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

[Patricia Dunham]

hmm… in the video, Locatelli uses buckwheat flour; the Museum written recipe says spelt & "whole meal" (American would be whole wheat, yes?) and adds gluten. 

in the video, Locatelli uses just "biga" -- sourdough. The Museum written recipe adds modern yeast and gluten, as well as "biga".

Any ideas on why the Museum made so many changes to Locatelli's version? Does drive us crazy (at our house), when the Museums and Universities do this kind of thing -- they have a perfectly good object and then "reproduce" it with weird and unnecessary changes and tell the public the result is "authentic". argh!!  (particularly, the bread RECIPE is absolutely NOT "older than the Colosseum"!)

I thought the string and stamp things were marvelous, although Locatelli's maker's mark weight was obviously much too heavy. 

very interesting. makes me think I might want to try it a couple of times, with all the variations. I have sourdoughs (3), that's probably the biggest stumbling block for most "modern" home bakers. anybody else? (maybe I can just be lazy and wait for other's results?  8-)  )

chimene & gerek   


On Aug 13, 2015, at 6:59 AM, Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com> wrote:

> "On August 24 in 79 A.D., just before Mount Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum and preserved their ruins in ash, a baker put his last loaf of bread into the oven. The baker would not live to see the final product. But now, millennia later, archaeologists discovered it in an oven. With the help of the British Museum's instructional video, you can re-create this ancient loaf of bread and eat like the ancient Pompeians. 
> 
> 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."
> 
> HTTP://WWW.FOODANDWINE.COM/FWX/BREAD-RECIPE-OLDER-COLOSSEUM?XID=NL_FWX081315THISBREADRECIPE
> 
> 
> http://tinyurl.com/ljjau45 for the British Museum recipe and video.
> 
> Johnnae