So, it didn't turn out to be as easy as we thought to
reproduce this bread.
But here we are.
We got some flour - we got some buckwheat flour,
which is the flour that they used all the time.
It was more readily available.
So, we've got a kilo of that, so like 2lbs.
We prepare a fountain.
Here we've got a little bit of the,
as we call in Italy,
'maga' or 'biga'
because obviously they didn't have yeast as such,
but they would use like a sourdough as we call it now.
It's a lovely smell of acidity.
Then here I've got a little bit of water, which has got
a bit of salt in it.
I'm going to gently with my hand.
Apparently there were using as well, some kind of
different animals to move around different machines
that mixed the bread,
but obviously being in wood, nothing was left over from it.
Slowly I put it all in.
There we go, in the middle.
Then with your hands, bring it back in.
Ok, I'm going to work it really gently and allow it to
take always a little bit of air,
so it gets trapped in there so it makes it nice and lighter.
As you can see it's a very straightforward dough.
Then it will stratify really, really nice.
So, I'm going to shape it down like that.
I'm ready to go.
Then you're going to press it out.
Ok, so here I got the right shape, size and the only
thing I like to let it raise for a minute.
I think one hour and a half to two hours will be more
than enough - in a temperate room.
There we are.
Got one hour and a half to two hours and it gets much softer.
You know, this is where I start to have a problem
because in a normal situation I would bake this one
and it would become a beautiful...I could make little
cuts to make it a little bit more...
But here on the picture I've got here, the bread is
divided like if it was a token.
It's almost like somebody gets paid one piece of that.
So, and there is this sort of like line around, which I
cannot justify myself.
At the start I thought it was baked upside down or
something like that.
But obviously it's not because otherwise they would
have found the tin in the oven.
The only thing I sort of thought about it, in order to make
it easy to carry they would have tied a piece of string
around it.
I'll show you what I thought.
As I'm going, I'll fix it in.
This also will guarantee the fact that each of the
pieces of bread will be roughly the same size because
the string will be the same size.
Ok, here we are.
I'm going to pull it.
That's it - I'm happy with that.
Ok, now the shaping is perfect.
I'm going to make the cuts.
I'm going to divide it in eight.
One
Eight of these lovely little cut will allow the heat to
come out, will allow the thing to raise.
But then, as we can see in the picture each of the
slaves had his own little mark.
So, we made a little Locanda Locotelli sort of double L,
which I'm going to place here.
Like that, like in our logo.
And then,
a little weight on top of that.
Now, I will double this up like that.
When the bread is ready, I can actually carry
with this string.
So, I am ready to bake it now.
Ok, I'm going to take away our 'LL'.
This is making for a fantastic loaf of bread
from Pompeii.