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.