Recipe for the world’s oldest bread revealed

copperbadge:

hxans:

historyisntboring:

“Jordanian bread recipe from 14,000 years ago

  • Make flour from wild wheat and wild barley
  • Pound tubers (roots) of wild plants that grow in water (sedges or club- or bull-rushes) to a dry pulp
  • Mix together with water to make a batter or dough
  • Bake on hot stones around a fire.


The people living in the area at the time were hunter gatherers.

(…)
This happened before the advent of farming, when people started growing cereal crops and keeping animals. (…)

Our ancestors may have used the bread as a wrap for roasted meat.
Thus, as well as being the oldest bread, it may also have been the
oldest sandwich. “This is the earliest evidence we have for what
we could really call a cuisine, in that it’s a mixed food product,” Prof Dorian Fuller of University College London told BBC News. “They’ve got flatbreads, and they’ve got roasted gazelle and so forth, and that’s something they are then using to make a meal.“”

@copperbadge ancient bread!

I wonder what the tubers did – I would guess they add flavor and possibly some elasticity? Mainly I wonder because while the crumbs apparently clearly indicate flatbread, I know that one way to grow wild yeast is to let mashed potatoes sit out for a while. So I wonder if the tubers aren’t some kind of cross-pollination with someone who had semi-leavened bread. 

Gastropod had a podcast a while back about mustard which indicated that very early people were combining foods and flavors in a very chef-like fashion, so I think it’s good to remember that hunter-gatherers weren’t just eating food, they were intentionally cooking food and doing culinary experiments!

I can’t believe the first ever bread was a tattie scone

Recipe for the world’s oldest bread revealed

Leave a comment