Aug 08, 2019 20:00:00

A fierce baker who baked bread using ancient Egyptian yeast 4500 years ago appeared, what is the taste actually eaten?

Seamus Blackley , a physicist and game designer called 'The Father of Xbox', made 'ancient bread making' using yeast 4500 years ago. The method of reproducing sourdough 4500 years ago and its taste are published on Twitter.

Two weeks ago, with the help of Egyptologist @drserenalove and Microbiologist @ rbowman1234 , I went to Boston's MFA and @Harvard 's @peabodymuseum to attempt collecting 4,500 year old yeast from Ancient Egyptian pottery.Today , I baked with some of it .. .pic.twitter.com / 143aKe6M3b

— Seamus Blackley (@SeamusBlackley) August 5, 2019

Normally, when making bread using yeast, Blackley uses a method of collecting microorganisms by placing a mixture of flour and water in the forest instead of buying yeast at the supermarket. However, since the environment is completely different between ancient and modern times, the collected microorganisms should be different. Therefore, in order to bake ancient bread, you must first get the ancient fungus.

Fortunately, many yeasts can remain dormant for long periods of time. So, with the help of Egyptian Serena Love and microbiologist Richard Bowman , Blackley went to Peabody Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum attached to Harvard University for “Bread Making”. This is because it was thought that yeast could be collected from the pottery displayed in the museum.

This is how the yeast is actually collected from ancient pottery. The method of injecting liquid into the pottery and taking out the yeast from the liquid was taken, and the yeast was obtained without damaging the pottery.

Since food should have been put inside the pottery used to make beer and bread, it was thought that yeast was present here.

While the resulting yeast samples are sent to the laboratory for investigation ...

Blackley started making bread using one of the samples.

Because modern flour is different from ancient ones, ancient bread was made from three types of flour: barley, hitsumbu wheat, and cola sun wheat.

Tools and containers used to make bread are

autoclaved , and flour made from barley and human wheat is sterilized.

Sterilization using ultraviolet rays was also performed.

After that, the collected sample was added to the flour.

Yeast has been carefully grown for several weeks.

One week later, the flour with the sample had foamed, so it was time to make bread.

Add fermented seeds into a mixture of water and olive oil.

Blackley says that the scent of this fermented species is “unlike you had imagined”.

And the bread made in the usual way of making bread looks like this. In the platter on the left, you can see that the bread seeds are swollen. Of course, the ancient people would not have used a mechanical oven, but it seems to have followed a modern method.

This is the baked bread. The symbol on the surface is the “T” of the hieroglyph. The scent is 'sweeter and thicker than modern sourdough', and the difference is quite large.

The cross section looks like this.

“The taste is so indistinguishable that it ’s easy to tell whether it ’s ancient or modern bread,” Blackley said. “The aroma and flavor are incredible.”

However, the results of the sample analysis have not yet been obtained, and it seems that the yeast is only 4500 years old when the results of the DNA sequencing performed by researchers are obtained. Until then, there was no possibility of the collected yeast being a relatively new yeast.

In addition, in response to the comment “Will you break your stomach?” Blackley said, “The microorganisms before the world was industrialized were much safer than today,” and in addition, the baking process itself was a sterilization treatment. I think it has become. “That's why humanity is still alive,” Blackley said.