Ancient Egyptians had a varied diet, but the most important of their food items was bread and beer. Every meal was accompanied by them, and meals were regarded incomplete without them. Wheat and barley were the chief crops grown; wheat was used to bake bread and barley to make beer. Egyptian Bread was the staple food of Egyptians. Much of our knowledge about ancient Egyptian bread comes from archaeological excavations that have found desiccated bread in tombs. The bread was placed as a funerary offering to nourish the dead during their journey to the afterlife.

Process of Baking Egyptian Bread

The process of baking bread is known from sources like Old Kingdom statuettes, Middle kingdom models, Tombs at Beni Hasan etc. An illustration from the tomb of Ramses II depicts the baking of bread at the royal bakery.

Egyptian bread was made almost exclusively from emmer wheat, which was more difficult to turn into flour when compared with most other varieties of wheat. Emmer required extensive processing, which was usually performed by women in many families.

Egyptian bread was very different from bread that we eat today. The hard and gritty bread was very dangerous to their teeth. Many Egyptian mummies show severe abrasion of the teeth from eating bread containing sand and particles from the grindstones. Even Amenhotep III suffered badly from such problems.

The chaff comes in spikelet’s that needed to be removed by moistening and pounding with a pestle to avoid crushing the grains inside. It was then dried in the sun, winnowed and sieved and finally milled on a saddle quern, which functioned by moving the grindstone back and forth.

Grinding was a tough job, taking hours of hard labour. Grit from the quern stones was released into the flour and was baked in the bread. The baking techniques varied over time.

Flavourings used for bread included coriander seeds and dates. There were other flavourings such as honey, butter, eggs, oil and herbs, as well as fruits which were occasionally added. Yeast might also be added to some recipes. But it is unknown whether they were used by the poor.

The most common type of bread is a pita type made either with refined white flour called aysh shami, or with coarse, whole wheat, aysh Baladi. There were more than thirty different shapes of bread.

Over forty varieties of bread and cake were made in the New Kingdom. There are many types of loaves, including ones that are shaped like animals. Loaves also shaped like human figures, fish, all of the varying dough texture.

The climate of Egypt, which is very arid in many locations, is responsible for preserving a rich record of organic materials, including bread loaves. Hundreds of specimens have survived, mostly from funerary offerings that have found their way into the museums of the world.

Bread was often used as a synonym for food and hospitality. Extending bread to the poor by the rich was appreciated. The gods and the deceased aspiring to an eternal life of divinity were offered white bread.

At times, wages were paid in the form of bread and beer though grain was mostly used for this purpose. During the old kingdom, a worker’s daily ration was ten loaves of bread and two jugs of beer.