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+---- Thread: Roman bread (/showthread.php?tid=9913)
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Re: Roman bread - Ceannt - 07-18-2007
Sounds Like hard work
Re: Roman bread - M. Demetrius - 07-20-2007
The whole point of the slow baking/low temperature (around 250F or about 110C) is to drive out the water, not cook the flour. For that reason, if the heat is too high, the crust will form, and the water inside will not be able to escape.
An open fire is likely much too hot, and a Dutch Oven (as we call an iron oven in the US) would need to be tended often to keep the low temperature, and tends not to allow much steam to escape. A dry oven, whether gas or electric should work fine. It will probably take 4 or 5 hours for the hard bread to dry out and be done.
Re: Roman bread - Gaivs Antonivs Satvrninvs - 07-20-2007
Quote:One of my commilitones always tries to bake bread in an open fire. He places the dough on a flat stone, covers this with a ceramic bowl and shovels some coals over them.
This sounds like the right approach except for adding the coals over it.
The bowl covering should be, I believe, unglazed because the glazing would increase the heat. You want something similar to a Romer-topf.
Here's a few recipes that you can try at home. Some are pretty good.
Please let me know if you try them and your opinions.
http://www.romans-in-britain.org.uk/arl ... lasses.htm
Re: Roman bread - Marcus Mummius - 07-20-2007
Quote:Here's a few recipes that you can try at home. Some are pretty good.
Please let me know if you try them and your opinions.
http://www.romans-in-britain.org.uk/arl ... lasses.htm
Hi Andy,
I already made the eggs with the pine nut sauce:
http://www.romans-in-britain.org.uk/arl ... _sauce.htm
The sauce looks a lot like vomit when you make it and smells a bit like it too but it tastes wonderfull, and it's an excelent combination with the eggs!
Anyone already tried this one?
http://www.romans-in-britain.org.uk/arl ... ongues.htm
Re: Roman bread - M. Demetrius - 07-21-2007
Quote:The sauce looks a lot like vomit when you make it and smells a bit like it tooAha! That adds some weight to my theory that the vomitorium had a collection and recovery system near the bottom. Why waste all that good food that's only been down for a couple of minutes? Yep. Recycling is not a new thing after all.
Re: Roman bread - Ceannt - 07-21-2007
Taht is not plesent to thing about
Re: Roman bread - Aetius Helvius Merula - 07-22-2007
It would vastly improve the economy of feeding all those clients and flatterers looking for a free dinner party. Just let the wine flow freely, and they'll never notice
Most sources I've come across (and they may be wrong) state the legionaries carried a ration of grain. Unground; did they have a small quern in the baggage wagon? I do know that they carried a small cooking pot. Was that just for when they were on the march? I haven't done this in a long time, but I once made a nice chunk of bread by wrapping a bit of dough with 2 or 3 layers of wet leaves, then putting it in the campfire's hot ashes for about 20 minutes. Not doable in Syria, Judea or Asia Minor, not on a large scale. Maybe they did it in Gaul or Britain.
Another method would be to put the dough on a hot rock, then cover it up with the clay pot, or fry it up bannock-style, like the backwoodsmen of my country.
Re: Roman bread - Caius Fabius - 07-22-2007
The roman soldiers carried a quern on their mule, probably 1 per tent group. We tried to let the troops at the last AD43 event grind their own wheat, but it was not a happy experiment. Maybe our quern needs to be resurfaced.
I did have good results with 'twice baked' bread with whole wheat flour, and rye flour, and for officers whole wheat with currents added. Do not use bleached flours when cooking Roman military panis! I also had some wheat and rye flour mixed. (You have to designate which is which, some people have allergies).
The twice baked break was not hard, although it was dry. I baked it a month before the event, and baked 25 pounds of flat bread. The bread was cut into pieces, (stamped with a 'unit' stamp) and stored in linen bags until the issue.
I still have a couple of pieces in my kit. With all the recent rains, they are a bit moldy, but you can scrape that off.
I used the same techniques as used by modern American Civil War reenactors to bake 'hard-tack'.