Baking Roman bread

Dr Christine Joynes and her family bake a bread that “Ancient Roman bakers and soldiers would have made”.

Speaking of her home baking, using a recipe designed for primary schools, Christine comments:

The joys of homeschooling! Thanks to Stephen’s encouragement, I did in fact go ahead and make Roman bread – which was surprisingly tasty and easy to make (picture attached). We used strong white bread flour, rather than a mix (as that’s all we had in our cupboard!). For information, a sachet of yeast is about 2-3 teaspoons.

Fiona’s challenge (“what’s Roman about this bread?”) led me to do a bit more research, and I discovered that Romans didn’t actually use yeast (and sometimes used fermenting grapes instead). Hence it is usually quite flat. (But in current circumstances I decided not to challenge the school on the recipe it sent us!) I also discovered the following recipe for bread dating to 160 BC from Cato’s On Agriculture 74:

Recipe for kneaded bread: wash both your hands and a bowl thoroughly.  Pour flour into the bowl, add water gradually, and knead well.  When it is well kneaded, roll it out and bake it under an earthenware lid.

Good to see hygiene being flagged!

And I then dug out a picture I’d taken at the Ashmolean’s recent “Last Supper at Pompeii” exhibition featuring some authentic Roman bread – blackened due to the volcanic ash.

You too can bake your own Roman Bread!