Medieval Egyptian Bread with Pistachios and Almonds

Welcome to our kitchen. Today we prepare medieval Egyptian bread with sesame seeds and nuts from a 14th-century cookbook. We start with the ingredients. We need white wheat flour, sourdough, sesame oil, sesame seeds, almonds, and pistachios. We prepare a dough with 450 grams of flour, 2 pinches of salt, 2 tablespoons of sourdough, about 70 milliliters of warm water, and 150 milliliters of sesame oil. Then we add the almonds and pistachios, coarsely crushed, and the sesame seeds. We used about 40 grams each of seeds and nuts. There are no directions about whether to toast the seeds and nuts, anyway the ones on the surface of the bread will toast during the cooking. The ratio between flour, sesame oil, seeds, and nuts is recommended by the author, but you can change it. To obtain a softer bread, you may add more water. This recipe is collected in an extensive Egyptian cookbook, which includes more than 800 recipes for food, beverages, medicinal remedies, incense, perfumes, and more, translated into English with the title Treasure Trove of Benefits and Variety at the Table. You find the original title of this source in the description below. The second book is dedicated to bread and includes 10 recipes described in detail, like the one we are preparing today. As we mentioned before, in the text, we find information about the ratio among the ingredients, a fact quite rare in the ancient and medieval Italian cookbooks. Bread, as writes the Egyptian author, must be made with white wheat flour, kneaded for a long time, adding water a bit at a time. The dough has to be not excessively soft nor hard. It is essential baking the bread at low heat to prevent it from burning outside and remaining raw in the internal part. Before heating it, the author recommends leaving it to rest and cool down. In this cookbook, we find several references to yeast, called caramira. Exactly as described by Pliny in the 1st century, one of the methods to obtain yeast is keeping aside a piece of the dough of the previous day or making sourdough, but there are also mentioned other kinds of yeast, among which one obtained by the fermentation of ale. The general directions about how to prepare bread in this Egyptian cookbook are not very different from the recommendations by Galen or some medieval Italian physicians, such as the anonymous author of De Flore Dietarum, dating to the 11th century, or Michele Savonarola, who lived in the 15th century. To know more about yeast and bread in the Antiquity and Middle Ages and read an article dedicated to the figure of the Egyptian cook according to this medieval source, check out our Patreon page, in which you find several articles about historical food and translations of sources of cooking and dietetics. Moreover, we recommend reading our books Ancient Roman Cooking and Registrum Coquine, a medieval cookbook, available in print and e-book editions on Amazon in English and Italian. To support our work, you can also buy us a beer or purchase our merchandise. You find all the links in the description below. We let the bread leaven overnight, then we shape four round bread rolls, two fingers high, as specified by the author. We bake the bread in the oven for about 35 minutes, but the cooking time may change depending on the hardness of the dough and the flour you used and the size of the bread rolls. This bread turned out intensely flavored, with the seeds and nuts pleasantly toasted. Sesame oil gives complexity and aroma to the bread, with its nutty, delicious flavor. A rich bread, perfect with honey, but also to accompany meat or fish. This bread must be eaten fresh because the day after it turns quite dry and hard, but it is nothing different from the typical recommendations that we read in the ancient and medieval sources, in which the authors repeat that bread must be freshly made. If you're interested in ancient foods and flavors, subscribe our channel and consider supporting us on Patreon.