Pliny on Bread
From Naturalis Historia (Natural History). Pliny the Elder. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. London. Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 1855.
BOOK XVIII, CHAP. 26. (11)—THE VARIOUS KINDS OF LEAVEN.
Millet is more particularly employed for making leaven; and if kneaded with must,1 it will keep a whole year. The same is done, too, with the fine wheat-bran of the best quality; it is kneaded with white must three days old, and then dried in the sun, after which it is made into small cakes. When required for making bread, these cakes are first soaked in water, and then boiled with the finest spelt flour, after which the whole is mixed up with the meal; and it is generally thought that this is the best method of making bread. The Greeks have established a rule that for a modius of meal eight ounces of leaven is enough.
These kinds of leaven, however, can only be made at the time of vintage, but there is another leaven which may be prepared with barley and water, at any time it may happen to be required. It is first made up into cakes of two pounds in weight, and these are then baked upon a hot hearth, or else in an earthen dish upon hot ashes and charcoal, being left till they turn of a reddish brown. When this is done, the cakes are shut close in vessels, until they turn quite sour: when wanted for leaven, they are steeped in water first. When barley bread used to be made, it was leavened with the meal of the fitch,2 or else the chicheling vetch,3 the proportion being, two pounds of leaven to two modii and a half of barley meal. At the present day, however, the leaven is prepared from the meal that is used for making the bread. For this purpose, some of the meal is kneaded before adding the salt, and is then boiled to the consistency of porridge, and left till it begins to turn sour. In most cases, however, they do not warm it at all, but only make use of a little of the dough that has been kept from the day before. It is very evident that the principle which causes the dough to rise is of an acid nature, and it is equally evident that those persons who are dieted upon fermented bread are stronger4 in body. Among the ancients, too, it was generally thought that the heavier wheat is, the more wholesome it is.
1 Or grape-juice. This must have tended to affect the taste of the bread.
2 Ervum.
3 "Cicercula." See B. xxii. c. 72.
4 This remark is founded upon just notions.
Pliny the Elder also describes using barm from making beer. This is yeast, as opposed to the sourdough noted above, for leavening.
In Gaul and Spain, where they make a drink by steeping corn in the way that has been already described—they employ the foam which thickens upon the surface as a leaven: hence it is that the bread in those countries is lighter than that made else- where.” (Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis –Book XXVI-12)
Les Leftovers wrote an interesting article called "The Yeast Paradox" (https://leslefts.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-yeast-paradox.html). He writes:
“In bread history, this note from Pliny the Elder has a particular importance. . . The drink was cervisia, the Gaul's primitive beer. Since beer was already known to the Egyptians and (at least by reputation) to the Greeks, it is already a mystery why a long list of writers in Latin - as late as Gregory de Tours - found it necessary to describe the drink, as though it were a novelty. But in terms of bread, a more relevant mystery is: why did the Romans never adopt this leavening method? . . .“As it happens, Pliny lists the Roman methods for leavening bread, one of which involved millet, which, if kneaded with must, could be kept for a year; the same was true of wheat-bran [see above]. . .
“In other words, the Romans used sourdough to leaven their bread. Leaving one to wonder why, if they knew that bread from Gaul and Spain was lighter, did they not make at least some bread with the same method? This is all the more striking given the Roman love of luxury and variety. . .
“This had one advantage, certainly: bread made with sourdough lasts far longer than bread made with yeast. In medieval times, rents were often paid in bread, something which would have been hard to do with yeast-leavened bread and its short shelf life.
“Probably for most of the Middle Ages even scholars had long forgotten that the Gauls had leavened their bread with the foam from beer. This is ironic, given that beer itself quickly became a standard drink under the Franks and was even made by monks. But in 1560, Bruyerin, having cited Pliny's earlier statement, wrote that the custom endured among the Flemish "which is why theirs is lighter than other bread." And so, in the sixteenth century, at least some of the French knew that one obtained a lighter bread by using yeast.
“And yet, not only did French bakers not adopt this method, some actually fought it.
“Marie de Medici (Henri IV's Italian queen) is thought to have introduced rolls made with both milk and yeast, rolls which as a result were known as "the queen's bread"; as a class such bread was known as "softish bread" - pain mollet. Others imitated this, to the irritation of ordinary bakers, who put it out that using yeast in bread was actually harmful. In March 1668, the Faculty of Medecine decided to examine the question; the result was that they banned its use. The question then went before the French Parlement (more of a supreme court than a judicial body) which first sought the lieutenant of police's opinion. He too condemned its use, along with that of milk (which had already been used in bread in the fourteenth century). Nonetheless the Parlement decided on March 21, 1670, that yeast could be used in bread (though only that of Paris). . .
“In the latter half of the eighteenth century, Dr. Malouin, one of the great French experts on bread, wrote: "The discovery of the use of yeast in making dough is a remarkable epoch in baking, in facilitating the making of bread, because it makes the dough rise faster, and because one is less obliged to work it, if one has put in yeast." As discoveries go, this one might have been considered a long time in coming, especially since Malouin himself cites Pliny's text.
“Nor was this the end of the story. All the way into the nineteenth century, yeast was referred to in French as "artificial leavening", despite being as natural in origin as sour dough. And today? It is not rare to find French artisan bakers who consider sourdough the true traditional leavening agent, and yeast a foreign innovation, still to be regarded with suspicion.”
BOOK XVIII, CHAP. 27.—THE METHOD OF MAKING BREAD: ORIGIN OF THE ART.
It seems to me quite unnecessary to enter into an account of the various kinds of bread that are made. Some kinds, we find, receive their names from the dishes with which they are eaten, the oyster-bread,1 for instance: others, again, from their peculiar delicacy, the artolaganus,2 or cake-bread, for example; and others from the expedition with which they are prepared, such as the "speusticus,"3 or "hurry-bread." Other varieties receive their names from the peculiar method of baking them, such as oven-bread,4 tin-bread,5 and mould-bread.6 It is not so very long since that we had a bread introduced from Parthia, known as water-bread,7 from a method in kneading it, of drawing out the dough by the aid of water, a process which renders it remarkably light, and full of holes. like a sponge: some call this Parthian bread.
The excellence of the finest kinds of bread depends principally on the goodness of the wheat, and the fineness of the bolter. Some persons knead the dough with eggs or milk, and butter even has been employed for the purpose by nations that have had leisure to cultivate the arts of peace, and to give their attention to the art of making pastry. Picenum still maintains its ancient reputation for making the bread which it was the first to invent, alica8 being the grain employed. The flour is kept in soak for nine days, and is kneaded on the tenth with raisin juice, in the shape of long rolls; after which it is baked in an oven in earthen pots, till they break. This bread, however, is never eaten till it has been well9 soaked, which is mostly done in milk mixed with honey.
1 Ostrearius.
2 From ἄρτος and λάγανον, bread and cake.
3 From σπεύδω, to hasten. A sort of crumpet, probably.
4 Furnaceus.
5 Artopticcus.
6 "Clibanis." The clibanus was a portable oven or mould, broader at the bottom than the top.
7 Aquaticus.
8 See cc. 10 [A variety of spelt was called by this name; but it was more generally applied to a kind of flummery pottage or gruel.] and 29 of this Book.
9 It would appear to be somewhat similar to our rusks.
BOOK XVIII, CHAP. 28.—WHEN BAKERS WERE FIRST INTRODUCED AT ROME.
There were no bakers at Rome until1 the war with King Perseus, more than five hundred and eighty years after the building of the City. The ancient Romans used to make their own bread, it being an occupation which belonged to the women, as we see the case in many nations even at the present day. Plautus speaks of the artopta, or bread-tin, in his Comedy of the Alularia,2 though there has been considerable discussion for that very reason among the learned, whether or not that line really belongs to him. We have the fact, too, well ascertained, in the opinion of Ateius Capito, that the cooks in those days were in the habit of making the bread for persons of affluence, while the name of "pistor"3 was only given to the person who pounded, or "pisebat," the spelt. In those times, they had no cooks in the number of their slaves but used to hire them for the occasion from the market. The Gauls were the first to employ the bolter that is made of horse-hair; while the people of Spain make their sieves and meal-dressers of flax,4 and the Egyptians of papyrus and rushes.
1 Which ended A.U.C. 586.
2 A. ii. s. 9, 1. 4. "Ego hine artoptam ex proxumo utendam peto." It is thought by some commentators, that the word used by Pliny here was, in reality, "Artoptasia," a female baker; and that he alludes to a passage in the Aulularia, which has now perished.
3 Which in Pliny's time signified "baker."
4 The Stipa tenacissima of Linnæus, Fée says; or else the Lygeum spartum of Linnæus.
