Kaboom is the sound that some poor baker
heard that fateful autumn day in 79 AD when Mount Vesuvius blew its top, and
showered his bakery in hot ash and gas carbonizing a loaf of bread in the
process not to be seen for 1,800 years. Sucks for him, but great for us because
today we are going to take a look at that most iconic ancient Roman loaf of
bread, the Panis Quadratus. True Roman bread for true Romans, this time on
Tasting History. So as we saw in the episode a few weeks
ago on Apicius we have a decent number of recipes from ancient Rome but
we don't have one for bread. What we do know of their bread comes from writings
about bread, not really recipes. Pictures done in frescoes and then the burnt
loaves from Pompeii and Herculaneum. Now a lot of people have recreated this loaf
of bread and I will link to some of those resources in the description but
I'm going to take my cue from London chef Giorgio Locatelli who
recreated this loaf some years back for the British Museum. And if it's good
enough for the British Museum than it's good enough for me. Though I've actually made
some changes so maybe it's not. Anyway like 90% of breads out there chef Locateli assumes that this is made of flour, water, yeast and salt and when I first
made it those are the only ingredients that I ended up using, and it made this
lovely beautiful loaf but it was rather bland, and so I ended up doing it again.
Now that first loaf I only used whole wheat flour, gorgeous color this second
loaf that I'm doing today looks rather different but I'm hoping that the flavor
is better because I'm adding in some herbs. So for this loaf you will need
1,000 grams of flour, 250 grams of biga or freshly fed sourdough starter, 3
teaspoons of salt, 400 to 500 milliliters of lukewarm water, and then some dry
herbs. I used about a half teaspoon of fennel, and a teaspoon of hyssop. Also the
amounts of those ingredients are a little bit variable depending on how
loose your starter is. My starter ended up being a little tighter than I usually
like so I ended up using that whole 500 milliliters of water, but you might not
need it if you have a loose starter. So the first question you probably have is
what kind of flour do I use. Well you got options kid, and for answers we are going
to go to that most prolific of ancient Roman writers, Pliny the Elder. "There is
no grain that displays a greater avidity than wheat, and none that absorbs a
greater quantity of nutriment. With all propriety I may justly call winter
wheat the very choicest of all the varieties of wheat. It is white,
destitute of all flavor and not oppressive to the stomach."
Sounds like Pliny would have been a fan of Wonder Bread. Now Pliny goes into
extensive detail about the different wheats of the Empire. He talks about
their weight, their color, their flavor, yada yada yada, but he saved the top
three spots for the wheats of Boeotia in modern-day Greece, the Isle of
Sicily and Egypt. Then Pliny talks about flowers made from other grains that the
majority of the people would have eaten like barley, rice, spelt, sesame and the
wonderfully named Panicium or African panic grass. AhhHH! So for this loaf I ended
up using half buckwheat, bad name cus it's not a wheat, and half whole wheat
and I'll show you it really changes the look of the loaf once we're all done, but
you can use whatever flours you want. Pliny also has a lot to say about
leaveners. He talks about one that's made from millet and must, or skins of fresh
wine grapes and that is where the yeast would come, from actually the yeast that's
on the skins, and then he talks about one made from barm. "In Gaul and Spain where
they make a drink by steeping corn... they employ the foam which thickens on the
surface as a leaven; hence it is that the bread in those countries is lighter than that
made elsewhere." And just a note by corn he means grain not like American corn.
And then there's the kind that I'm going to use which is just regular old
sourdough which pulls its yeast from the air, good ole California air yeast. I'm
not sure why that's Southern but whatever. So first take your water,
lukewarm or room temperature is fine, and stir in your salt, then mix your herbs
into the flour. Then take your flour and dump it out onto a flat surface and
create a ring or what's called a fontaine. Then in the words of Johnny
Cash pour that yeast in that burnin ring of flour, and start to work the flour
into the sourdough starter with one hand while you pour the saltwater slowly
with the other. Then just keep mixing as the dough comes together, and like I said
you might not need all of that water so just kind of keep an eye on it. You want,
once it comes together stop adding water. If it's actually too wet, then just throw
some more flour in there and you're good to go.
Then go ahead and knead your dough. I kneaded it by hand, it took about 15
minutes to get kind of a nice smooth dough, but if you have a breadmaker you
can go ahead and use that. I wouldn't use a stand mixer because this is a lot of
heavy dough and you might burn out that motor, but if you do have a bread mixer
no shame in using it especially because then you'll have a free hand to tap that
Subscribe button and the Notification Bell so you never miss another episode
of Tasting History which would be a disaster, not Pompeii and Vesuvius but a
close second. Now once your dough is kneaded to perfection place it in a bowl
cover it and let it rise for 90 minutes to 2 hours ,or until it about doubles in
size. So now a lot of classical writers wrote about bread, and wheat and all
of these ingredients so let's take a look at why relying on Pliny the
Elder is so apropos for this bread. Gaius Plinius Secundus aka Pliny the Elder,
best known as an author, and philosopher but overachiever that he was happened to
also be the Admiral of the Imperial fleet moored at Messina north of Naples
on that fateful day in 79 AD. Sadly his nephew, Pliny the Younger (not incredibly
creative with names this family), he was the only person to give an eyewitness
account of the disaster, a blow-by-blow of the eruption. And he gives us some
insight into just how his uncle died. Here's where the story picks up just
after the eruption, "My uncle's scholarly acumen saw at once that it was important
enough for a closer inspection, and he ordered a boat to be made ready, telling
me I could come with him if I wished. I replied that I preferred to go on with
my studies." A chance to check out a massive black unnatural looming cloud
coming over the horizon and this kid decides that he's gonna stay home and do
homework. I mean I know I'm not one to talk but nerd alert. He tells how his
uncle took several ships to go to Stabiae to check on a friend, and it's a
little odd because clearly he was worried about his friend enough to go
down there, but then when he got there they packed up some stuff put it on the
ship and then returned to his friends villa for dinner, while they watched
broadsheets of fire and leaping flames from Mount Vesuvius.
"My uncle tried to allay the fears of his companions by repeatedly declaring that
these were nothing but bonfires left by the peasants in their terror."
You should have terror too Pliny! You should have terror. But clearly he did not because after dinner
he went and took a nap. Finally some hours later, and only
because the courtyard had gotten so filled up with pumice and ash, that they
were in danger of being trapped inside did they decide to hoof it with pillows
strapped to their heads to ward off falling objects. So when they
eventually get to the ships Pliny realizes that due to the earthquakes
caused by the volcano the waves are way too high, and they're trapped so he sits
down on the beach and takes a rest. Then the flames and smell of sulphur which
gave warning of the approach of fire drove the others to take flight and
roused him to stand up. He stood leaning on two slaves, and then suddenly
collapsed when daylight returned on the 26th, two days later his body was found
intact and uninjured, still fully clothed, and looking more like sleep than death
and that's how most people died that day. It wasn't lava, it was noxious gas and
falling ash, and that's kind of lucky for us because instead of being completely
flattened Pompeii and Herculaneum are wonderfully preserved, including their
bakeries. One such bakery, or pistrinum, is that of Popidius Priscus .
He had his own mill with four giant mill stones made of basalt lava, foreshadow
much? They were likely driven by donkeys to grind the grain into flour, then in a
separate room the dough is mixed using huge mechanical paddles, so if you are
using a bread machine to make this that's okay because they didn't do it by
hand either, Popidius approves. In fact it seems that the only part of the
process that was done by hand was the actual shaping of the loaves, and so
that's what we're going to do right now. So set your oven to 400 degrees
Fahrenheit, or 205 degrees Celsius, and turn your dough out onto a lightly
floured surface. Then knock out the air. Then shape it into a ball and set it on
either a baking sheet, or a bread cloche like the one that I used, and if you are
using a bread cloche be careful because they're delicate. I broke mine today, I'm
very sad about it. Then pat the loaf down into sort of a flattop cake and cover it,
and let it rise for another 20 minutes or so. Once your second rise is done
we're gonna go ahead and give this loaf its iconic shape. So take a piece of
baking string, and tie it right around the middle of the loaf and cinch it so
it looks like my waist in pants that I haven't worn since before quarantine. Now
for the lines on top there's a lot of debate, but there's debate on everything
to do with this loaf pretty much, so using Occam's razor I'm going to go with
the simplest explanation, and use the string that we've already got to make
for deep impressions on the top which creates eight separate sections. Then
stick your finger in the middle of the loaf to make an indentation to keep the
bread from cracking and slide the bread into the oven for about 40 to 45 minutes.
If you are using a cloche remove the lid about 30 minutes into baking so it can
darken up a little bit. Now my loaf did not need to darken because I used that
dark buckwheat, so honestly it kind of looks like the the burnt loaf from
Herculaneum, but it smells fantastic as it's baking.
So once the loaf is done remove it from the oven, and set it on a cooling rack to
cool. So here we are, our Panis Quadratis, or Roman loaf of
bread, and you can see the vast difference between just using two
different types of flour, so you know use what you want, but just know that some
are going to look more more pleasing than others. If you're doing this for
pictures I'd go with the lighter flour it's prettier, but this other one, the
darker one smells a lot better than the other did so let's cut into this.
It is definitely dense, but you kind of knew that by the shape. Let's take a
little bite here. I don't like the color, I got to say. It smells good, but I don't
like the color. All right, so it's definitely better than the previous loaf
that I had tried, but still not great. Current Italians do it better I think,
but then again we don't actually know because all that we've got to go on
are the looks of the bread and some of what Pliny tells us, but that's
that's how it goes you know sometimes sometimes you win, and sometimes you
don't. If you're interested in other ancient Roman recipes I have a playlist
down here of all the Roman recipes that I've done so far on the show so I will
see you next time on Tasting History.
Pompeii 79; L.A. 2020 - the similarities are striking.
I love Max, he’s brilliant! Please give him a shot guys!
Welcome to the bread bank we sell bread. We got bread we got loafs. Roasted, toasted, buried in volcanic ash for a thousand years.
If anyone wants a rec for another video of his, check out this one where he makes Garum (sort of Ancient Roman fish sauce): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S7Bb0Qg-oE
I like how almost every ingredient is qualified with "but you can use whatever you want". I'm not the only one who wanted the replication to be an actual replication, am I?
TRUE ROMAN BREAD FOR TRUE ROMAN!
Breads in historic pictures look much lighter in color than his second one also they look like they might have egg yolk spread over them.
Oh.
I went dyslexic for a moment.
Clicked on the video, started watching, then went "Wait, the BOOOM make sense, but, baker!? Oh wait... it's not Breaking Bad in the style of Ancient Rome it's BAKING BREAD oh my."
Fascinating and i like his face