The modern image of bread is commonly the rectangular-cubist white slice which goes in the toaster or sandwiches various fillings. Even the artisan revival caused some consternation as the rustic loaf does not fit well into a toaster. Bread has become an industrial artefact with mathematical parameters of production and consumption….and the wholemeal of yore, well it is consigned to the “cranks” despite science revealing to us that wholemeal has more anti-oxidants and  beneficial nutri-thingys than the far more sexy mango or avocado or other post-modern well-travelled buzz foods.

But it hasn’t always been so, in fact for the greatest part of our culinary history, bread was a very very different product than our white-sliced or hovis or even bloomer. Moderns would scarcely recognise ancient breads even depictions of the last supper got it wrong, with renaissance painters showing us a classic Italian pane di casa rather than a pita bread, which would have surely graced the Lord`s table.

At present I am living in Australia, the land of my birth. Apart from the obvious advantages of sun, sea surf and space, to my mind one of the great parts of living here is to be in contact with the Australian aborigines, here for 60,000 years before the European invasion. The people captain James Cook referred to as “the happiest people on earth”…well until we slaughtered them and virtually annihilated their culture.

The indigenous people hold a great many secrets, sadly many of them lost, not least their method of making “bread” also probably lost or at least extremely difficult to uncover. Fortunately, Jennifer Isaacs photo-documented one of the last bakers of ancient Australia.  Most indigenous Australians have of course been seduced with industrial white bread but some still use  the old methods replacing the original ingredients with white flour.

What are the “old methods”? The bread of indigenous Australia was unsurprisingly cooked in the ashes of a campfire. Even in classical times, the original Roman focaccia is documented as being cooked in the ashes, and the classical Greek loaf was similarly baked, except with a mini-oven clay dome or cloche covering it…a huge technological leap and one which enabled a higher rise and better crust. Many such domes or cloche were recovered during the excavation of Athens, and these were still being made by Devon potteries and exported to the Americas until the 19th century.

The “campfire” was actually a very special sort of fire, not simply the fires we construct when camping. In Australia, this fire was carefully burned with a particular wood so as to form a hot coal base with a good covering of soft white ash. This ash formed the “sole” on which the bread was placed. The soft ashes did not adhere to the loaf  forming a hot cushion and were easily brushed off. The top of the loaf was browned by the smouldering twigs carefully suspended over it.

Sounds like the almost-despised bannock doesn’t it? Not unsurprisingly as the bannock is the British focaccia really, both having their origins in this neolithic technique still existent in Australia. The bannock was elevated from the ashes on to the griddle or girdle of the Celtic peoples, the new hearth of the iron age, but is still baked in the ashes in some areas and by intrepid campers and luddites.

These ancient loaves would have been challenging to moderns as they were invariably crusty and hard, which was much modified by the Greek cloche. But again, these loaves were made from grain…usually barley oats or rye, and later emmer wheat, all of which tend to bake very firmly.

The original bread from the stone age which we can see in Australia, and is clearly the ancestor of “bread” was rarely made from an actual cereal . The commonest indigenous bread here was made from the seed of purslane. This is an interesting plant as it has a world-wide distribution and may have an extraordinarily ancient human connection, possibly being known even before the arrival of the aborigines in Australia 60,000 years ago. 

  I first became aware of it when reading the notes of an early settler who commented that when the aborigines (pitinjatjara tribe) arrived in a certain area at a particular time of year , obviously when the purslane (munyeroo/inwichika) was seed-heavy, they uprooted numerous plants, upending them on animal skins and winnowed the seeds. He commented that the people rapidly put on weight and became sleek.

The grinding technique employed is also unusual in that it was wet-grinding. The seeds were piled on a flat stone, sprinkled with increasing amounts of water and ground to a paste. The paste was then spilled over into a coolamon which is a large wooden bowl. From here it is deftly slipped into the ashes to form a small oval loaf of grey-purplish colour.

When the CSIRO (the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) investigated the nutritional content of the purslane seed, the readings almost went off the dial! Not only is the seed full of all the major nutrients and minerals, but has a complement of valuable fatty acids/oils, making it in today`s terms a super food, but interestingly one which is ignored in favour of more fashionable finds, such as the chia seed of the Andean civilisations. What this reveals is that a Neolithic hunter gatherer could easily gather enough of these seeds to make a digestible bread which is more nutritious than most other foods.

It is an efficient economy, providing maximum nutrition from minimal effort . A hunter-gatherer could subsist on this bread, obviously seasonal but also a “back-up” food. Indeed large caches of this stored seed were still being found long after the aborigines had been displaced. This is the beginnings of what we know as civilisation really, which depended on regular reliable source of nutritious food in exactly the same way as the great river civilisations arose in the “middle-east” dependant on barley and wheat. It also indicates our very ancient connection with “bread”.

This bread is not hard or heavy and only minimally crusty. Purslane is full of valuable and nutritious fatty acids/oil which we well know softens any dough-stuff. Unfortunately I haven’t  tasted it but rely on the notes of Jennifer Isaacs who took the wonderful photographs. She described it as nutty and like a sweet rye bread. I have great hopes of travelling to the pitantjatjara lands or those of the aranda to see if I can still find this bread. I have shown the photographs to indigenous friends, one older male had a fleeting memory of it, but others are as intrigued as myself. They are more familiar with the modern form which “aunty” can be seen baking in the ashes, but from supermarket white flour and probably leavened with baking soda/powder.

Interestingly this is the origin of the Australian “damper” sometimes baked in the ashes, but mostly in a camp-oven made of iron, and often trotted out as an authentic colonial bread, rapidly forgotten, as  baked without skill it is un-appetising….and the skill of baking in ashes is not at all common today! Trendy damper of course is usually baked in a bakers oven , making it more like a soda bread really. This does indicate the ubiquity of panary technique however. There is little doubt in my mind that the damper of the colonists was learned or re-learned from the aboriginal people.

The barkindji people of north western New South Wales are interesting in that they baked a similar bread from a true cereal, the panicum millet native to Australia. These people actually had a grain economy, were not nomadic and had huge grindstones, not the smaller portable ones of more nomadic peoples. But even the nomadic peoples left their smaller gindstones in place for their return to that area…now sometimes found, sadly forgotten and unused. When the first English explorer entered their country he was astonished at the grain economy and actually lamented that he could see the beginnings of a settled culture which could have evolved….who knows where, and he commented his tracks would inevitably lead to its destruction. It is clearly the origin of most cultures who in antiquity settled around sources of food such as native cereal crops, as hunting and gathering became impossible due to population pressures.

Imagine the original inhabitants of areas such as Kurdistan where wheat grew naturally, when they made their breads using this ancient technique. The grass seeds which may have been the original ingredients of bread, did not have gluten, and so were definitely flat. Those who first used wheat would have been thrilled at the lightness possible with wheat, especially as doughs were left to ferment and become even lighter, not to mention more nutritious, as the fermentation unlocks many nutrients.

 These were softened with the ancient oil-seeds giving us the habit of dipping bread in Olive oil, and it is no co-incidence that the Olive and Wheat are both natives of Kurdistan. It is not hard to visualise these people selecting the best wheat which opened the way to modern breads. 

Wild wheat was still being used into the Sumerian period from 3000 bce to 2000 bce, as it is often mentioned in the cuneiform tablets found at Sumerian sites as being a gift brought from the king of neighbouring areas to the ruler of Sumer. This is the time of the first written records, so it is interesting that wild wheat is often mentioned as an important food, important enough to be a gift from one ruler to another. The Sumerians in fact talk of bread being “seen in the shrines” so it also had extra status as a devotional or ritual food, obviously important because of its superior nutrition and ability to enable settled living and the development of more complex culture. (this also perhaps being the origin of the sacred status of bread as exemplified by the belief that the communion host symbolises the “body….. of Jesus Christ”.

In ancient Australia, breads were also made from a variety of grass seeds most of which are ignored today as stock fodder, eventhough research has shown their nutrition to be excellent and their status as indigenous plants ensuring sustainability . It still is the undiscovered continent in many ways having the extraordinary status of not having one single indigenous food item as common fare.

 Bush “foods” are used by gourmets and the adventurous, but largely as flavourings to the European and Asian foods which are the staples. Unfortunately because we killed-off the only people who knew, there are a great many fungi and other foods we will never enjoy. For example Australia has numerous truffles with none game to eat them.

The ancient seed bread is the pancake really, without the pan, and probably a lot less “cake” than we have become used to. In this way, as a familiar pancake we can re-create this form of bread and enjoy it as did our forebears. Most cereals from Quinoa to Buckwheat(crepes) can be enjoyed in this way and can worthily accompany todays foods with a little creativity and borrowing. Blends of Millet and sesame , wet ground (in a blender even), or Quinoa and chia and many others are easily made , and rolled around delicious fillings, as is common in less industrialised places. These are more than worthy replacements for the boring and soulless white bread sandwiches which haunt us.

The stellar trajectory of the once vital commodity, bread (in its many forms), to its modern status as bland filler is truly a wonder of the ascent of man.

-JD