Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

Don't worry, I am not actually about to start spouting poetry, but I really am about to write an entire blog post about a loaf of bread. Trust me, it's actually a pretty cool loaf of bread.

Very early one morning, in the manner of bakers the world over, a lone baker in 79AD put a loaf of bread in an oven. I know, this is hardly earthshattering news. That same baker had probably doing the exact same thing every morning of his life up to the day he baked this very special loaf. Any other morning, and the baker would have delivered his bread to whatever customer it was meant for. Unfortunately for our craftsman, that happened to be the morning that Mt. Vesuvius chose to erupt so spectacularly, burying Pompeii, Herculaneum, the baker and the bread.

About 2000 years later, in the excavations that uncovered Herculaneum, the oven was reopened with the bread still inside. While obviously, the bread itself wasn't going to nourish our intrepid archeaologists, it was quite the interesting find. Duplicating the recipe took some time, but if you have an interest in actually seeing it done, follow the link here: http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/past_exhibitions/2013/pompeii_and_herculaneum/pompeii_live/live_event/bread_recipe.aspx .

What is really neat about this, especially for those of us interested in crafting worlds like might have existed in far older times, is the kind of detailed image we can get of what daily life was actually like. I bake bread from scratch fairly often, but I would not have realized a tradesman would mark his loaves before they were baked. Not that it doesn't make sense, it simply wound not have occured to me. No doubt, if I were to make loaves of bread meant to be like ancient bread, I would have assumed that simple loaves, either round or oblong would be the prefered style. Instead, these loaves, while round, are deeply scored in the upper surface, resembling nothing more than a pizza. Another interesting detail is the cord that appears to have been baked into the bread, so that the large round loaf could be easily carried.

Funny how such a simple act, like baking a loaf of bread, could carry on more than 2000 years after your death. I only wish the poor doomed baker knew how many souls enjoyed his final loaf.

Cheers,

Michelle