Scientist Baked And Tasted Bread With 4,500-Year-Old Yeast – It Was Incredible!

Bread is magic. This seemingly simple staple made of dough and yeast has evolved for centuries since the founding of it. There is multiple accounts of bread and yeast in the Bible, history of the Englishmen and European are filled with how bread becomes part of their daily lives, their culture. And today, bread has spread to various cuisines from Asian to Middle-eastern.

Thus, it’s not weird if you stumble upon ancient pottery that can be dated back when religions revolved around Sun God and mummies. And in that ancient pot, you find samples of ancient yeast that are still dormant. That’s what Seamus Blackley found and like any other inquisitive minds, we wonder what bread tastes like that back then.

Fun fact though, Seamus Blackley is also the father of Xbox because yes, he’s also the man of a team that persuaded Xbox to build the console. And here’s his journey to revive ancient Egyptian bread. Check out the full Twitter thread on this link!

And so, it all began two weeks ago…

Blackley began his Twitter thread by explaining that he worked with an Egyptologist and a microbiologist in an attempt to recover yeast from an ancient Egyptian container that is at least 4,500-years-old. The pottery may have been used for fermenting bread and beer, so the bread-enthusiast is eager to see what kind of bread people used to eat back in those days.

While Blackley was eager for bread, Egyptologist Dr. Serena Love who worked with him in recovering the samples was enthusiastic for beer, in her interview with Bored Panda. She said, “I got us access to museum collections and Seamus collected some samples in late July. We’ve been working on this since May.”

He kept one. Understandable. We’re all curious as hell as well.

Blackley awakened the yeast with freshly milled Barley and Einkorn flour.

Looks very homey, then it was for ‘experimentation’.

No modern wheat is involved!

Teaching themselves the baking technique of the Old Kingdom, Blackley began the process.

…except for this part, because ancient Egyptians didn’t have ovens.

This reads ‘T’ in Hieroglyph which probably reads ‘TASTY’.

Jokes aside, Blackley did explain that it’s really tasty, fresh and amazing.

Just to show how amazing this ancient bread tastes with blueberry jam.

Everyone loved the thread and have been cracking ancient Egyptian jokes!