Bread making and Archaeology

This week’s blog is a guest post by Heather Hayes-Bowlzer, who is studying Archaeology at UWTSD Lampeter. 

So last week in my lecture we made bread. Yep, you heard me right we made bread. But not just any sort of bread, we made bread that the people from ancient Crete would have made. And we made it using similar ingredients that they would have used at the time.

Okay, let me explain. My name is Heather and I am an Ancient History and Archaeology student here at UWTSD Lampeter. The lecture, taught by Dr Louise Steel, was all about what people on Crete did during their normal daily routines. One of the things that they did was make bread, and that was when we got our hands stuck in! It was really fun getting our hands sticky with making the bread.

The ingredients we used were emmer wheat, honey, warm water, live yeast and a pinch of salt and they were similar to what the people in ancient Crete used. Since we didn’t really know how they did this, a little guess work was needed. It was very messy but it was so much fun and we enjoyed learning about how the people of ancient Crete would have made their bread, which is something we take for granted today, but it was something that they would have relied heavily on in the past. I especially enjoyed the part when we kneaded the bread, as I found that it was very therapeutic.

After we made the bread we left it to prove whilst Dr Steel taught us all about the activities that the people of ancient Crete would have taken part in the household. It was extremely interesting; and I enjoyed learning about how the people of ancient Crete carried out their day to day activities. After the lecture we were surprised to find that the bread had doubled in size.

Dr Steel said that she would take the bread home and bake it. The next day we went to the lecture to the warm smell of bread and we found the bread that we had made in class yesterday. The bread had a dense texture, similar to that of soda bread and it had a thin crust. It smelt lovely and we were all eager to try it. However when we did, we found that it tasted absolutely awful!

Despite the taste

, I found the whole process of making the bread was extremely enjoyable, and I loved doing it.