Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Bread in ancient Egypt

Bread, the Staff of Life

Barley, emmer and pre-eminently wheat were used.



The emmer (an old kind of Eurasian wheat with bearded ears and spikelets that each contain two grains) was taken from a silo in which it had been stored after threshing and winnowing. The spikelets were moistened and pounded by men in mortars in order to separate the chaff from the grain. The bran was removed and probably used as animal feed.

Grinding

The grinding was mostly women's work and took hours of hard labour kneeling down every day, often causing disability. Only the amount of meal used each day was prepared. They fought tedium by singing chants such as "May the gods give my master strength and health" (or that is what their master, who left the record of these words, would have liked them to sing.)
   

Until the Middle Kingdom mills were placed on the floor, later they were raised onto workbenches, rendering the milling process somewhat less tiresome. The mill was a simple trough with two compartments. The grain was poured into the top compartment and by rubbing and crushing it with a grindstone, moved into the lower partition. Since the Roman Period rotary mills have been known.

After sieving, the larger particles were poured back into the top for further grinding. The sieves made from rushes and the like, were not very efficient and allowed grains of sand and little flakes of stone to remain in the flour, especially when soft mill stones were used.

This way of preparing the flour caused severe abrasion of the teeth above all of those who depended upon bread as their main source of nourishment.  But it affected all classes: Amenhotep III for instance suffered badly from his teeth.

kneading bread
The dough was made of flour, water and leaven - either some sour dough left over from the previous day or some leaven from the last brewing of beer - and was left to rise in warm moulds and then baked in closed ovens. During the New Kingdom ovens big enough to bake several loaves simultaneously came into use. These ovens often had ceramic steps on the inside and their outside was covered with clay. Round imprints made with jar openings prevented cracks forming in this outer layer.

Sesame seeds, honey, fruit such as dates, butter, eggs, oil and herbs were often added to the dough to flavour the bread. In the first millennium BCE yeast came into use, replacing the sourdough. Over forty varieties of bread and cake were made in the New Kingdom.

The following satirical description of baking dates from the New Kingdom - by this time ovens were generally accessed through an opening at the top:

The baker kneads incessantly and puts the loaves in the fire. His head is in the middle of the fireplace. His son holds him by his legs. Should they slip out of his hands, the father would fall into the fire.

According to this description the dough may have been formed into flat round disks which were stuck to the hot inner surface of the oven (in the manner pitta bread is still baked in Arabic countries) or tall, thin bread moulds standing upright in the fire were still used, as they had been during the Middle Kingdom.

Hand formed bread was baked on a clay disk covered by a lid. Later, a vaulted copper or iron sheet was used. The bread dough was baked on its convex part, while, turned upside down, the concave part served as a sort of kettle for cooking liquid foods.

When no oven was available, the Egyptians baked wafer thin bread on the hot sand, as desert dwellers have done since time immemorial (The bread is called “Shamsy” or Solar) and is still used in upper Egypt until today.

The making of Solar bread

Bread was often used as a synonym for food and hospitality. The New Kingdom scribe “Anny” exhorted his readers Do not eat bread while another stands by without extending your hand to him. The rich, hoping that good deeds would count in their favour in the afterlife often mentioned their generosity.  Sheshi, Harkhu and many others made such claims, using formulaic language which inspires little faith in the trustworthiness of their protestations:

I gave bread to the hungry, clothes to the naked.

Original text by: André Dollinger 

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