[Sca-cooks] British Museum and a Roman Bread recipe

[JIMCHEVAL at aol.com]

I saw this a while back.

There's some interesting stuff here -  notably the use of string - but 
let's be clear: this is not a 2000-year-old  recipe, it is a modern bread with 
some archaic touches. I don't know why they  refer to a "recipe" - no old 
recipe is being used here. And having noted himself  that the Romans used 
sourdough (as Pliny also said), he proceeds to include  yeast, which is why the 
final bread, instead of having the neat lines seen on  the Roman original, is 
over-swollen.

Note that until the nineteenth  century, yeast came from beer. No beer, no 
yeast. And the Romans were rarely  aware of beer. Certainly, so far as I 
know, no breweries were found in  Pompeii.
 
So it would be more accurate if the museum labeled this as illustrating  
some Roman techniques. But if you want to get something like what was made in  
Pompeii, you would need at the least to use only sourdough here. You'd 
probably  want to use a coarser flour too (the Romans used horsehair sieves - 
probably  from the Gauls - but actual Roman wheat has been found and it is 
anything but  pure),
 
Jim  Chevallier
_www.chezjim.com_ (http://www.chezjim.com/) 

FRENCH BREAD HISTORY:  Late medieval bread outside  Paris
http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2015/07/french-bread-history-late-medieval.html









In a message dated 8/13/2015 6:59:48 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
johnnae at mac.com writes:

The  British Museum commissioned this re-creation from Giorgio Locatelli, 
an  Italian chef based in the United Kingdom. His recipe calls for three 
kinds of  flour, yeast, salt, water and gluten; the full recipe can be found on 
the  British Museum's site. Unless your oven measures in centigrade, you may 
need  some help  converting."