Help with authentic, Ancient Egyptian, 100% emmer sourdough loaf?
I'm trying to make a reasonably authentic loaf of ancient egyptian bread, using 100% emmer wheat flour, and ancient Giza sourdough culture from Ed Wood's International Sourdough.
I've tried adapting a spelt sourdough recipe with little success, and I am now attempting to use this recipe [pdf].
I'm still a novice bread baker, so I'm looking for pretty specific steps on how to go about doing this. Am I on the right track with that recipe? I can't find a whole lot of information on working with 100% emmer flour.
I guess one of the obstacles here is that I'm not entirely sure what the difference between a bad loaf and an authentic loaf will look like. There are reasonably good sources on ingredients, equipment and methodology, but it's hard to tell what a finished loaf of bread was supposed to be like a few thousand years ago.
In any case, I appreciate any help or insight anyone can offer on the subject!
I would not trust the recipes you are referring to. One of the recipes calls for oil. And a soaker. And then using the water from the soaker. There is no documented evidence for precisely how Egyptians made bread so this level of recipe detail -- this level of dough manipulation -- lacks historic credibility. One of the recipes also calls for the use of modern wheat flour. Modern bread flour was introduced by the Greeks into Egypt in the first centuries BCE. Thus, that recipe could, conceivably, relate to a Greco Egyptian bread but it wouldn't be right for a bread from the Middle Kingdom, for example.
There are many examples of Egyptian tomb loaves. In fact, we have more breads from Egypt than we do from any historic period -- by lots! The problem is that the correlation between breads found in tombs and breads eaten in homes is not known.
If the text you are working from doesn't provide the source in ancient Egyptian then I would personally not trust it
I am currently writing a history of bread for the University of California Press and have just started looking at Egyptian breads.
I am not sure what model in your mind you have of "success." I think that if you were to make a flat bread about 13 cm in diameter with a slight rise in the middle that you will have produced a bread that would have been recognized in Egypt circa 1200 BCE.
There is a new Facebook bread history group https://www.facebook.com/groups/breadhistory/. You might join that and ask your question there.
William Rubel
"Bread, a global history."