Regular readers may be aware that quite a few years back when I was a chef I once ran my own restaurant called Apicius. It was named after the oldest known cookbooks, authored by a Roman named Marcus Gavius Apicius sometime around 1 AD.
So you can probably understand my excitement at finding this video from the British Museum...
In AD 79, a baker put his loaf of bread into the oven. Nearly 2,000 years later it was found during excavations in Herculaneum. The British Museum asked Giorgio Locatelli to recreate the recipe as part of his culinary investigations for Pompeii Live.
I am so going to have to make this recipe
Ingredients:
400g biga acida (sourdough)
12g yeast
18g gluten
24g salt
532g water
405g spelt flour
405g wholemeal flour
Method
Melt the yeast into the water and add it into the biga. Mix and sieve the flours together with the gluten and add to the water mix. Mix for two minutes, add the salt and keep mixing for another three minutes. Make a round shape with it and leave to rest for one hour. Put some string around it to keep its shape during cooking. Make some cuts on top before cooking to help the bread rise in the oven and cook for 30–45 minutes at 200 degrees.
Comments
When did you have that location?