Ancient Roman bread baked with wild grape yeast

In this video I am showing how to retrieve wild grape yeast to bake an authentic Ancient Roman bread. It will be accompanied by moretum, a white cheese spiced with herbs and garlic, commonly served with bread as a snack.

The common bread of ancient Rome, baked from wheat and/or barley, was a round loaf dissected into eight pieces to allow for easy portioning. The yeast used was wine yeast, simply obtained from fresh grape must. The yeast on the grapes is the same that allows the grape juice to ferment into wine. The yeast could be kept throughout the year by preserving a batch of each dough as a starter for the next day. Another way to “catch” wine yeast in summer, if you happen to have a vineyard at hand, is to simply place a bowl with a liquid flour-water mix between the vines, and wait for the wild yeast to infuse the dough, which happens in few hours. In absence of wine yeast you can also simply use baker's yeast.

For the bread you need: flour, yeast, concentrated grape must, salt and bay leaves.
For the moretum you need white cheese or ricotta, garlic, salt and mixed freshen herbs according to your taste.

You can find more recipes in my cookbooks "GARUM: Recipes from the Past“ (available in English, German, French and soon in Italian), "From Eden to Jerusalem: Recipes from the Time of the Bible“ (available in English, German and Italian), or "VEGETUS: Vegetarian Recipes from the Past“ (English, German, Italian). For quick and easy no-fuzz gourmet recipes there is "Cooking on the Move: 100 Recipes for Mobile Kitchens". And if you like, visit my website at https://trullocicerone.com.