Tea at Trianon: Ancient Egyptian Bread

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Ancient Egyptian Bread

From Ancient Origins:

A history enthusiast has baked loaves of ancient bread based on an ancient Egyptian recipe and using an ingredient that was 1,500 years old – yeast scrapings taken from ancient Egyptian bread pots. He claimed the outcome was very tasty!

Ancient Egypt was a society that was very much dependent on the grains that it grew in the very fertile Nile valley . It was used to make bread and even to brew beer , both staples in the Egyptian diet . We actually know quite a lot about the bread that the Egyptians ate because of ‘optical and scanning electron microscopy of desiccated bread loaves’ reports Science.

One amateur research has been intrigued for many years as to how the Ancient Egyptians made their bread and what it tasted like. Seamus Blackley, a successful American video game designer and entrepreneur, became interested in Ancient Egyptian bread some years ago. He had all the ingredients he needed to replicate how they made their bread and could even use the same type of millstones to grind grain into flour. Blackley only needed one thing- yeast, which was essential in the baking process of Egyptians 4000 years ago, as it is today. (Read more.)