As a lover of food and history, something I find extremely interesting is
old food. I'm actually in the middle of reading a book right now on the historical evolution of cookery, and learning about how people prepared and ate food hundreds or thousands of years ago just fascinates me to no end. So I was pleased when I accidentally stumbled upon the below video produced by the British Museum. In it, Chef Giorgio Locatelli attempts to recreate a 2,000-year-old loaf of bread excavated from a baker's oven in Herculaneum, which was lost along with Pompeii in 79 C.E. From the British Museum's
Pompeii Live exhibit:
In AD 79, a baker put his loaf of bread into the oven. Nearly 2,000 years later it was found during excavations in Herculaneum. The British Museum asked Giorgio Locatelli to recreate the recipe as part of his culinary investigations for Pompeii Live. Try it for yourself using Giorgio's recipe.
Ingredients
400g biga acida (sourdough)
12g yeast
18g gluten
24g salt
532g water
405g spelt flour
405g wholemeal flour
Method
Melt the yeast into the water and add it into the biga. Mix and sieve the flours together with the gluten and add to the water mix. Mix for two minutes, add the salt and keep mixing for another three minutes. Make a round shape with it and leave to rest for one hour. Put some string around it to keep its shape during cooking. Make some cuts on top before cooking to help the bread rise in the oven and cook for 30–45 minutes at 200 degrees.
Watch the ancient bread rise again below. Or, at least, Locatelli's version of it. I'm not enough of an ancient or food historian to verify its legitimacy, but it's interesting to watch in any case.
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