grocery in #Montreal)
Then I added salt, "Pope's Salt" from Cervia in #Italy, but any sea salt will do: 20% of the weight of the fish, or 77 grams. #garum
Read 21 tweets
Sep 26, 2022
Silphion in #Paris!

You can see the Arcesilas Cup, in the medals room of the Bibliothèque Nationale.

6th-cent. BC Spartan vase thought to show Cyrenaican king, and workers weighing silphion in scales for transport across the Mediterranean. Image
Some scholars dispute this, say wool is being weighed on the scales. The white oblongs have been interpreted as silphion resin mixed with bran to stabilize the product for shipping. Monkeys, parrots, lizards suggest African setting. Image
For more on the history of Silphion, lost herb of the ancients, see my @NatGeoMag feature: nationalgeographic.com/history/articl…
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(