i'm gonna gently pour whoa
it's a cheese curd party
hey there i'm sola eli and this is
ancient recipes with sola
in each episode we're gonna take a dish
you may recognize and attempt to
recreate one of the oldest versions of
it to ever exist
it's a little history it's a little
cooking and it's a whole lot of me
what's not to love
in this episode we're going to recreate
a fossilized bread that was found at
pompeii
yep there was carbonized bread found
underneath all of the ash
and what goes better with bread than
cheese
the romans weren't the first ones to
make bread or cheese of course
but it will be really cool to recreate a
version from pompeii
we're going to start by beginning to
make the cheese the romans worked on and
perfected
many types of cheese making techniques
so we're going to give one a try
so here i have one gallon of goat's milk
we've already brought this to a boil and
then let it sit for about 15 minutes
you want it to cool off just a little
bit if you bring it to a boil and then
just go right in there with the rennet
it's gonna be too hot their rent it
wouldn't be in pill form
that's how you get it nowadays so i'm
going to use one rennet tablet
and i'm going to dissolve it in a little
bit of water before adding it to the
milk
i like to break it up with my fingers a
little bit before adding the water to
help it you know make it easier to smush
okay so here's some tap water we're
gonna add a splash
a little splash you just want to
dissolve it so it
it incorporates into the milk really
easily
i would probably use a little tiny whisk
nowadays
they didn't have whisks back then so
we're gonna
we're trying to keep it as ancient as
possible right a little smashy smash
with wood on wood tools
it's a lot harder without a whisk okay
success okay so
my milk it was boiled it's now
cooled just slightly but it's still
pretty warm and we're gonna add our
rennet in
now once you add your rennet mix it up
really well
and then like stop touching it okay now
now's the point i'm gonna stop touching
it
you don't even wanna move it from the
stove like put it in one area
and don't go near it because the curd is
going to start to set
now and if you agitate it too much
you're not going to have a nice curd
you're going to end up with cheese
that's dry too much weight is going to
come out of it so we're going to let
this sit
stand now for one hour and while that
does its thing we're going to start
making the bread
the bread we're trying to recreate is
called panis quadratus and has an
interesting shape that you can see here
from the pictures of the ones
found in pompeii some were even found
still in the oven
all right so we're going to start by
dissolving some salt into our water
just like that and dissolving the salt
into the water like this just makes it a
little easier to incorporate
now we're going to be making this bread
with um sourdough starter
that's what they would have back then
they didn't have instant yeast
so this is gonna be totally naturally
leavened which is
another reason why it's important to
dissolve the salt into the water if you
put salt into your
starter it's just gonna kill it it'll
just be dead before you started
okay so here i have some spelt now i'm
gonna mix this
using the well method so right here on
the counter so
we're gonna start by dipping it
okay when you're making a well it's
really fun like there's no reason to do
it anymore
you could just use a big bowl or a mixer
but sometimes i do it when i want to
feel old-timey you know
so see how i'm like i kind of took my
time to tip it out into this nice big
pyramid
this is going to make it a little easier
to make a nice well with high walls
that's really important
if you don't start out with high walls
it's going to just like rupture
and you're going to have a flood and
it's going to be so sad
and such a mess spelt is like over 5 000
year old
wheat it's coming back now because
everyone's into those ancient grains now
check out how high walled my well is
right
this is good we're gonna widen it just a
little bit
you have to take your time when you're
building your well this is
this initial foundation is gonna make it
a lot easier when you get mixing
okay now i'm gonna add my sourdough
starter right into the middle
i'm not going to put it all in there
just yet we want to incorporate this
slowly
so we don't have massive collapse okay
so turn your hands
into like a fork all right and now i'm
going to just gently fork in some of the
walls
of my felt and slowly start
incorporating
the sourdough into the flour this is
going to get messy but
i think it's a lot of fun so we're
slowly just the well is slowly getting
wider
i'm slowly mixing some of my
flour into my sourdough starter now
we've got a little more room
i'm gonna add the rest of this this is
gonna get everywhere
it's cool okay
getting it all in there all right
so we just keep doing this slowly take
your time
incorporate the flour into the starter
this is a pretty high hydration dough so
we've got like two parts flour to one
part water
which is gonna give us nice big bubbles
hopefully a nice crust spelt has a
really nice flavor compared to like
modern bread flour which is it's it
modern flour is great for a lot of
things it's great for fluffy cakes and
tender crusts but it's not the most
flavorful but it does develop gluten
really well
spelt flour on the other hand takes a
lot more to work it to develop the same
amount of gluten as you would with like
a modern bread flour
so even though i haven't tried this
before i'm predicting it's not gonna be
as like fluffy and tender it'd probably
be more of a dense bread but we're gonna
find out
i feel like it's time to add water this
is where it gets risky
and a little scary but my well is still
it's still intact
so yeah i'm pressing with my fingers
against the
surface of the counter to make sure that
i'm like scraping
kind of like if you were using a dough
hook the way it like scrapes along the
sides
of the bowl you're just doing that with
your hand you're turning your hand into
a dough hook
okay here we go folding more flour in
the well
is getting i should have started it
further out it's getting dangerously
close to the edge of the table
but i think that's part of the fun right
it's a little risky let's see what
happens here
there was actually over 30 bakeries in
pompeii
bread was such a big staple of their
diet um and that's that seems like a lot
that seems like a lot of bakeries
for one city i do think it's more
bakeries than we have here in manhattan
okay oh gosh it's getting crazy hold on
hold on we're bringing it in
we're coming back come back to me
so we're just adding a splash at a time
slowly incorporating it
i think i'm gonna go for all of this
water and then if it looks too wet i'll
add a little more flour back into it
this is a workout for my fingers though
they're really
they're doing a great job as forks okay
it's a really nice soft dough so in
pompei they would actually bake the
bread on the floor of the oven
they did have clay vessels that they
would form the bread in but they didn't
actually bake the bread in there
oh that's it okay that's the last of the
water so now i'm gonna see how much of
this flour
we're gonna need we might not need all
of it that is the cool thing with the
well method
when you do it in a stand mixer or just
like a bowl and you dump it all together
you kind of it's like a one-shot deal
but
here since we're incorporating it slowly
we can kind of
gauge how much flour we need this is
probably how they did it back then
because they were just making bread by
eye you know you probably weren't
measuring
okay i think i'm gonna move into
kneading
so i'm gonna try and get this stuff off
my fingers into here
let me i'm gonna clean off my fingers
with my other fingers
okay here's a fun trick you take some
flour
and the dry flour helps rub the scraps
of dough off of you
now i find it a little easier to knead
my dough if my hands are relatively
clean
because the dough on my hands you know
has some of it's gotten crusty
and if you try and if you accidentally
get that into your bread you're gonna
have like a crusty chunk of dough
and i think it's gonna be a bit of work
all right
need so
everyone's got like a different form
once you get into kneading you'll figure
out
what works best for you but we're just
it's like a folding
pressing stretching situation
i do this push thing with my right hand
while i'm pulling forward with my left
now this feeling a little a little wet
so i'm just gonna do this like little
sprinkle situation as i go
as you keep kneading it's gonna get
silky and soft so
don't like overdo it with the flour at
the beginning because then you're gonna
end up with really
dense dough i'm doing this like push
turn situation
huh push turn flip forward
and we're just gonna keep going until
it's nice and smooth you get into a
groove and it's really fun
push turn pull you know
i'm into it you're gonna get into it
takes a minute but it's fun once you get
into a nice group
everyone has a different kneading form
though so you don't have to follow mine
find your own
kneading rhythm we are getting nice and
smooth you can see i haven't added
much more flour but it's starting to
look less sticky
as you need like the starch kind of
absorbs that moisture so that's why
it's good to not add too much flour in
the beginning that's how you end up with
dry bread
sometimes if i've got a high counter i
like to like stand on something can i
stand on something
so this bread ends up in a kind of
unique shape there's a lot of debate out
of
over how the shape was made but some
people think that they pressed
a wagon wheel into it because it has
these like divots and
this center hole that that kind of looks
just like a wagon wheel today we're
going to use a dowel
it looks so close now we're going to get
into i'm going to avoid adding flour
get out of here because i want
nice texture on this dough we got we got
lots of flavor going from those extra
additions you can see it's it's really
transforming
oh yeah okay this is a little high so
i'm gonna adjust with a little squat and
then get a full body workout
okay i'm gonna stop i feel good about
that
i don't think
that with this dough i'm gonna get
any more smoothness okay returning to my
original height
all right so we got our dough it's nice
and smooth it's hot it's a lot less
sticky than it was before but it's still
nice and moist now i'm going to grab
this wooden
bowl for for proofing grease it up just
a little so it doesn't stick
you could also flour it up i suppose but
this board looks like it needs
some oil anyways you know you have to
oil your wood it's alive
it's my favorite thing to do once a
month i sit down i oil all of my wood
a little oil now
we want this to stay in a nice ball
all right and we're gonna let this proof
for an hour and a half to two hours
until it's
almost doubled in size i'm gonna cover
it with a damp cloth
just to make sure that we don't form a
skin and i'm gonna take a little break
clean up
and then we're gonna come back and drain
our cheese
so our milk and rennet situation has
been hanging out
and it has become set like a curd
you know it's ready when you jiggle it
and it moves as
one kind of like a panna cotta or a
jello mold
you want to see a good wiggle but don't
get too aggressive cause we want to
cut the curd when we want to cut the
curd we don't want it to just break on
us
and i'm gonna use a dagger
because i feel like they would use one
in pompeii
[Music]
so the reason we're going to cut our
curd rather than just breaking it up
is we really want to control the way the
whey is released
if you cut this up into lots of itty
bitty pieces too much weight is gonna
come out and it's gonna end up really
dry
i'm gonna cut like one inch squares kind
of a grid
so one inch going in one direction
and then we're gonna go in the other
direction so we're gonna we want to get
like nice big cubes
so the way can drain out slowly and we
don't end up with like
this really tight dry cheese
all right so that's good and now i'm
gonna line
a colander with some cheesecloth so we
can drain it into here
and i'm just gonna pour my curds in let
them drain that way's gonna
fall through all right i like to start
by labeling some so the whole thing
doesn't just
come out and go splat
and then we're gonna switch to a pour
see how wiggly
jiggly it is it's just like jello
okay i'm gonna switch to a pour i'm
gonna gently pour
whoa it's a cheese curd
party okay
awesome so i'm not gonna
squish or press or twist or anything
right now we wanna let the curds
initially just drain on their own so
we're gonna set this aside for one hour
if you start like ringing and out right
now you're gonna end up with a really
dry cheese so you need to just let
gravity and time do its thing but we're
gonna come back
in one hour and then we're gonna twist
and press
so my bread has been proofing for a
couple hours and we got a little poof
a little fluff it's alive there's some
bubbles now i'm going to transfer it
over to a peel so we can bake it before
we put in the oven i'm going to give it
a few
few marks with a dowel to try and get
that quintessential
pen quadratus shape i'm going
to very gently i don't want to deflate
the bubbles we created during the
fermentation so i'm going to try and be
be gentle awesome
and now i'm gonna make our imprints with
the dowel
now the original bread had like a little
hole in the middle but we're just gonna
go with the dowels
i feel like this is gonna make it really
easy to break the bread after it's
baked you know because it's already got
these impressions
and now i'm going to put this in the
oven to bake here we go
[Music]
okay so my curds have been hanging out
for an hour and we just let them
naturally drain and you can see they
already look
a lot drier you can press this and age
it
throw it in a salt brine we're gonna eat
this fresh so i'm gonna season it up
right now
right here i'm gonna sprinkle in some
salt i'm waiting to do it now because
so much of the liquid is going to press
out so if we had put it in earlier
we would have just lost that salt so now
is a good time but if you were going to
like age this
you could press it and then have it hang
out in brine or
age it like straight into salt but we're
going to eat this today
so seasoned it up and now i'm going to
press it to just like help
remove the remaining moisture i'm going
to twist up this cheesecloth
and then weigh it down now the romans
they actually would use
wicker baskets or even a ceramic mold to
separate the way from the cheese
they actually found a mural in pompeii
of
the way separating from the cheese in a
wicker basket but we've got colanders
now
so i'm going to just let this hang out
this can go for a couple of hours
or even overnight if you want a firmer
cheese but we're going to get back to in
a little bit
and now i'm going to finish up my bread
[Music]
we got our bread out of the oven
sometimes the bakery would use a baking
stamp to put their emblem on it as a way
of branding
and to even signify if the bread was
kosher all right
so let me check out our cheese this has
been pressing
this whole time so it's firmed up quite
a bit and i'm going to just try and flip
it out on this plate so we can get a
nice slice
so you can see how firm it's gotten but
it's still pretty soft
it's just like make it flip in a cake
you got to do it with confidence
i don't know how much confidence i have
all right
here we go ah
oh look at that it totally just set up
in no time at all
and i guess let's break into our bread
make a little cheese plate
pompeii style i'm gonna get
follow these ridges get a nice hunk of
bread
and they would normally serve this up
with figs mint
walnuts so we have all of the
accoutrements
and let me get a piece bit of this
cheese i'm gonna make like a
a toast you know like an ancient toast
get it on there look at that
really nice dense texture but still
crumbly it's a fresh cheese
you know
all right so i got my fig
i love figs i call them jam bags we got
some we got some walnuts let me sprinkle
it with a little bit of mint
a fancy toast you know what let's just
put it all on there
this is if i was in pompeii this is how
i would do it
i wonder if they brunch there right this
could be on a brunch menu
let's tear open a jam bag even
nice a little bit of sweetness this is
gonna be a big bite
all right i'm gonna go in going in there
sorry sorry guys so the cheese
is really mild it's a lot like a
farmer's cheese
creamy but you can still feel the curds
because it's not aged at all
a little bit crumbly almost like a
cottage cheese but a little bit tighter
the bread is super nutty from that spelt
flour
but it's also a little bit dense because
it's just leavened with sourdough
but um the figs add a nice sweetness all
together it's a nice piece of toast
i would do this i would brunch with this
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be really cool for us to check out
let us know in the comments below and
i'll see you next time
[Music]
you