Scientist creates 'light and airy' bread from ancient Egyptian YEAST (2024)

A loaf of bread has been made using 4,500-year-old yeast found in Ancient Egyptian pottery.

Egyptologist Dr Serena Love and microbiologist Richard Bowman helped tech developer Seamus Blackley collect yeast samples two weeks ago.

He used UV sterilisers on it before feeding it organisms to prepare it for baking over the weekend.

Mr Blackley, who invented the Xbox, then used wheat typical of the time - barley, einkorn and kamut to make the loaf, along with water and unfiltered olive oil.

He live-tweeted hisunusual project, sharing a snap of the finished bread with the caption: 'The scoring is the Hieroglyph representing the "T" sound (Gardiner X1) which is a loaf of bread. The aroma is AMAZING and NEW.

'This crazy ancient dough fermented and rose beautifully,' said Mr Blackley.

'It’s much sweeter and more rich than the sourdough we are used to. It’s a big difference. After this cools we will taste!'

After trying the baked goods, Mr Blackley described it as 'light and airy'.

Headded: 'The aroma and flavor are incredible. I’m emotional. It’s really different, and you can easily tell even if you’re not a bread nerd. This is incredibly exciting, and I’m so amazed that it worked.'

Mr Blakely's wife even enjoyed a slice of the sourdough with some jam.

Now he intends to learn Ancient Egyptian baking methods to perfectly replicate bread from thousands of years ago — even down to the pots they used.

University of Iowa biologistRichard Bowman devised a method of collecting microbes from ancient ceramics without damage.

'You pump a fluid in carefully with a syringe and some sterile cotton in contact with the ceramics. It soaks in and you vacuum it back out,' Mr Bowman told The Times.

'Our extraction process was basically a form of microbiological fracking,' Mr Blackley added.

The solution feeds the microbes, he explained, adding that 'it doesn’t take long for these guys to wake up'.

Mr Blackley sampled microbes from bread moulds, beer vessels and other artefacts from the collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Harvard's Peabody Museum.

The collections of the museum in Boston even feature a real Egyptian load of bread.

Before any dough can be kneaded, however, the pair had to distinguish which of the collected microorganisms are from ancient times and which might be modern contaminants from the museum or the archaeologists who unearthed the pots.

'At the bio lab, we will characterise and separate out the various organisms we harvested from the vessels and breads,' Mr Blackley wrote on Twitter.

We can then see what’s modern, and likely a contaminant, and what’s old. We will then make a guess, using all the samples, of what the actual Egyptian mix was.'

Mr Blackley is of the opinion that those who bake the foods of antiquity have painted a poor picture of ancient baking skills.

'They make these flat disgusting cakes,' hetold The Times.

'I promise you that a Roman centurion coming back from being away would kill a baker that gave him a piece of s*** like that.'

And in ancient Egypt, he added, travellers would encounter 'three pyramids clad in white limestone. They are dazzling white. You are in the capital of the f***ing world.'

'These people did not have garbage food,' he continued.

'They loved bread. They were very good at making fancy breads and workaday breads for the army.'

Once they have finished their baking, the pair are planning to write an academic paper describing their research.