Baking Bread with 4,500 Year Old Yeast

 I have mentioned that I bake sourdough bread, right?  Indeed, on Tuesday I baked 2 loaves of sourdough with rosemary.  It smelled wonderful.  Then, today, out of the blue I find that the Xbox inventor bakes bread with 4,500 year old yeast. My own starter is a continuation of a 400 year old yeast strain. but, a 4.500 year old yeast?

Seamus Blackley (who invented the Xbox gaming system) posted on Twitter how he, together with a pair of scientists (an Egyptologist and a microbiologist), collected yeast from 4,500-year-old Egyptian pottery. They took samples from containers they suspected were used for bread-making and beer-brewing in Ancient Egypt. Blackley kept a single sample of the antique yeast and used milled barley, as well as Einkorn flour to ‘awaken’ the yeast. After a week’s worth of patient waiting, the scientist was ready to start baking! (The microbiologist is going to make beer next!)

That is, of course, incredible. If you are a bread enthusiast, you should check out Blackley's tweets as he takes you step by step through the process. Very interesting, and very cool.