Making 'The Last Kingdom' inspired Anglo-Saxon bread

Have you ever got so completely into something that it ends up taking over your life? For me, it's Netflix's The Last Kingdom. And when my husband caught me watching the same episode for the fourth time in one day, he suggested that I take all of the education that I'd learnt from the show and invest it into some historical quicking. Which is so sweet and thoughtful of him, and also completely misses the point of why I'm watching it in the first place. But I did take his advice, and while I wait for the next season of The Last Kingdom to finish up, here is some Last Kingdom-inspired Anglo-Saxon bread. Hello and welcome to the Pastors of Farm Pantry, where today we're making Anglo-Saxon bread. It's from the Anglo-Saxon word hlath, which I am definitely pronouncing wrong by the way, that we get our English word loaf from. And the Anglo-Saxons loved their bread. They had a word for the person who made the bread, the time of year to cut the grain, where to bake the bread, if you fancied a bit of bread, for running out of money and paying your landlord in grain, and for the ultimate ball ache, when you drop your grain on the way to the barn. And in 1047, to really separate the wheat from the chaff, Edward the Confessor passed the Bread Purity Law, which stated that bread could only be made up of four key ingredients. Water, flour, salt and barm, which was the frothy stuff that rises to the top when you're fermenting ale. Which is why bread and brewing has also always gone hand in hand. Although Eddie would have had his bread made from the finest wheat flour, the rest of us wouldn't have been so lucky necessarily, because wheat was the most expensive of the grains. And so other Anglo-Saxon peasants might have been only entitled to things like barley, rye or oats, which were the kind of three other most common grains used at this time. So if you're making your bread out of wheat, you are totally within your rights to do that, but you should know that the rest of us peasants are judging you. Barley and rye, in particular, were subject to a very nasty disease called ergotism, which can affect you neurologically, but also can make various bits of you drop off as well. It was also known as Saint Anthony's fire, and it's thought that ergotism did for Magnus II of Norway, who was the son of Harald Hardrada, who was a famous Viking, who, as any year seven will tell you, was killed by Harald Godwinson at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066. If you want to know more about this history, or you just want somewhere to go where you can admire lots of photos of Uhtred's magnificent hair, then head over to my blog, The Pastors of Foreign Pantry, where you can find this recipe and loads of other historical ones as well. But for now, let's get started. To make Anglo-Saxon bread, you will need 160 grams of barley flour, that's about one cup, about 100 millilitres of water, that's about three and a half fluid ounces, add a pinch of salt, and knead to combine. You'll find you get quite a sticky, dense dough after a while. This is absolutely perfect. Unlike modern bread, these griddle breads were not intended to rise, so you don't need to leave it to rest. Once your dough has been made, scatter flour along a clean surface, and portion your dough into four equal sizes. Squidge each portion down to about the size of your palm. Heat a griddle pan on a medium flame until it is really hot, and place two of your breads in the pan. Cook them for about four or five minutes, or until you smell burning, frankly, and then flip them over and cook on the other side as well. They should turn a slightly darker colour, crack slightly, and they'll have these really nice scorch marks on them, so you'll know that they've been cooked. And there you have it, Anglo-Saxon bread. It might not be as pure as Edward the Confessor would have liked, but it does taste great. And there you have it, the easiest recipe in the world, right? Three ingredients. And today I am serving it with a hunk of good quality cheese, some really nice spiced rhubarb chutney, I guess pickle, relish maybe, for people who are in America, and then two gherkins, which are feeling really fancy today, and they're calling themselves Cornichon. So let's see what it tastes like. I'm kind of cheating actually, because I already know that this is going to taste really good. I've made it quite a few times before. It's very nutty, denser than a loaf of bread that we'd be used to today, and it's very, very Moorish. In terms of taste, it is not as sweet as modern day bread, but it is much, much saltier, because obviously we added quite a lot of salt to the mixture as one of our three ingredients. In terms of texture, you'll see it's a fairly dense loaf. I don't know if you can call that a loaf, but it's fairly dense. It's a very close texture. It's not as light and fluffy as pre-sliced white loaf that we would find in a shop today. But I quite like it. I think that adds to its charm, because it's sort of chewier. You have to work harder for it. Now I've chosen to eat mine with cheese, because that's just personally what I like, but you could have this with anything. It will work well with ham. It will work well with chicken. It would even work well with something sweet, like jam, peanut butter, Nutella, anything really. I've fed this to my family, and they've all loved it. So this is a proper winner in our house, and you've seen how quick and easy it is to make. I really want people to give this one a go. I love it, and I really hope that you do too. Thank you so much for watching, and join me next time for my next experiment on The Past is a Farm Pantry. I'm just doing some research. Destiny is all.