From Sardinia to India!

 Welcome to a Double Feature!! 

Part One: Sardinia

Last month I tried to make Sardinian bread which failed, so I had to expand it to 2 weekends of work. After which I forgot to write a post so... enjoy this 2 for 1!

For context, Sardinia is an island off the coast of Italy. Which I totally had to google when I found out about this bread. 

This bread was called pane carasau. According to Deborah Mele from ItalianForever.com, it can be found “as far back as 3,000 years ago." This light, thin flat bread was popular with Sardinian shepherds, who would head into the hills laden with parcels of pane carasau. This bread is also known as carta di musica (meaning “music sheet”), in reference to its previously mentioned thinness and could be kept up to a year. Mele Continues,

"Recently, archaeologists have found traces of this bread—still a Sardinian staple—in many of the megalithic stone dwellings scattered across the island. It’s made from durum wheat dough rolled into paper-thin circles and baked in wood-burning ovens. As they puff up like balloons, the still-soft rounds are each split into two discs, flattened, and baked a second time until crisp.”

It is because of this "balloon like puffing" that I had to turn this bread into 2 weekends of work. Mele's recipe is as follows,

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/2 Cups Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 1 1/2 Cups Semolina Flour
• 1 Envelope Active Dry Yeast
• 1 1/2 Cups Warm Water (Approximate)
• Salt

TO SERVE:

• Fresh Chopped Rosemary
• Coarse Sea Salt
• Olive Oil

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Combine the two flours with about a teaspoon of salt.
2. In a small cup, dissolve the yeast in about 1/4 cup of the warm water, and let sit until bubbly.
3. Add the yeast mixture to the flour with the rest of the water.
4. Mix until you have a smooth dough, then cover and let sit 1 hour.
5. Knead for 5 minutes and cover for another hour.
6. Preheat the oven to 475 degrees F.
7. Spray two flat baking sheets with oil spray.
8. Knead the dough once more and divide into 8 equal balls.
9. Roll each ball out as thinly as you can to fit the baking sheets, and bake each for 5 minutes in the preheated oven.
10. The breads should blister but not yet brown.
11. Remove from the oven and pile one on top of the other.
12. Place a board or flat tray on top and let sit until cool.
13. To prepare for serving, return each bread to the oven for 10 minutes or until golden and crispy.
14. Remove, brush lightly with olive oil, sprinkle with fresh chopped rosemary and salt and return to the oven for a few minutes.
15. Let sit until cool enough to handle, then break into large pieces.
16. Serve warm.

My first attempt was promising in that I had built up a lot of good gluten structure. However, it clearly did not go as I had hoped.

When I finally got around to baking there was little to no puffing. My first attempts were too thick and the second was thinner but there was still little to no puffing in the bread. I'm not sure if it was a heat issue or what but as thin as I tried to roll these breads the puffing was very minimal.

These 2 photos on the right are from my first attempt. You can see from the second image that you cannot really see though the bread very well which means it was too thick.

The image below is from my second attempt. This is the most puffing I was able to get. Even my thinnest attempt was not enough to get this bread correct.

This bread is meant to be kept in bags while tending sheep in the mountains, so I kept this bread out in the open air for a week following my various tries, and they were kind of nasty... 😑

I have no idea what went wrong but it was still a good exercise in going through the motions of making bread, even if they didn't turn out right. 

Part Two: India

Our second bread is Roti. This bread goes by many names (Chapati, phulka, manni) and is made in a lot of regions all over the world. Roti as a simple unleavened bread, similar to the Sardinian bread. This bread tells the complex story of 500 years of European colonization. This bread is not only a staple in India and Pakistan, but also in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia to name just a few. The people of South Asia who where dragged around the region by the aforementioned colonization brought their bread recipes with them. (Boyd, Porter, and Seal 2020) I followed this great recipe from Hebbars Kitchen. The pictures at the bottom of the webpage were especially helpful.

INGREDIENTS 

• 2 cup maida / plain flour
• ▢¼ cup wheat flour / atta
• ▢1 tsp salt
• ▢2 tbsp oil
• ▢1 cup milk (or as required)

INSTRUCTIONS

 

• firstly, in a large bowl take 2 cup maida, ¼ cup wheat flour and 1 tsp salt.
• mix well making sure everything is well combined.
• now add ¾ cup milk and mix well.
• start to knead adding milk as required.
• form a sticky dough, adding milk as required.
• now add 2 tbsp oil and continue to knead for 5 minutes.
• knead to a smooth and non-sticky dough.
• grease the dough and rest for 4 hours. make sure to rest the dough well, else you may end with chewy rumali roti.
• after 4 hours, knead the dough again. pinch a ball sized dough.
• dust with maida and roll gently.
• roll as thin as possible, dusting maida to prevent from sticking.
• now heat the kadai in high flame for 2 minutes.
• flip over and sprinkle saltwater. saltwater helps to make a non-stick coating to the kadai.
• take the rolled roti and stretch gently.
• make sure the roti turns translucent (the hand should be clearly visible).
• place over the hot kadai. make sure to keep the flame on from the bottom.
• cook until the bubbles start to appear.
• flip over and press cooking on all the sides.
• finally, fold rumali roti and enjoy immediately with curry.

This was an interesting bread in that it has to rest for FOUR HOURS! I have seen breads with a double proof, but never one that you just let sit for that long. The positive of this is that I could get the bread going in the morning and do other things around the house until the dough was ready.

As letting bread rest is becoming more of a widely used technique around this time, I asked myself why this was. If you live in a society where everything has to be done by hand; farming, gardening, grinding wheat, etc, why would you put up with coming back to a task later in the day? But then it hit me... as a new mom I am learning the importance of multi-tasking. So the idea that I started the bread and then did some laundry, etc and then came back to the bread is the same concept that has been used by moms and servants for generations! Multi-tasking is really where its at! Any moms in the chat? Can I get a woop!? 🙋

Making Roti as actually a very fun and interesting process. Once the rough has rested, been

shaped, and pulled as thin as it will go, the recipe says to heat up a Kadai, turn it over and use the bottom as a griddle. As far as I can tell a kadai is like a wok. We have a wok so I tried to use that, but the handles are angled up and got in the way of the pan making contact with the stove top. So instead I used the bottom of a large sauce pot. This made my Roti smaller but they tasted great! The recipe says to serve warm and that is certainly the way to go, but they are also good microwaved and eaten with hummus, which I am defiantly doing while writing this.

Over all, the failures and successes of these breads have been a delight. They have also made me realize that some things don't change. We, as humans, will always need bread and we, as moms, will always need to multi-task. Bread is a fascinating connective tissue that ties people together across regions and generations in a way that few things do.

So have a great day, make some Roti and call your mom.  💗

IIIIt's Egypt time!

 Fermented Egypt Bread 3 ways

*This bread has 3 different fermentation times*

6 cups Whole Wheat Flour

6 Tablespoons Wheat Bran

4 Cups Water

-Place a pizza stone on the second highest rack. Pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.

-Mix the Whole Wheat flour and Wheat Bran in a large bowl. Pour in the water a little at a time into the flour and bran mixture, making sure that all the water is absorbed before adding more. Mix until a dough forms and all the flour is hydrated. 

-Divide the dough into 3 sections (roughly 613grams each), place 2 sections in bowls and cover them with a tea towel and set them in a warm place to proof. Oil your surface and place the last section of the dough on the surface. Separate the dough into 2 pieces. Gently poke and shape the doughs into the desired shape. Once the oven is ready, flip the dough on to the pizza stone. Bake the dough for 14 minutes, flipping halfway through. (This is also really good with sesame seeds pressed into the dough) 

-After 6 hours pull the second portion of dough and dump the dough onto an oiled surface. Separate the dough into 2 pieces. Gently poke and shape the doughs into the desired shape. Once the oven is ready, flip the dough on to the pizza stone. Bake the dough for 14 minutes, flipping halfway through. This dough should have more gluten structure!

-After 11hours, pull the third portion of dough and repeat the process for the second dough. WARNING, I did not cover this dough well enough and got a hard skin over the dough... don't eat it. When baked it turned out worse than the 6 hour dough anyway. 

****

In early 1900s, the tomb of Senet was discovered in Thebes. In her tomb was a recipe for bread, this is the oldest written bread recipe that has been found so far. Senet died sometime between 1958 and 1913 BC, the recipe in her tomb says to "Crush the green with sticks in a wooden container, pass the crushed grain through a sieve to remove the husks, using a corn stone crush the grain still finer until you have a heap of white flour. Mix the flour with enough water to form a soft dough, knead the dough in large jars either by hand or treading on it gently. Tear off pieces of the kneaded dough and shape into rounds. Cook directly on a bed of hot ashes or place in molds and set on a copper griddle over the hearth. Be attentive while cooking and once the bread starts to brown, turn over and cook the other side."(1) 

According to H. E. Jacob, the Egyptians firmly believed that you could take it with you when you died. So there whole culture revolved around honoring the after life. As intricate as their cult of the dead was, it 's elaborateness stemmed from a place of confusion. They weren't sure where the realm of the dead was, so they did all they could to cover their bases. The Tomb served as a picture book to amuse the dead, but also to remind the dead who they where and what their mortal life was like.(2) With bread being an important staple of the Egyptian diet, this recipe would serve as a reminder to Senet that she ate bread while she was alive. The recipe would remind her how bread was made.

Legend has it that the Egyptians invented fermentation. The thought is that fermentation was born not out of intention but out of absentmindedness, as most things are. Egyptians also didn't fear decay, they most likely saw it as a part of life, so letting bread dough sit on the counter would not have seemed so wildly out of place. (3) 

Watching this bread come together was certainly fascinating! Especially watching the bread transform while fermenting. Honestly, the 6 hour bread was A LOT better then any of the bread I have made so far. I could see the gluten structure forming once it was baked which was the coolest thing! The third bake was not great though. I think I accidentally made a sourdough mother. I was really concerned about that hard, nasty smelling skin that formed over the dough. I did go a head and bake the dough but, I promise I didn't eat it. (Secret addition from husband while proofreading: I did eat it. It was bitter, tough, and left a bad aftertaste. I sanitized my mouth immediately with brandy.)

There are also a lot of other fascinating things about Egyptian culture relating to bread, so I will just list them here without context b/c it's fun. 

• Egyptians were the first to mix seed in their dough for flavor. Like sesame seeds, poppy and camphor. 
• In the ancient world, Egyptians were known as the "bread eaters."
• They made so much bread and with such consistency, that it was a cultural unit of measure. 

Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of Sam bakes bread and talks about it. See you next time! 

1https://youtu.be/jZZ-HSf-DLM  

2Jacobs pg 29-30

3(Parker 2014, 2-3)

The Journey Begins: Caveman bread

 ~16,420 B.C.

Caveman Bread- 3 ways

1 Yucca Root, peeled

1 1/2 c Whole Wheat Flour

1c Wheat bran

1c water

Bread 1- Grate the peeled Yucca into a bowl on the finest side of your box grater. This should create a white paste resembling canned chicken salad. Take a bottle to further mush the Yucca into a paste. This can also be done with a mortar and pestle if you have one. Heat up a lightly oiled caste iron skillet on medium heat and shape the Yucca paste into thin patties. (If you want to make Bread 2, only use half of the Yucca paste) Cook these patties for 4-6 minutes, flipping half way through, until desired brownness. Makes 2 small patties

Bread 2- Mix Whole Wheat floor and Wheat Bran together until homogenous. Use the remainder of the Yucca paste and mix in the wheat mixture, a spoonful at a time, until a dough begins to form. Shape this dough into thin patties and cook in the same lightly oil caste iron skillet as Bread 1 until brown on both sides. This should take around 1-2 minutes. (If you are only cooking Bread 2 this may take longer, 4-6 minutes approx.) Makes 2 small patties

Bread 3- Take the remaining wheat mixture and drizzle in about a cup of water, while mixing until a dough begins to form. Once the dough forms kneed a few times in the bowl with your hands. Form into thin patties and cook 4-5 minutes in the same lightly oiled caste iron skillet as Breads 1 and 2.

*****

"Approximately 14,400 years ago, a baker in current-day Jordan burnt a round of unleavened bread. In 2018, it was found—charred and initially unidentifiable—in an ancient fireplace in the Black Desert. Up until this moment, bread consumption was thought to have started much later, after the advent of grain farming around 10,000 years ago. However, this discovery suggested hunter-gatherers were making bread long before they settled around arable farms. In short, it shook up accepted notions of just how long bread has been in our lives." (Boyd, Porter, and Seal 2020)

Bread is a funny thing, it comforts us, gives us a sense of accomplishment and, most importantly, provides us with nutrients to continue to make more bread. Although we don't know a whole lot about the bread that was discovered in Jordan, we can make some educated guesses as to what this first bread would have been like.

Logic would suggest that during nomadic times, our ancestors would not have been able to let bread sit long enough for fermentation to occur. It would also suggest that their foraging skills would have produced root vegetables. These roots would have likely been ground into mush, possibly mixed with other ground plants and cooked on a hot rock in/on the fire. For this first bread experiment, I am really winging it and calling upon all of my arm chair expertise and channeling every youtube/TV chief I have ever seen.

The first thing I needed to find was an appropriate root. With the cradle of civilization being the Mediterranean I tried to find some roots plants from that area... however, with the selection in my local grocery stores I had to settle for a Yucca root. This root is actually from South
America, but it's as close as I was going to get. Also, I would venture to guess that our ancestors would have thrown in some other ground plants into their bread, if not out of curiosity, than for the convince of having two foods in one dish, much like we put meat in our mac and cheese today. I tried to simulate these ground plants with Wheat Bran and Whole Wheat flour.

So with my ingredients selected and the ghosts of cooking shows past assembled, I began my bread journey.

First, the Yucca root has a very waxy and thick skin, so I decided to peel that off with a vegetable peeler. Now, would our ancestors have peeled off the skin, probably not, but I decided that I didn't want to eat waxy skin today, so I took it off. After peeling, I busted out the box grater and settled on the finest side of the grater since the root probably would have been ground against a rock to make the hard root easier to eat. I then decided for the sake of authenticity to mush it up further with my improvised mortar and pestle made out of a bowl and a wide bottom hot sauce bottle.

I was kind of weirded out when I discovered that Yucca paste looks a lot like canned chicken. I even exclaimed out loud, "It looks like I'm making chicken salad!" ...odd

With the question of what is actually in canned chicken rattling around in my head, I soldiered on. Heating up the caste iron skillet and forming my ... Yucca paste into thin patties, They browned up rather nicely. I got 2 patties a couple of inches across out of half of my Yucca paste. You can really leave this in the skillet as long as you like. One of mine was darker than the other because I wanted to see how dark I could get them without burning. The longer one was about 6 minutes.

I then took my mixture of 1 1/2 cups of Whole Wheat Flour and 1 cup of Wheat Bran and spooned about 2 spoonfuls into the remaining Yucca Paste. I then mixed it together to form a dough. I repeated the forming and cooking of these patties. These cooked up really quickly, probably in part because my skillet was already at the correct temp.

My third bread really came in the moment. I realized that I had dished out way too much flour and Bran so I decided that I was going to add some water and make bread out of that too. Waste not, want not, ya know?

I slowly added about a cup of water to the wheat mixture until a dough started to form. then kneading the dough just a few times before making the same patties and cooking them in the same way. These where harder to tell when they where done just because they where already pretty brown when I put them in the pan. When I knocked on them and they sounded hollow, according to The Great British Bake Off, that means they are done.

Tasting was very interesting, in that I had very low expectations of all of these breads but some of them really surprised me! Bread 1, which was just Yucca paste tasted like a hash brown! My husband tried one and added salt and it was very good! Bread 2 was... very underwhelming, just ehh. Bread 3 was obviously the closest to modern bread which made it fine. It was very dense which is to be expected and in thinking about being out in the wilderness with only this bread, it would not be unwelcome at my camp fire.

All in all I would say the breads where a success. Accounting for a few modern pieces of equipment and cooking inside, I would say that I got as close as I could get to what our nomadic ancestors would have had around 14,420 years ago.

<- Bread 1 is top left, Bread 2 is top right and bread 3 is on the bottom.

Let's Begin...

I’m normally not one to make New Year's Resolutions, but this year, I’ve decided to make one. I haven’t been able to do as much history related things as I would like, so I’m resolving to make time to do that. After much discussion with my husband and spontaneous inspiration from Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat Acid, Heat on Netflix, I have decided that this year’s resolution will be to travel back in time through the lens of bread! 

I know I’m a little late to the bread train, since lots of people took up baking during quarantine. However, like many people, bread is my favorite food and I find the whole process of making bread fascinating. So, that’s what we’re going with. 

When brainstorming about this project, I had two choices, either work from modern to ancient, or ancient to modern. The most modern bread is Ciabatta which was developed in the 1980s in response to imports of bread from France into Italy. And while I do love Ciabatta bread, I’m sure I do not have the baker’s skills to create a good loaf without several failures. So, in the interest of positive energy, we will be going from the first bread to the latest bread. 

The goal is to do a lighter “Julie and Julia” where instead of working through a whole cookbook in a year, I will be making one bread per month, in chronological order from oldest to youngest. With any luck I will be baking 12 breads this year! Which is a heck of a lot more than I have made in the last few years combined! 

So here’s to obtainable goals and making my house small like bread. Let’s laugh, get covered in flour and bake some halfway decent bread!