When in Rome Bake Bread!

Before our first day of dining like a Roman, I decided to bake some bread as both rich and poor ate tonnes of the stuff! Of course, per the rest of history, rich Romans got to eat the most delicate, white loaves made with the finest of wheat flour. The poor Roman often ate much coarser and tough bread, made from various grains including spelt, barley, emmer and rye. Basically any grain they could get their hands on! 

The flour for the poor man's bread was often so badly milled, that most Romans found their teeth would wear down after eating it during their life times because the loaves would also include grit, dust and the outer layer of the grain!

After doing a bit of research I found most recipes called for a sourdough starter based dough. But I did not really have the time, nor the inclination to repeat my many sourdough mistakes! Yes, I was there too along with the rest of the nation in our attempt to make Sourdough loaves during the first lockdown. None of mine proved to be very good. So yes, I did cheat a bit, with the help of fast action yeast! Look, I'm going to the efforts of baking my own bread, and seeing as I can't get a warm, Italian climate or traditional, stone oven I consider that fair and reasonable! If you would like to make a truer, soughdough based, Roman loaf check out this Blog Post from the British Museum.

I followed a basic Mary Berry recipe, but added in spelt flour to boost up the Roman factor and scored it to look like the bread on the right. Apparently, Roman loaves were made to have a bit of string round the middle, so you could carry it home with you like a little carby handbag! I've just moved house, so whereever my string has got to is a complete mystery. As it only attributed to the overall design, and would've been removed for cutting, I decided to forgo the string and not spend five hours looking in a multitude of boxes for it! 

Roman Bread Recipe

• 300g Spelt Flour (or whatever wholemeal flour you like)
• 200g Strong White Bread Flour
• 300ml of warm water
• 1 Sachet of Fast Action Yeast
• 1 Tsp of Honey
• 2 Tsp of Salt
• 1 Tbsp of Olive Oil

1. 
   Mix the fast action yeast with the honey and warm water. Set to one side till nice and bubbly.
2. Mix the spelt flour, strong white bread flour and salt together in a large bowl. 
   
3. Slowly pour in the water and olive oil into the flour and begin to incorporate all the flour. Keep mixing and adding the water until you have a ball of dough. Add a little more water if the dough is too dry. 
4. Knead for 10 minutes on a lightly floured surface. Add a drizzle of oil to the bowl and pop your dough back in the bowl.
5.  Cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave in a warm place to rise for 1hr - 2hrs. I went for the cupboard under the stairs, it's very toasty in there with all the clutter that does not have a permenant place in the house yet! 
6. Oil up a baking tray, pop your loaf on that and cover with the clingfilm again. Leave in the warm place for 30 minutes. Preheat your oven to 230C (220C fan).
   
7. 
   Put the bread in the oven for 10 minutes. Then lower the temperate to 200C (190C fan) for 30 minutes. This will ensure your bread has a nice crust.
8. Take out the oven, and leave to cool on a baking tray. Or cut it after five minutes because you have zero self control and slather with butter, because you need to try it or how will you know if it's any good? Don't want to feed your friends/family/housemates horrible bread after all!

This bread will be part of most of my recipes in the coming week, so do come back tomorrow for our first Roman recipe, a Collumella Salad!

If you're fascinated by Roman Bread, and let's face it who isn't? Then I would definitely recommend taking a look at Romae Vitam too, a website with a huge amount of information concerning the Romans. They also used yeast in their Roman Soldier Bread recipe too!