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

[Terry Decker]

"Biga" isn't just sourdough starter.  It can also refer to a sponge produced 
from yeast, flour and water.  It is worth noting that the written recipe 
calls for biga acida (sourdough).

Whole meal is whole wheat flour, but you would be advised to use something 
like King Arthur's White Whole Wheat or a pastry flour rather than a coarser 
milling.  Using the spelt and the whole wheat flours is valid, but the Roman 
meal would likely have been from emmer rather than modern common wheat. 
Buckwheat is almost certainly out.

Locatelli's dough is fairly soft for a period bread dough, which means the 
baker's mark will make a deeper impression than in a stiffer dough.

I've got to do some looking in my references.  I've done some Roman breads 
and I may have a period recipe that meets the criteria for the preserved 
loaf.  However, I'm in Gold Canyon, AZ at the minute and about 2 weeks from 
my notebooks.

Bear


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
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