The Bread of ANCIENT ROME _ Pompeii's Panis Quadratus

Carpoo 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 1800 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, 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 that 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 Locatelli 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, three 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 saves the top three spots for the wheats of Boeotia in modern day Greece, the Isle of Sicily, and Egypt. Then Pliny talks about flours 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. So for this loaf I ended up using half buckwheat, bad name because 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 old California air yeast. 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 burning ring of flour, and start to work the flour into the sourdough starter with one hand while you pour the salt water slowly with the other. Then just keep mixing as the dough comes together. Now 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 bread maker 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 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 Mycenaeum 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 going to 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 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 friend's villa for dinner while they watched broad sheets 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, 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 sulfur 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 Poppidius Priscus. He had his own mill with four giant millstones made of basalt lava. Four shadow much? They were likely driven by donkeys to grind the grain into flour. Then in a separate room the dough was 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. Poppidius 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 and I'm very sad about it. Then pat the loaf down into sort of a flat topped cake and cover it and let it rise for another 20 minutes or so. Once your second rise is done we're going to 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 four 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 quadratus 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 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 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 gotta say it smells good but I don't like the color. All right so it's definitely better than 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 are the looks of the bread and 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.