The World That Was - Akkadian King's Bread "Ninda Ensu" (Iraqi "samoon")

Hello and Welcome to The World That Was!

This week, I'm recreating some Akkadian bread, as seen in some cuneiform inscriptions, as well as visual representations in carved panels in Akkadian palaces.

The original bread has a striking similarity to modern Iraqi samoon - from it's shape to it's description in Akkadian!

In any case, let's now take a look at the world that was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above!

Ingredients

1 cup wholemeal flour

2 cups plain flour

salt

water

active dry yeast (or 1/3 cup sourdough starter)

milk

sesame seeds

Method

1 - Preparing the Dough and letting it Rest

To begin with, we need to make a starter. The easiest way to do this today is to use some dry active yeast, opening a sachet, and placing it in a bowl with a bit of warm water. But if you have some sourdough starter, you can use 1/3rd of a cup of that instead! But keep in mind that the sourdough starter will affect how hydrated your dough is later on.

Pour in 1 cup of wholemeal flour, along with two cups of plain white flour into the yeasty mix, and mix everything together until the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl cleanly. If it's too dry and crumbly, add some water - little by little - until it comes together into a smooth ball.

When it's ready, place a damp cloth or a bit of clingfilm over the top of your bowl, and let the whole thing prove in a warm area for a few hours - or until it's doubled in size.

2 - Forming your Bread

When your dough has expanded hugely, tip this out onto a lightly floured worksurface, and get to kneading. Fold and twist this around for about 10 minutes, just to help develop a better texture of the loaf down the line. When you're finished kneading it, roll the whole thing into a long snake of dough. Cut this in half, and these halves in half again, so you wind up with four roughly evenly-sized balls of dough.

Carvings of Akkadian banquets show off lemon-shaped loaves of bread, and modern samoon are formed in a similar way. So roll a ball of dough in your hand, leaving two nubs at either end of it. Flatten the centre of the loaf down, by stretching and pulling at the dough until it smooths down.

3 - Baking

When they're formed, place them onto some baking paper, and cover them with a damp towel for about 20 minutes. After this, brush them with a bit of milk, before sprinkling some sesame seeds over the top of them if you want. Bake these in an oven preheated to 230C / 450F for 15-20 minutes, or until they turn golden brown.

Serve up warm, and dig in!

The bread is delicious and fluffy, with a nice crisp crust. The sesame seeds - if added to the top - become toasted and flavourful when baked.

The original name for this bread would have been "ninda ensu" - which literally translates to "the bread of the king/ruler". "ninda" being a catch-all word for a variety of breads and cakes in the Akkadian language, so while it's likely that "ninda ensu" referred to a savoury bread, it's also likely that this may have been sweetened too!

I used a 2:1 ratio of plain flour to wholemeal flour, as this gives us a bran content similar to what would have been able to be produced in pre-industrial Akkadian society - although even so, this amount of pure, fine flour would have only been affordable to the Kings and rulers of the time - due to the time-consuming process of making flour as fine as possible.