BOOK XVIII. XXVI. I02-XXVII. 105 



boiled wit h prime flour of emmer and then mixed with 

 the flour, this process being thought to produce the 

 best bread. The Greeks have decided that two- 

 thirds of an ounce of leaven is enough for everv two 

 half-pecks of flour. Morcover though thesc kinds of 

 leaven can only be made in the vintage season, it is 

 possible at any time one chooses to make leaven 

 from water and barley, making two-pound cakes and 

 baking them in ashes and charcoal on a hot hearth 

 or an earthcnware dish till they turn brown, and 

 afterwards keeping them shut up in vessels till they 

 go sour ; then soaked in water they produce leaven. 

 But when barley bread used to be made, the actual 

 barlev was leavened with flour of bitter vetch or 

 chickHng ; the proper amount was two pounds of 

 leaven to every two and a half pecks of barley. At 

 the present time leaven is made out of the floiu* 

 itself, which is kneaded before salt is added to it 

 and is then boiled down into a kind of porridge and 

 left till it bcgins to go sour. Generally however they 

 do not heat it up at all, but only use the dough kept 

 over from the day before ; manifestly it is natural 

 for sourness to make the dough ferment, and hkewise 

 that people who Uve on fermented bread have weaker 

 bodies, inasmuch as in old days outstanding whole- 

 someness was ascribed to wheat the heavicr it was. 



XXVII. As for bread itsclf it appears superfluous wai/s oj 

 to give an account of its various kinds — in some ^"g^"' 

 places bread called after the dishes eaten with it, 

 such as oyster-bread, in others from its special deli- 

 cacy, as cake-bread, in others from the sliort time 

 spent in niaking it, as hasty-bread," and also from 

 the method of baking, as oven bread or tin loaf or 

 baking-pan bread ; while not long ago there was 



255 



