Babylonian Bread

 

Interestingly, this one isn't all that difficult. Although there's a week elapsed time between starting and baking, the fact is there isn't all that much actual hands-on work. It's mostly wait time. For instance, it probably takes no more than 10 minutes to mix the mash ingredients. After that it's a matter of waiting 48 hours, giving the mash a stir now and then, before going on to the next step.

you are 100% right . the Bedouin the Druze and most of the arabic  Nomadic tribes used this method  . 

but the one that turn to be Farmers start using the ovens .

i will try to do this flat bread on the weekend

 

The pillow also seems to make it easier to center the bread on the saji.

 

Once we finish the Mesopotamian barley-bread project (or, rather, as a continuation of it), I'm going to try this technique. I'm thinking I can invert my wok on an open fire.

 

The pure barley dough doesn't have enough stretch to be cooked this way. One open quesiton is when did they start using wheat flour in the fertile crescent? There's about a 300 year gap between the earliest records we have of Mesopotamian bread and the time the Egyptions domesticated wheat. What we don't know is how soon after that wheat raising spread to other areas.

 

I would suspect fairly quickly, as the caravans would have spread the word. Just guessing, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that by 800 BCE, everybody in the ancient world was using wheat, either partly or wholely, in their breads.

 

So, here's my tentative game plan.

 

1. Make a 100% barley bread using the mash-starter method.

2. Experiment with a make-shift saji, using wheat flour to learn the technique.

4. Make flatbreads on the "saji" using a mixture of barley and wheat flour.

 

You are extraordinairely innovative and quite a talented flat bread maker too !

 

Looks wonderful ...

 

Lovely pictorial and thanks so much for your showing us your feature ...

 

Kind regards.

Margi.