flipSitos — the staple food (bread/grain)
Barley maza and cheese, camp flatbread
EverydayReconstruction🧂 🫙facile30 min
Sitos — the staple food (bread/grain)
Barley maza and cheese, camp flatbread
Flat barley cake kneaded with water, sometimes enriched with crumbled sheep's cheese, baked on a hot stone. The everyday food, nourishing and portable, that sustained the soldiers of the Achaean camp.
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Why this dish? Far from lavish banquets, the army camped before Troy lived for ten years on maza, the barley flatbread or porridge, the basis of Greek diet. Achilles, prince of Phthia accustomed to meat, nevertheless shares this daily bread of warriors between assaults.
Do not think the hero lives only on fat flesh, friend. Ten years beneath the walls of Troy, it is barley that is ground and kneaded, and the flatbread baked on the hot stone by the sounding shore. I crumble the cheese of my Phthian ewes into it, for a warrior who has not eaten has no arm for the spear. Break it with me: it is the simple bread that sustains both anger and courage.
Ingredients
- •Toasted barley flour — two handfuls (grain base)
- •Water — as needed (binder)
- •Sheep's cheese — a piece, crumbled (enrichment)
- •Salt — a pinch (seasoning)
How it was made : Maza (ground barley, sometimes simply moistened without cooking) was the ordinary bread of the Greeks, more common than wheat bread reserved for the wealthy. In camp, barley kept well and was quick to prepare. Sheep's or goat's cheese, mentioned by Homer, made it a complete meal.
Sources : Homer, Iliad and Odyssey (mentions of bread and cheese) · A. Dalby, Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece