
A Conversation with the Team That Made Bread with Ancient Egyptian Yeast - yawz
https://www.eater.com/2019/8/8/20792134/interview-seamus-blackley-serena-love-richard-bowman-baked-bread-ancient-egyptian-yeast
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adrianhon
The reporting on this has been utterly dreadful, and Seamus Blackley and his
collaborators are jointly responsible for this. Just look at the headline:

 _A Conversation With the Team That Made Bread With Ancient Egyptian Yeast:
How a scientist harvested 4,500-year-old yeast and turned it into a loaf of
sourdough_

Wow, they did it, right? They absolutely, definitively made sourdough from
4,500-year-old yeast! Oh wait:

 _" And, look, there may not be any ancient yeast in this. This could all be
crazy, because we haven’t done all the science, and we’re going to. But it
definitely acted different. It was really exciting."_

What a joke. Blackley isn't a 13 year old at a science fair, and neither are
his collaborators. They knew that publishing this as a tweetstorm with the
disclaimers at the bottom would be open to misinterpretation, and it was. Here
are a couple of lines from his tweets that would make anyone think they did
it:

 _This crazy ancient dough fermented and rose beautifully. Here it is in the
basket, just before being turned out to bake.

The crumb is light and airy, especially for a 100% ancient grain loaf. The
aroma and flavor are incredible._

Yes, I blame all the journalists as well for not doing their fucking jobs and,
you know, calling up actual scientists and Egyptologists who've already tried
similar things.

~~~
pjc50
The twitter thread is full of disclaimers like "Finally, I need to say again,
this was just for practice". Yes, there's some uncertainty over whether
they've actually got ancient yeast in sufficient uncontaminated quantities.
Yes, it's a publicity stunt. No, we shouldn't actually care quite so much.

> calling up actual scientists and Egyptologists who've already tried similar
> things.

Like who?

------
jillesvangurp
I saw this in my Twitter feed a few days ago. Some hilarious comment included
"Return of the yummy".

I've actually been experimenting with sourdough recently. It's very easy to
get started with this and even the failures are pretty tasty. All you need is
clean water, some decent flour and about 7-10 days to turn that into a stable
sourdough starter. After that, you can just keep on growing it and baking
bread, pizza, pancakes (oh yes), etc. Dangerously delicious. I could use less
carbs in my life, though.

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gshdg
This is fascinating.

I do wonder whether sterilizing the flour had any effect on the output. Doing
a control with the same flour and modern yeast seems potentially worthwhile.

~~~
nrdvana
It sounded like he already had experience with that. He said that flour always
turns out like a “puck”, where this was fluffly. So, not exactly science-grade
analysis there, but certainly a strong indicator.

~~~
gshdg
The “puck” thing was about the type of grain he used. There was no indication
that he’d previously sterilized said grain.

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sersi
I really would love buying that yeast eventually to experiment with it, good
business opportunity for them if the lab tests they are doing pans out.

~~~
ncmncm
I would buy.

Sell it as a kit with the right flour.

------
neonate
I happened on a fun radio interview with Seamus Blackley about this while
driving this evening:
[https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1583944259602](https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1583944259602).

------
lowdose
Nobody got sick.

~~~
amluto
I’ve never heard of anyone getting sick from anything that looks and smells
like sourdough and doesn’t have obvious mold. And people start their own
starters all the time under extremely unsanitary conditions.

It turns out that the critters that infect people are usually pretty
specialized and have a hard time living in dough.

~~~
senectus1
yeah yeast _hates_ salt.

humans are kinda salty.

~~~
amluto
Are you saying that the kind of yeast that ferments bread can’t tolerate salt?
The salt I add to my dough on a regular basis disagrees.

As I understand it, there are two things going on. First, most (or even all?)
pathogens can’t tolerate alcohol, and many baking yeasts produce alcohol.
(Many sourdoughs produce very little, though.). A lot of pathogens also can’t
tolerate the acids in sourdough either. Most importantly, baker’s yeast and
sourdough cultures grow _fast_. The outcompete the nasties in dough. This is
why a brand new starter can be funky, but this resolves itself after a few
generations.

