Roman bread

[Caius Fabius]

The roman soldiers carried a quern on their mule, probably 1 per tent group. We tried to let the troops at the last AD43 event grind their own wheat, but it was not a happy experiment. Maybe our quern needs to be resurfaced.

I did have good results with 'twice baked' bread with whole wheat flour, and rye flour, and for officers whole wheat with currents added. Do not use bleached flours when cooking Roman military panis! I also had some wheat and rye flour mixed. (You have to designate which is which, some people have allergies).

The twice baked break was not hard, although it was dry. I baked it a month before the event, and baked 25 pounds of flat bread. The bread was cut into pieces, (stamped with a 'unit' stamp) and stored in linen bags until the issue.

I still have a couple of pieces in my kit. With all the recent rains, they are a bit moldy, but you can scrape that off.

I used the same techniques as used by modern American Civil War reenactors to bake 'hard-tack'.