In Italy, under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed. Yet they produced Micha

[dolari]

I've decided to skip remaking that bread, and move to the next recipe - I'll come back to it some other time. In the meantime, here's the recipe I used. Make sure to use 14 weight ounces of flour, and not 14 liquid ounces like I did. ;)

Although I just noticed the copy-and-pasted recipe from http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/roman/fetch-recipe.php?rid=roman-soft-bread had everything redone as metric....

Original Roman "Recipe:"

Amongst the Greeks it is a bread called 'soft' which is made with a little milk and sufficient olive oil and salt. The dough must be made supple. The bread is called 'Cappadocian' since for the most part 'soft' bread is made in Cappadocia. The Syrians call such bread lakhma and in Syria this bread is delicious through being eaten warm.

Modern version:

600g strong white flour
125ml warm water
1½ tsp dried yeast
1 tsp sugar
60ml olive oil
75ml warm milk
½ tsp sea salt

In a cup, dissolve the sugar in the warm water (which should be at or just slightly above body temperature). Sprinkle the dried yeast on top of this, cover and leave in a warm dry place for about 15 miutes, until the mix starts frothing.

Sift the flour into a large bowl, mix in the salt and then create a crater in the middle. Pour the yeast mix, the olive oil and milk into this. Gradually mix the flour into the liquid ingredients to form a dough. Knead this firmly for about five minutes (adding more flour or water as necessary) until the dough is firm.

Take a 500g bread tin and grease liberally with oil before lining with a dusting of flour. Press the dough into the bottom of the tin, cover with a cloth and leave to stand in a warm place for about an hour until it has risen.

Bake in an oven pre-heated to 200°C for about 40 minutes until the crust is a pale golden colour. This loaf should have a soft centre and is excellent with soups.

Comments

[chaoticset.livejournal.com]

When I took physics, my head almost fell off the first time I realized that ounces converted into both mass and volume... >.>

[carly-kai.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of Air Canada discovering that a Boeing could glide into Gimli (butt ass nowhere Canada) because there was a mix up between litres and gallons of av gas...

Anyhow, the use of metric and imperial measurements in the same recipe sounds like it was written by the famous french sadist, Julia Child. It's amazing how many people do not know the metric equivalent of the hour and minute.


Quack.