Something a bit different from my usual posts… I baked a panis quadratus! Bread in the style of Ancient Rome! I don’t know why it has never occurred to me that you could do that. But here it is. And it was absolutely delicious.
I used this recipe and added some nigella seeds as well. Which the Romans did use so I think it’s an absolutely legit addition! :-)
For this first try I did tie the string around the dough but I don’t think I’ll be doing that in future. There was a bit of colour staining and although it is probably fine I don’t really want to take a risk that the dye in the string could be harmful…
One of the theories, about why there was a string tied around the bread, is that it was for carrying the bread. And that seems like a perfectly good reason to me. It’s not like they had bag-for-life hanging about…
