Ancient Egyptian Bread Deciphered

Picture this, you are dead and your soul is hanging around the ancient Egyptian afterlife and it wants a snack. I think if I had to choose an afterlife food it would be basket and robin's chocolate and peanut butter ice cream, but that was not really an option in ancient Egypt so one of their go-to after-death delicacies was bread. So today we are making a bread depicted on the walls of a tomb nearly 4,000 years old. Ancient Egyptian flatbread, this time on Tasting History. So today's recipe is not really a recipe per se because while the ancient Egyptians loved their hieroglyphs and did use them to write about food they didn't use them to leave us any actual written recipes. Instead they left loads of depictions of food being prepared on the walls of tombs. So we can use some of those depictions to recreate one of the many, many ancient Egyptian breads. Today's is a bread depicted on the wall of a tomb near Luxor, TT 60 better known as Senet's Tomb. Grind emmer or barley to make flour. Mix the flour with water to form a dough. Knead the dough in large jars or by treading on it. Take a ball of dough and shape it into a round. Bake on coals or a griddle. So this is one of your simpler breads, something that would have been eaten by the majority of the population but there were fancier breads available in ancient Egypt, ones that had milk, and honey, and eggs, and coriander like the ones found in King Tut's tomb and even lotus flower. And while today's recipe calls for a simple circular flat bread the Egyptians also had well-risen semi-circular loaves, and on a wall in the tomb of Ramses III there is a bread depicted that looks like it was probably boiled before being baked like a bagel. It also shows breads being molded into all sorts of shapes, round, spiral, triangular, conical, and even in the shape of a cow. There have been breads found in the shapes of all sorts of animals like crocodiles and even humans, and many breads were baked in molds similar to bread pans today. In short ancient Egyptians loved their carbs and other ancient peoples would often refer to them as bread eaters. In the old kingdom there were at least 15 different types of bread and by the new kingdom over 40. So frankly I could make a whole host of ancient Egyptian bread videos and maybe I will, but today I'm going to focus on one loaf. Actually kind of two because a lot of breads in ancient Egypt were risen but not all of them, and this one really works either risen or not risen. Unleavened. So for this recipe what you'll need is about two and a half cups or 350 grams of emmer wheat. You could also use barley. Emmer and barley were really the staples of bread making during this time period. About one cup or 240 milliliters of water. Now depending on what grain you go with and how dry it is, and how ground up it is the amount of water is really going to vary especially when you add in leavener which is going to throw everything off so just be flexible. A half teaspoon of salt. They usually added salt to their bread though it was not depicted in the image but for flavor sake we're doing it. And one cup or 224 grams of optional starter. So while I'm using starter or sourdough as my leaven which was used in ancient Egypt they also used a lot of other different leavening agents like sour wine, the yeast from grape skins, and possibly from the beer that they brewed en masse. So the first thing that you need to do is grind out your grain. Now if you use either a pre-ground grain or an electric mixer it's going to grind it much finer than they would have had but it's also going to be a lot easier and frankly it's going to be a lot easier to work with so I won't fault you if that's what you end up doing but I am using a hand grinder to better replicate the coarse grind that they would have had. What I'm not going to do is add rocks to my flour because that probably would have been present in much of the flour of ancient Egypt. The way that they ground the grain it often left a lot of grit in the flour and archaeologists can tell from the teeth of mummies that besides cavities and gingivitis that they also suffered from ground down teeth likely due to the amount of grit in their bread. Also even with this modern hand grinder that I used sure took a long time to grind that flour. In the Mastaba of Tai in Saqqara it's written grind, grind well. I grind with all my strength. The servant sifts the flour and I bake the loaf myself, and while I didn't use all of my considerable strength my arms were pretty tired after grinding all that wheat. So once you have your flour add the salt, and the starter if you're going to use it, and the water. Then mix it all together and knead it. Now the wall depicts people either kneading it in jars or with their feet. I'm not going to do either of those things. I'm going to knead it in a normal modern way but you get the same effect. The thing is emmer wheat doesn't have that much gluten so no amount of kneading it is going to get you that nice stretchy elastic dough that we know and love today. It's also going to make it so that you're not going to get nearly the rise that you would get from like a modern sourdough, but it is what it is. But it is still really important to knead this dough because that's going to let the water incorporate into the flour, and this flour soaks up a lot of water so you might need to add some as you go on. You'll have to kind of just feel it out. Then set the dough in a bowl and let it rise for a couple of hours. Now like I said this dough is not going to rise like a modern sourdough but it will get puffy. I actually left mine for a total of six hours. I did three sets of two hours and I would kind of punch it down in between each time, and it did get a bit of a rise. Now while your dough is rising I would really appreciate you hitting that like button, and tap that notification bell so you don't miss any episodes of Tasting History, and now let us look at this Egyptian Bread of the Dead. Imhotep does not like rhymes. Fine, everyone's a critic. So just like you need food to keep you alive in ancient Egypt you also needed food to keep you dead, or at least keep you happy when you were dead because if you were lucky enough to make it to the field of Aru or the field of reeds it was essentially a mirror image of your life on earth. So you were going to need some food. Also I really hope that you enjoyed your life on earth because basically you just get more the same. On the east wall of the tomb of Senegem, an artisan in the 13th century BC, a vignette shows he and his wife happily harvesting grain and plowing their fields in the next world. A lot less harp playing, and fewer fluffy clouds than our modern idea of heaven, and a lot more manual labor. Manual labor that required sustenance, and so Egyptian tombs are filled with sustenance. Loaves of bread, jars of honey and beer, baskets of grain, and for the carnivorous crowd we can turn to King Tut's tomb which had 48 boxes of mummified meat including leg of veal, antelope shoulder, ducks, and geese, and when it became impractical to keep filling a tomb full of actual food then you just depicted the food on the walls. The walls of tombs are littered with images of stacks of snacks, instructions on fishing and hunting. My favorite thing about Egyptian hunting practices is that they often used cats, a skill that neither of the cats that I live with have had any desire to pick up. The wall images are also how we learn about how they cooked food just like those of the bread making from which we adapted our recipe today, and whether it was physical food or just images of it food was more than a luxury that you were bringing to your afterlife. It was part of your key to get into your afterlife. It was kind of like that hundred dollar bill that you slip the bouncer outside of a fancy nightclub. Not that I have ever done that. I am nowhere cool enough to go to those places. You still can't come in. Nor would I ever spend $100 on doing that but I've seen it in movies so I know what happens, but instead of a nightclub it's the Field of Reeds and instead of a hoity-toity bouncer it's Osiris. In the Papyrus of Ani of Thebes from around 1250 BC one of the spells in the Book of the Dead details exactly what you need to get in. In this hall of justice one shall utter this spell pure and clean and clad in white garments and sandals painted with black eye paint and anointed with myrrh. There shall be offered to him meat and poultry, incense, bread, beer, and herbs. And really that's just polite because this is Osiris's house and it's rude not to bring something when you visit someone's house, and this spell that you're supposed to recite after dropping off this goodie bag is one of the most famous parts of the Book of the Dead. It's called the Negative Confession or spell 125. Basically everyone has gathered for the weighing of your heart. Osiris of course, but also Thoth, Anubis, and the 42 judges who depending on the time period might include Horus, Hathor, Isis, Ra, and a whole host of other gods. You have to remember that Egyptian history is really, really long. Thousands of years. So any fact about Egypt might apply in one dynasty but not in another and that includes things about their religion as well. So the gods change, it's just what it is. But it does usually happen that there are 42 gods there to judge your sins, and each god is offended by a different sin, and you need to admit those sins in order to move on. And there are some super serious sins such as Hail Amkaibit who comest forth from Kernet, I have not slain men and women. Hail Heruru who comest forth from Nehatu, I have terrorized none. But there are also some sins that are a little less serious though frankly just as important to having a functioning society. I haven't been eavesdropping. I haven't been stirring strife. I haven't been prying into other people's business, and my favorite I haven't been deaf to words of truth. I really, really like that one. Then there are a few sins that specifically have to do with stealing food. You can't have stolen bread from children because who would do that? You can't have stolen cake from the spirits of the dead, and you can't have stolen grain in general. What's interesting is that while many of the sins overlap everybody's list of sins was rather unique to themselves because what might be a sin for one person might not be a sin for another just because of their place in society, or the time period that it was taking place. Also it being a negative confession meant that if you did commit a certain sin then you didn't admit to it you just left it out. So if you don't specifically say I did not debauch the wives of other men we're all going to assume that you did, but the most important thing when having your heart weighed was to not lie because if you lied then you failed the test and you would be devoured by Amit, the devourer of souls, but if you were tempted to lie then there's only one thing that can rat you out and that is your own heart sitting there on those scales. Lucky for you there's a spell for that. Earlier in the Book of the Dead you have spell number 30 which basically tells that little lump of cardiovascular tissue sitting on those scales to keep its bloody mouth shut. Oh my heart which I had from my mother, oh my heart which I had upon earth, do not rise up against me as a witness in the presence of the Lord of Things. Do not speak against me concerning what I have done. Do not bring up against me anything I have done in the presence of the great god Osiris. Now provided that everything goes well, your spells worked, and you don't get devoured by Amit, the devourer of souls, then you finally get to see a glimpse of what your infinite future might be like, and for the priest Ani that meant some really mighty fine vittles. Let there be given unto me vessels of milk, and cakes, and loaves of bread, and cups of drink, and flesh in the temple of Anpu. I will not eat the things which are abominations unto me. What I abominate is filth. I will not eat it, for my bread shall be made of the white barley, and my ale shall be made from the red grain of the god Hapi. Now having served tables for a very long time I am exceedingly polite to servers, but if I wasn't I would totally steal that line. Is that mustard on my burger? I will not eat the things which are abominations unto me. Take it back and refill my iced tea. I have spoken. Also that last line, my ale shall be made from the red grain of the god Hapi. Hapi was the Nile god, and the god of grain, and while rather androgynous in many depictions he's often shown to have quite a big belly, and droopy boobs. Be nice it's his quarantine body and he is working on it. Now partly the depiction is because he represents fertility with the Nile but it's also possibly, and I don't know this, because he ate too much of that grain he's the god of. Stick with me here. The ancient Egyptians actually had a big problem with being overweight and diabetes especially in the pharaoh class because it seems that a diet of mostly beer and bread not really good for the physique especially if you're not working at all. Luckily if you were building pyramids you did work it off but you were paid in beer and bread. 10 loaves of bread and a gallon of beer each day, and based on some of the names of the groups of people who worked on the pyramids it seems that they definitely enjoyed that beer maybe all in one sitting. Graffiti in the area mentions one group of workmen known as the drunkards of Menkorah, and while I wouldn't consider myself a drunkard a glass of beer albeit modern beer does sound like a mighty fine accompaniment for our ancient Egyptian bread. So once the bread has risen as much as it will form it into several flat rounds. Do the same for the unleavened bread, then get a griddle nice and hot and set the loaf on to cook for a couple of minutes before turning it over to crisp up on the other side. What's interesting is that to this day in Egypt there is a bread known as Aish Baladi which is basically the bread that we're eating today albeit with a lighter flour that's going to let it puff up more like a pita. This one you'll get a little rise not so much because of the emmer wheat, and while I don't know this for a fact I wouldn't be surprised if the rather stackable loaves that we're making today aren't the same type of loaves of bread that are mentioned in a document from the reign of Mentuhotep III. I advanced with an army of 3,000. The battle arena extended to the river and desert. I gave every man a skein of hide and a long stick to carry things as well as two buckets of water and 20 loaves of bread for each day's ration. I mean 20 loaves they got to be pretty stackable to carry them around I would think. I don't know. Anyway our bread's ready and here we are ancient Egyptian flatbread. So they're not that different. This is the unleavened and the leavened. The leavened definitely has a little puffiness to it but still pretty thin. Let's give them a shot. Unleavened. You know what? I shouldn't have drank the beer but there's some nice flavor there. It's chewy but it's good. It actually has a lot more flavor than than I expected. I guess that's you know it's it's a harder wheat to work with but it's a more flavorful wheat to enjoy because there's nothing else contributing to the flavor except for a little bit of salt but yeah I would enjoy this with some hummus. Dip it. Maybe put a little I don't know cheese. Oh it's good. Now the leavened. I'm gonna rip it apart. Yeah there's a little sponginess to the middle. You know it's got like so many pieces still of the of the actual grain that I'm surprised it even held together. Let's give it a shot. That one has even more flavor. That's the big difference. The texture is actually even more chewy than the first one. Lighter and yet chewier which is kind of odd. It's not as hard or crisp but there is more flavor. That sourdough just it livens things up even more. So let me know if you want to see more ancient Egyptian bread or ancient Egyptian foods in general. It's kind of like they had an entire cuisine for thousands of years. There's plenty of and I also want to make ancient Egyptian beer which is very different from this stuff. Anyway make sure to like this video, subscribe, and I will see you next time on Tasting History.