Monthly Archives: August 2012

Cybus (Cheese Bread), Roman Breads

Cybus (Cheese Bread)

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It’s that time again…time to pull out the mixing bowl and make magic!  This time we’re doing cheesey bread, in a period style no less.  I like cheese and I really like bread, so with a Roman recipe we’re going to combine the two.

Cybus

Translation:

Cubed shape bread, with aniseed, fresh sheep’s cheese and olive oil (Ath. 114a/Faas, pp. 192)

Ingredients:

4 C Somolina Flour (wheat though a little semolina and/or traces of rye and barley would not be out of place…see note on flour)

1 C White flour

2 C Sheep’s milk cheese (feta or machango depending on taste desired)

3 Tbs olive oil + 1 tsp for coating of dough

1 tsp salt               1 tsp honey              1 ½  C water              1 tsp yeast

1 tsp Anise seeds (optional)

Redaction:

The Roman recipe is fairly sparse so I had to do a little experimenting and researching.  The above ingredient list is from playing around with various flours and flavors!

*A note about period flour.  Period flour was not just one type of flour or another.  Depending on where the flour was in the que of grinding depended on how much semolina, barley or rye might be found in the wheat.  Not matter where in the que though or how much of wheat flour was being ground, traces of other flours would show up.  This is because period grist mills did not clean between grinds.  Unlike today’s flour there was always a little extra to the wheat flour.

 

This is 4 cups of Semolina flour.  This is not what most people associate with bread, mostly… The texture is grainy and not silky smooth like a regular white or wheat flour is.  The bread texture produced from Semolina flour is just a little on the grainy side, more rough in texture.  Good but different and that is what we want to explore!

First step is to get the yeast going or at least introducing the yeast to the flour.  Mix the yeast, water and honey together to get the yeast bubbling and growing or if you like just put the yeast in the flour and mix well.  This is the point to add in the anise seeds if you wanted to.

Here I have both types of flours and the yeast ready to go.  Everything is well mixed together so that we can add in the cheese.  Now for this recipe, I use a good quality sheep milk cheese.  You can use a dry feta or even Parmesan.  Don’t limit yourself to just one type of cheese or even one cheese if you want to play around with flavors!

Mix the cheese and flour together and make a small well in the center of the mixture. Next the oil.

To this add in salt, honey and a bit of water…not to much water though.  We want a nice dough not a wet batter.

Next we’re going to make lumpy cheese dough!  Mix everything together.  Here is the first moment or two of stirring together.

Looks pretty rough doesn’t it?  Keep kneading!  The dough does get prettier.

This is much more uniform now.  I knead the dough till the texture is smooth and elastic.  Then I set aside to rise.

I’ve lightly covered the bread with olive oil.  For some reason this seems to help the rising and the flavor gets a little added boost.  The bowl is covered with a cloth and set in a warm(ish) spot to rise for roughly an hour to an hour and a half.

Once the dough has risen, I punch it down and place the dough on a metal sheet for the 2nd rise, usually about 30-45 minutes.  Till it’s nice and fluffy!

The dough is now ready for baking.

As a bread loaf, I have to admit this is pretty ugly looking.  Subsequent tries on this has shown that forming a round ball that are smooth and non lumpy form mostly round(ish) and smooth(ish) cheese bread rounds.

Here is a picture of the interior.  I’d offer you a taste but the bread is gone now…and it was very very tasty!  By the way this bread goes excellently with the Roman garlic herb cheese recipe.  They compliment each other very very well!

 

 

 

Roman Sweets, Sweet Patinae (Nut Pudding)

Sweet Patinae (Nut Pudding)

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Sweet Patinae

 

Translation:

An inverted patina: Roast pine nuts and chopped walnuts and grind with honey, pepper, and garum; milk and eggs and a bit of oil

(Giacosa, pg 161)

Turnover as a sweet.  Toast pine-kernels and broken and clean nuts, and pound with honey, pepper, liquamen, milk, eggs a little wine and oil  (cook in a shallow pan) and turn out on to a round serving-dish.

(Flower, pp. 103)

Nut custard turn-over (patina versatilis vice dulcis)

Pignolia nuts, chopped or broken nuts are cleaned and roasted and crushed with honey.  Mix in pepper, broth, milk, eggs, , a little honey and oil.  (Thicken slowly on fire with out boiling, fill in moulds, take care that the nuts do not sink to the bottom, bake in hot water bath when cold unmould.)

(Apicus, pp. 103/#143)

 

Ingredients:

1 cup pine nuts 1 cup walnuts               1 cup almonds

5 Tbs honey                 ½ tsp ground pepper    1 tsp garum

3 eggs                          1 cup half and half         1 Tbs oil

½ cup wine

Giacosa, pg. 161.

 

Redaction:

First I gathered the ingredients together.

The nuts were probably roasted either on a clay sheet in an oven or on top of an oven in a frying pan.  (Flower/Giacosa) I roasted these nuts in the oven on a cookies sheet.

Here are the roasted walnuts and unskinned roasted hazelnuts.

And the roasted pine nuts.  Pine nuts roast a lot faster then walnuts or hazelnuts, so keep an close aye on them!  Pine nuts are waaaay to expensive and tasty to waste burning.

Here the roasted nuts are all gathered in individual bowls.

When they were done, I ground them in a small electric grinder,

though I am sure that if labor and time were not an issue, kitchen slaves could have ground the nuts into as fine a paste. Since I had no kitchen slaves, I settled for an automatic grinding this time.  I have found that grinding by hand (or at least my hand) that using a mortar and pestal that the nuts do not come out fine.  I believe this is due to user error and not the grinding potential of the mortar and pestle.

Once the nuts were roughly ground I mixed them with the honey, pepper, and red wine.

The eggs were combined with the half and half and oil.  Once the egg mixture was well blended, I combined this with the nut and spice mixture.  This mixture was poured into a casserole and bake for around 20 minutes at 350.

I added a sweet red wine on hand, not having a white wine available.  The commercially available white wines would have been a good addition; however I find I do not like the chemical tastes and with several gallons of home made meads etc on hand I decided to deplete my stock of home made non chemical wines.

The half and half used is from a cow.  There was an option to use goat milk which would have been just as likely as milk from a cow to have been used, possibly more so.  The option to use regular milk, I do not believe would have been as good a choice as the milk would not have had full body of cream as straight from the animal milk would have.  The addition of half and half gives this dish a very rich and creamy taste. Peppercorns were ground in a mortar and pestle.  The eggs used were organic farm raised, closer to period; however regular store bought eggs would have worked with the same results.

The finished desert.  Very tasty and very firm!  This is not nearly as soupy as the pear patinae (probably due to the fruit being softer and gushier)  sort of a firm crunchy oatmeal but much tastier!

 

Roman Cookery

Giacosa NOT Herkotz

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When I first started redacting, I did a common mistake in that I assumed that Herkotz was the author of the book A Taste of Ancient Rome.  This is my mistake.  The author is Ilaria G. Giacosa, while Anne Herkotz is the translator.  If you see my redactions with the name of Herkotz as the author…please disregard this and know that the correct research reference is Giacosa.

I have tried to correct this error in all subsequent Roman redactions though I have missed some corrections in my older posts.  I do not wish lead any one astray who wants to use my redactions and research for their own cooking needs.

Panis Alexandrinus (Cumin and Honey Bread), Panis Alexandrinus (Cumin and Honey Bread), Roman Breads, Roman Cookery

Panis Alexandrinus (Cumin and Honey Bread)

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When I was doing the Roman research paper for Steppes Artisan (and Laural’s Prize Tourny), I was reading about the different breads eaten at banquets.  One of the odder ones struck me as strange but yummy.  I mean really, who puts cumin in bread…with honey even?!  I knew the Romans were a little strange in their eating, but seriously?  So of course I HAD to try this.  Oh my…I must say, either my palate has changed for all time or this bread is really really really good!  You have to try this at least once.

Panis Alexandrinus

Cumin and Honey Bread

Translation:

A popular and frequently mentioned bread.  We do not know exactly how it was made except that it contained Egyptian cumin, hence the name and probably honey. (Faas, pp. 191)

Ingredients:

4 C Flour

2 Tbs cumin (Egyption if possible)

1 tsp salt

1 C Honey + 1 tsp for yeast

1 C water

1 tsp yeast.

 

Redaction:

First mix 1 tsp of honey with yeast and water in a small cup or bowl allow to sit for 5 minutes.

Here is the honey and the 2 tbs of cumin, the milky looking cup contains the honey, water and yeast foaming just a little.

Next, in a larger bowl, mix the flour salt and cumin together.

(In this picture I had added the yeast originally for the first batch…the honey makes this bread very dense so the yeast needs a little help, so I suggest doing yeast in water and honey to give the yeast a little extra head start…)

Next add in the honey and yeast mixture.

*A note about period flour.  Period flour was not just one type of flour or another.  Depending on where the flour was in the que of grinding depended on how much semolina, barley or rye might be found in the wheat.  Not matter where in the que though or how much of wheat flour was being ground, traces of other flours would show up.  This is because period grist mills did not clean between grinds.  Unlike today’s flour there was always a little extra to the wheat flour.

Once the dough has been kneaded for 5 minutes (for a better crumb)

coat with oil, place in a bowl and allow to sit for 90 minutes in a warm spot, covered with a towel.  After 90 minutes, remove the dough from the bowl and do a quick kneed, 30-60 seconds.

Place the dough in a greased square pan

Here is the original cumin and honey loaf.

And now the interior of this loaf.

This is very very dense.  The second baking, with the yeast given a bit of a head start, also produced a dense heave loaf but less dense then the first.

I am still playing around with this recipe myself.  I find the taste incredible but the crumb still much denser then I am use to modernly.  The bread may just be a dense type of bread and may never achieve a fluffy crumb but I keep trying for fun!

 

Classes, Coffee in Period class at Pennsic 2012

Coffee in Period Class

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This is the overview with out the pictures.  For the full research, check out Medieval Research Papers > Coffee in Period.  The class was hands on with lots of discussion.

Highlights from the class:

One gentleman comment how he was instructed to let the coffee boil, and then pull off the fire for the length of a prayer (roughly 1 minutes) and to repeat twice more with sugar added.  Also the adding of sugar to the coffee while making.  Boiling 3 times was the suggested by  current connoisseurs of yummy Turkish coffee,(I could only find references to boiling twice at most in period but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t boiled 3x with sugar!)

There was a lively discussion on types of pans used for the actual roasting of the coffee.  I described the picture of one period dish looking much like a modern wok, though Hattox ( Coffee and Coffeehouses author) mentions a metal sheet on several occasions also used to roast beans over hot fires.  (Metal sheets used for cooking can be found in several of the cooking text…seems to be an easy item to use and carry!)

One young gentleman did an impromptu, and much welcomed, display on recreated deep ceramic/clay dishes from which men at the coffee houses drank from.  This young man brought in 3-4 cups that looked like small painted clay soup bowls that were recreated from archeological digs of re-discovered coffee houses ruins.  His replicates were estimated by the experts who recreated them from the original fragments to be roughly 7mm off (either lager or smaller) then the originals.  I had to say this was one of my favorite parts!  The sharing of knowledge and actually being able to handle an item that would have been used in period.  That was my “Squeeee!” moment of the class!

One lady came up after class to point out that, as a barista, not all blonde roasts give more caffeine then dark roasts.  Some do, some don’t, though the rule of thumb is the lighter the roast the more oil still in the bean equaling more caffeine with a darker roast having more flavor.

I must say the class was very enjoyable and I have to say the people who came to talk and watch the roasting of beans was just awesome!

 

 

 

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Return from Pennsic 2012

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After coming home from Pennsic 2012 , a very wet year, I am all but bouncing to do MORE cooking.  I can not wait to break into two of the 3 books I bought.  (I had wanted to get one more but budget constraints are the pits!)

I have a few Roman dishes I’ll be posting this week and next, but for now I shall post the two classes from Pennsic.  I hope every one who could go had as much fun (or more) then I!!