Babylonian Bread

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   So, I knew it all along. Ron is a natural born trouble maker who forces people to spend countless hours on culinary research when they could be doing something useful like picking up girls in the local gin mill. 

Thus, I spent much of the past two days researching Mesopotamian bread.  I’m gonna get you for that, Ron. When you least expect it, expect it!  
Anyway, a little background. With Margi’s http://www.foodsoftheworld.activeboards.net/pan-rustic-de-los-pastores-antiguo_topic3285.html as a springboard, Ron, Dan, and I have been having a discussion about barley bread and related topics as they were made in Mesopotamia. Much of that talk took place off-line, and consisted of how, exactly, those breads would have been made. Some of it was the result of hard research, some of it speculation. 

My conclusion: The three of us were both right and wrong on all counts.

Turns out, there is a plethora of information available. Much of it comes from Yale University’s Babylonia collection, and translations from cuneiform texts and other documents dating back as far as the late 1930s. In addition, there is an incredible scholarly work called Everyday Life in Babylon and Assyria that was invaluable. 

Before going any further, I have to admit that many of my speculations couldn’t have been more off track. Among them:

The Mesopotamians did perfect domed (what we tend to call beehive) ovens, The accumulated heat in the walls and floor allowed them to bake fermented dough and leavened breads in a slow, moist heat. Pretty much the way it’s still done. More than likely, one of my points is still valid: that ovens are a function of village and city life, not available to those living and working in isolated areas. So bread, for those people, would have meant cooking the dough over or in a fire.

A parallel can be drawn from more recent times. If we look at plantation life in the American South, fine breads, such as Sally Lunn, were commonly baked in the kitchens of the big house. But field slaves---in effect our peasant class---did not have access to ovens, so made bread in the form of pone, hoe cakes, ash cakes, and the like. Later on, woods workers in Canada would take a basic Scottish bread and “bake” it in skillets over hot coals to make Bannock. 

Food lists and inventories abound in Mesopotamian writings. Some of the earliest such lists, written in both Sumerian and Akkadian, contain more than 300 breads. But those may refer to shapes and minor differences in ingredients, rather than unique breads, because bread was baked in every imaginable shape and size. Often they were baked in molds, and could be made in the form of a heart, a head, an ear, even a woman’s breast. More than 50 different such molds have been unearthed at Mari---an ancient city about 40 miles from Babylon. 

Barley and other cereals were ground into flour and mixed with oil, milk, or beer. Some were leavened, some were not. And they might be sweetened with honey or flavored with spices and fruits.

Two words in that paragraph need explaining. “Beer” was not the refined beverage we think of. Grains were allowed to ferment, and the liquid by-product was beer. But the entire mash was served, and the liquid drunk with straws that had been invented just for that purpose. Those drinking straws had specialized filters at the bases, to keep out solids. Very often, particularly at formal occasions, several people would drink from the same vessel, with each one having his own straw.

So, when “beer” was used to make bread, it’s likely the entire mash would have been used. This possibly means the final product would resemble modern breads using sprouted grains. I’ve so far found nothing to confirm nor deny that speculation. 

Honey is another possibly misleading word. This quote from Every Day Life….. sheds an interesting insight. Keep in mind we’re talking about special state dinners held at the palace, rather than everyday food:

Amongst other foodstuffs we hear about, four varieties of 'bread' are distinguished, of which the commonest was an unleavened bread in the form of thin crisp disks made from whole-meal barley flour. Another type was specifically described as 'leavened bread', whilst the others were probably what we should refer to as pastries, since they contained such ingredients as sesame oil and something called 'honey'. The doubt about the latter term is that the same Akkadian word sometimes means honey from wild bees and sometimes date-syrup. 
Those “thin crisp disks” aren’t all that unfamiliar to us. In The History of Bread we learn that, the first round, flat loaves of bread were made from heavy porridge-like pastes of flour and water that were baked in front of the fire. The nearest surviving equivalents are the chapattis of India and Mexican tortillas.
Leavening was a later development than those tortilla-like unleavened breads. As The History of Bread continues, The next development was fermentation to make the bread lighter and more digestible. This was probably an accidental discovery from leaving porridge in a warm place for a few days.
From other sources we can conclude that, among other forms, these leavened breads were similar to the modern Pita. That is, they were still flatbreads, but had the flavor and lightness that yeast brings to the table. Eventually, other forms of flatbread would arise.
Which brings us to the real purpose of this exercise---making a Babylonian-like barley bread. 
Dan has already had some success, using Margi’s recipe as a starting point, but using beer and honey instead of sugar and water/milk. This is my attempt to do the same:
At this point I was unprepared to try and actually replicate the process. But I wanted to at least capture the flavors of the original. So I choose to use Honey Brown lager as the beer, and bee honey as the food for the yeast. Modern active dry yeast would substitute for the fermented grain beer used by the Babylonians.
Margi’s original recipe is confusing in terms of  quantity, as she says 1 ½ cups or 10 ounces of liquid. Obviously that’s wrong. 1 ½ cups equals 12 ounces. But given the nature of the ingredients, 1 ½ cups is a better figure. I also proofed the yeast in 4 tablespoons of warm water, rather than the 2 she listed; again, because the barley flour would need more liquid to hydrate. 
Speaking of flour, barley flour commonly comes in 20 ounce packages, or 567 grams. I used the whole package, figuring 2 ounces more wouldn’t hurt, and could always be adjusted with more liquid.  
As it turns out, I could have used significantly more liquid. The dough didn’t feel right, to me. But, not knowing what to expect, I wanted to stay fairly close to the recipe. What I wound up with was
2 tsp dry active yeast
1 tsp honey
4 tbls warm water
12 ounces flat beer
20 oz barley flour
2 tsp salt

Stir the honey and yeast into the water and let bloom until frothy, about ten minutes.

Combine the flour and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix well with the paddle attachment. Add the yeast and beer to form a soft dough, adding more liquid as needed. Despite my better judgment I didn’t add enough, which eventually produces a rather crumbly dough.

Switch to dough hook and knead 5 minutes. 

Pat dough into a disk and transfer to an oiled pan, turning to coat all sides. Set aside for two hours. Dough will get slightly puffy, but will not actually rise. It certainly will not double in bulk, because there’s no gluten in barley. 

A comment on the last two steps. Kneading is done to develop the gluten strands. Being as there is, on practical terms, no gluten in barley, this is probably an unnecessary step. 
Proofing is another matter. Although the dough won’t rise, the yeast and enzyme activity helps lighten and sweeten the dough. So I’d consider it an essential step. In fact, proofing for an even longer time would not hurt anything. 

At this point I decided to experiment. I divided the dough in half. One piece was formed into a boule. The other half was divided into four equal pieces. I formed each of them into a ball, then rolled them out into disks about 3/8 inch thick. Due to the dryness of the dough, these cracked at the edges, but generally held together. 

These all went into a 450F oven. The baking time given in the recipe was totally unreasonable, so I set things up to monitor progress.

After 8 minutes, as specified in the recipe, internal temperature of the boule was a mere 86F---basically raw dough---and the disks felt like soft cookies. Obviously the given baking time was wrong.

At 12 minutes the disks had firmed up, but didn’t feel quite right. Internal temp on the boule was 122F. At 16 minutes the edges of the disks were browning, and they just felt right. So I transferred them to a wire rack to cool. Internal temp on the boule was 136.

At 33 minutes the internal temperature reached 190F---the minimum for fully baked breads. At 35 minutes the needle hit 199F, and the bread sounded hollow when tapped at the bottom.

Conclusion: Baking time should be 35-40 minutes. 

By this time the disks were cool, so I tasted one. The bread was much lighter than I’d expected, and only slightly chewy. Great flavor, however, with the nuttiness one gets from whole grain, and a nice crust; chewy without being brittle. Texture, overall, was slightly tighter than a well-made Southern cornbread. 

The boule, once it was cooled, had essentially the same text and texture. The crust was comparatively thicker, with more crunch. In fact, I'd have to describe it as brittle. This could reflect slight undercooking of the flat disks. 

My game plan, after making these, was to attempt a more traditional approach, starting out by fermenting barley and proceeding from there. But my next attempt, instead, will be to get the liquid/solid balance in line, to form a softer dough. 

Stay tuned for further developments 