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Xbox creator Seamus Blackley baked a 4,500-year-old Egyptian sourdough
- supernova87a 6y agoEven back then some guy said, "I just can't get this sourdough to come out looking like anything but a frisbee", shelved the hobby, and forgot about it for 4,500 years.
- jojobas 6y agoThey had conical vessels for baking, so it would be more like a warhead. And haven't invented frisbee yet.
- Vespasian 6y agoUnasked for baking advice: When shaping the dough you need to fold it in a few times and put a lot of tension on the top side before letting it rest (upside down) for the final time Right before putting it in the oven, it's important to cut it deeply and at an angle with a sharp blade (I use a razor blade)
- axaxs 6y agoI think we have different definitions of 'deep.' If you cut too deep, the entire loaf will split. My wife just posted this to facebook today: https://ibb.co/TPXyS4S https://ibb.co/TPXyS4S
- GreenWatermelon 6y agoNot gonna lie that bread is so freaking weird and creepy looking. No offence to your wife.
- axaxs 6y agoNo offense taken. It was a post showing what happened on both when a cut was too deep(which she does quite often, on accident) - bottom left on left image, center on right. Curious what you mean by weird...the design? She usually just messes with design. The white top is just flour for the soul purpose of design. I don't care if it looks like a squid, I'm just in it for the eating!
- Ericson2314 6y ago> “they were much sweeter than ours, you could eat them like apples,” she says. I like sourdough plenty, but can we revive that?!
- HarryHirsch 6y agoSalad onions? Like this: https://gardenseedsmarket.com/salat-zwiebel-globo-groswuchsige-sorte-schmackhaft-auch-roh.html https://gardenseedsmarket.com/salat-zwiebel-globo-groswuchsi...
- sebmellen 6y agoWunderbar
- aspaceman 6y agoLook into Walla Walla and Vidalia onions. They don't keep as long as the average onion, but some people with a sensitive palatte use Vidalias in place of yellow or white.
- nischalsamji 6y agoTotally tangential.. But as you mentioned Vidalia onions, do check this post out - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728132
- DoreenMichele 6y agoNot tangential at all. Actually directly answers the question, above. Had you not posted it, I likely would have. From the article: They’re classified as a sweet onion, and because of their mild flavor (they don’t make your eyes tear up), some folks can eat them like an apple. Most of my customers do.
- User23 6y agoI grew up hearing stories of the long lost Amelia Bedilia onion that you’d eat like an apple. As the story goes that variety was lost.
- OpticalWindows 6y agoI would definitely love to try bread from a 4,500 year old yeast culture.
- FandangoRanger 6y agoIf you make your own wild yeast culture you might have a much older one.
- kop316 6y ago(Copied from a sibling comment of mine): look at this site: https://sourdo.com/ https://sourdo.com/ Ed Wood did more or less the same thing in the 90s, it was covered in Nat Geo in Jan 1995. He sells the sourdough culture he got in Egypt.
- Baeocystin 6y agoThe Ologies podcast did an episode on this. It is an enjoyable listen. https://www.alieward.com/ologies/gastroegyptology https://www.alieward.com/ologies/gastroegyptology As fascinating a listen as it is, though, I do find his refusal to share with anyone other than the people currently living in Egypt bizarre and off-putting.
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- lurker2001 6y agothese 4500yr old yeast cultures are somewhat misleading. Your starter will adapt to your local environment, picking up whichever yeasts are in the air / grain you use.
- beached_whale 6y agoThe twitter feed has a load of info and this article talks to it a bit more, but great care went into preventing that https://www.sbs.com.au/food/article/2019/08/14/would-you-eat-bread-made-4500-year-old-yeast https://www.sbs.com.au/food/article/2019/08/14/would-you-eat...
- seanwilson 6y ago> picking up whichever yeasts are in the air I'm not sure this is actually true to the extent it is usually mentioned e.g. "Yeast grow on grain and arrive with the flour. One gram of flour contains about 13,000 yeast cells. I don’t deny that there are a few yeast in the environment that find their way into the starter, but by and large the yeast that will survive in the starter are the ones that like the menu there, i.e, the ones that have a taste for grain. Sure enough, they’re the ones that were on that grain in the first place. " http://www.wildyeastblog.com/sourdough-stories-myth/ http://www.wildyeastblog.com/sourdough-stories-myth/ or more discussion: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/37259/mythbusters-grain-yeast-or-air-yeast http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/37259/mythbusters-grain-yea... I'm sure I read about some kind of experiment involving creating a sourdough starter with sanitised air but I can't find it... Does anyone have something more scientific?
- lgeorget 6y agoThey sterilized the flour with an autoclave before feeding it to the yeast. https://twitter.com/SeamusBlackley/status/1241160369013321728?s=20 https://twitter.com/SeamusBlackley/status/124116036901332172...
- CydeWeys 6y agoNot if you take the kind of measures they're taking to maintain a fully sterile, sealed environment.
- jonas21 6y agoFor a second, I was afraid it was going to be Nathan Myhrvold.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoI thought it was going to be Irving Finkel, but his speciality is Mesopotamia. He went up to college to study Ancient Egypt, but then the egyptologist died and he switched to the Ancient Middle East.
- jacobwilliamroy 6y agoWhat part of the XBOX was invented? It was just Windows 2000 running on storebought PC parts.
- zorpner 6y agoThat's literally the invention -- the idea that a real, competitive gaming console could be built from commodity hardware.
- jacobwilliamroy 6y agoPeople already were building custom windows gaming computers before xbox. And some companies even sold prebuilt windows gaming computers before xbox. They ran at higher resolutions than xbox, with higher framerates, online connectivity. Plus many PC games did have and continute to have mod tools that gave users near total control over their games.
- Randor 6y agoHi, Seamus Blackley worked on the hardware team and is primarily remembered for developing the XBox controller. I didn't work with him but I am a former XBox team member.
- swebs 6y agoThe Gamecube predates that by a few months and also used commodity hardware.
- jacobwilliamroy 6y agoDid gamecube also run windows 2000?
- waste_monk 6y agoI want to try the bread. I wonder if they will end up making it available, as a kit or something.
- DoreenMichele 6y agoFrom the end of the article: And Blackley fantasizes about one day selling ancient Egyptian bread commercially. So keep your eye out. You may get your wish.
- kop316 6y agoIf you are interested, look at this site: https://sourdo.com/ https://sourdo.com/ Ed Wood did more or less the same thing in the 90s, it was covered in Nat Geo in Jan 1995. He sells the sourdough culture he got in Egypt.
- waheoo 6y agoI'm sure it has nothing to do with stolen / looted Egyptian artifacts residing in museums around the world.
- SirHound 6y agoIt’s bread
- blix 6y ago> Blackley fantasizes about one day selling ancient Egyptian bread commercially. I'm so glad he's taking a stand against cultural appropriation!
- Alex3917 6y agoSelling it commercially would be pretty much the exact opposite of cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation would be “posting a shitty, burned, flat loaf saying, ‘Welp I guess this is what the ancient Egyptians had to deal with!’”
- blix 6y agoI don't know what definition of cultural appropriation you are using where using someone else's culture for profit doesn't count.
- planetsmashr 6y agoSomeone better tell the Koreans who run the sushi restaurant down the street.
- prox 6y agoAppropriate : “to make your own” adpropriare "to make one's own," from Latin ad "to" (see ad-) + propriare "take as one's own," It means that I take something from culture X and pretend that it is from my culture, and/or in some cases twist it so that it makes my culture seem more superior.
- a012 6y agoA little bit disappointed that they didn't have a photo of cutting open that bread.
- puranjay 6y agoHere's a picture from his Twitter in case anyone is interested: https://twitter.com/SeamusBlackley/status/1254807987098550272?s=20 https://twitter.com/SeamusBlackley/status/125480798709855027...
- OJFord 6y agoWow... I thought I used a lot of butter! (Probably less than a fifth of that!)
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoYikes! Every slice is a different size. How do you make a sandwich with that?
- dredmorbius 6y agoWell, the Egyptian loaf would have been 4,200 years old before sandwiches were invented... https://www.britannica.com/topic/sandwich https://www.britannica.com/topic/sandwich
- 0-_-0 6y agoWell it looks like it didn't rise properly, maybe needs a better starter...
- FandangoRanger 6y agoIf you are a home brewer or even just interested, Patrick McGovern's book Ancient Brews: Rediscovered and Re-created is a must-read, he re-creates a number of beers and alcoholic beverages some of which have gone into production from the Dogfish Head people. The original recipes were analyzed from residue and remains on potsherds and historical accounts, then he provides a home brewer's guide at the end of each chapter so you can make something at least quite close to the brew at home.
- Baeocystin 6y agoThat sounds like a fun read. Thanks for telling us about it!
- DoreenMichele 6y agoI strongly approve this use of excessive, decadent wealth, connections and so forth. This is fantastic. Beats the hell out of most indulgences I see people pursue using the kinds of resources someone like this has access to.
- kortilla 6y agoAgree. This is much more interesting than yet another charter to Antarctica.
- DoreenMichele 6y agoMy favorite part of the entire article is where he asks the two people who gave him the most crap to team up with him and help him do it right. It's brilliant and gutsy and I admire his dedication to excellence. I'm so glad they both said "Yes." They also deserve respect for their dedication to excellence. No, they weren't just dogging him to be mean or something. They share his dedication to excellence.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoI'm not convinced this is excessive / decadent, those words I'd associate more with the tech CEO's, Saudi royalty, etc. It's bread, not a gold plated lamborghini.
- DoreenMichele 6y agoI was homeless for nearly six years. I got myself off the street by moving into an SRO. I still live in an SRO more than three years later. Most people in developed countries on planet earth today have completely decadent levels of wealth compared to literally billions of the people alive today, much less historic kings and queens. Yet many of us spend far too much time, money and effort on having walk-in closets full of clothes, getting cosmetic surgeries and similar. I mean the Kardashians basically make millions off of playing to the crowd and sharing their lifestyles of the rich and shameless lives with people who are paying their bills and have zero hope of ever living that way. It is mind boggling and pointless and I am appalled the world is okay with that while also being okay with widespread poverty. There are some incredibly perverse things going on in the world today and if people like the Kardashians did anything that was one tenth as interesting and useful as this experiment, the world would be a vastly better place. Instead, they sell clothes and makeup as if dressing up like them will make you a millionaire like them instead of just keeping them in comfort. Edit: which is to say my idea of decadent wealth, connections, etc is different from yours and I'm not apologizing for that and I don't feel compelled to agree with your set point for "decadence." This was like some kind of movie Quest where you gather rare and ancient artifacts to make magic. He literally did that and you're dismissing it as merely bread. (Also also: How many people could start with an argument on Twitter and end up with "So help me make bread that hasn't been made in 2000 years."? This is "decadent" for reasons having nothing to do with financial cost, though there is real cost involved. Not everyone has a backyard to bury pots in and try to figure out how you bake like they did in ancient Egypt. Etc.)
- uhxtvx 6y agoRtgf
- jungletime 6y agoBut what about the wheat? modern wheat is different for sure. I know because wheat products even in Europe have a different taste than here in North America
- carlmr 6y agoIt's mentioned in the article that they couldn't use modern wheat to grow the extracted yeast cultures.
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- Baeocystin 6y agoThey use Emmer wheat, which is the variety that would have been used at the time. It's still grown commercially on a small scale, so you can buy some to try out without too much cost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmer
- testawi7676 6y agoimportant?
- testawi7676 6y agotesty
- testawi7676 6y agotest
- testawi7676 6y agoyes
- sohkamyung 6y agoOff-topic: > “People assume they were primitive because they didn’t have iPhones,” says Blackley. “They were potentially more sophisticated because of that.” Didn't Egyptians have tablets? :-)
- huhtenberg 6y agoNot 4500 years old, but you can get a 150 year old "Oregon Trail" starter. All that's needed is a self-addressed envelope - https://carlsfriends.net https://carlsfriends.net
- mikepurvis 6y ago+1 for the Carl Griffith starter. I eventually baked mine by mistake (and replaced it with one from a local bakery in my city), but it was great and very robust for a long time. Tolerated being in and out of the fridge so I didn't need to be feeding it constantly.
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- hahamrfunnyguy 6y agoMy big question with all this is, how does he know it is ancient yeast? Yeast mutates rapidly, so simply noting that it didn't taste like modern sourdough isn't enough for me. There are a couple of scenarios, contamination of the starter and there seems to be no guarantee that the yeast he used for his initial culture were from ancient times. As a homebrewer, I've done experiments collecting found yeast and the different strains vary...wildly.
- washadjeffmad 6y agoThis was the source of my bemusement, as well. In that light, it just reads like a branding gimmick. Friendship bread and other hereditary sourdoughs don't last more than a reculture against local wildtypes. Unless they're culturing and preparing the yeast and bacteria by strain and handling this industrially to prevent cross contamination, I don't have any hope they'll be able to do what they claim.
- thechao 6y agoThey actually discuss this at length in the Twitter 'thread'. Basically, they're pulling yeast spores from within the pottery, not from surface. Then they try to keep everything as sterile as possible after that (kitchen autoclaves, sterile handling with gloves, UV lights, etc.)
- washadjeffmad 6y agoAppreciated, Twitter is universally blocked for me.
- CydeWeys 6y agoIt seems like all of these questions are answered in the article? Hell, they've even got a geneticist working on sequencing the genome of the dormant yeast they extracted from the ancient pottery, so once that's finished I think we'll know pretty conclusively what we're looking at. But that the yeast would only grow when fed emmer flour, not modern wheat flour, already seems to suggest that something unusual is going on here that you wouldn't be seeing if it were truly modern bread yeast.
- radoslawc 6y ago> One of the detractors was an archaeologist with a background in Egyptology from the University of Queensland, Dr. Serena Love. “I was like, ‘Who is this guy?’ I don’t have an Xbox, I could care less about Xboxes,” says Dr. Love. Couldn't care less. Dr. ...
- washadjeffmad 6y agoPerhaps the only thing he cares less about is pedantry.
- joshspankit 6y agoYou’re assuming the level of care the Dr. has. Maybe she specifically means to say that she could care less.
- radoslawc 6y agoProbably in the same way as people specifically mean 'you're' when they write 'your' ;)
- executesorder66 6y agoNo, because then there would be no need to point out how much she cares. She specifically said that to highlight how little she cares for it, but said the phrase incorrectly.
- ogogmad 6y ago"could care less" is sarcasm.
- _iyig 6y agoIt's also a nonsensical expression which some English speakers (rather good-naturedly) find bothersome, as comedian David Mitchell explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw
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- feralimal 6y ago"4,500-year-old dormant yeast samples" You have got to be joking..... It must be that this guy (or his son/daughter) are about to start a 'Ancient Egyptian Bakery' franchise, and needed something to drum up some interest.
- bsenftner 6y ago"Xbox Creator" is an odd title/identifier, sure he was head of the project, but they are just slightly modified PCs. As if he did all the hard work, personally.
- dang 6y agoThreads about this from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20624396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20624396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20649495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20649495
- SEJeff 6y agoHe's actually really fun to follow on twitter and uses the hashtag #YeastMasters for things like this.
- Giorgi 6y agoI guarantee it tasted exactly the same.