Pizza dough dates from the time of the Romans. It’s a double fistful of everything…in the old way of measuring, the way Roman soldiers used to make bread in the evening, something like sourdough, 2 fistfuls of flour, two capfuls of olive oil, a little aqua pura [water], a pinch of salt, a shot of honey, and a little of the sourdough mix, allowed to rise a bit, then cooked at fireside on a hot rock. To translate into modern terms, 2 cups of flour [one whole wheat, one white], 2 tbs of olive oil, pinch of salt, tbs of honey, enough water to make it mix in an elastic, non-sticky way; and 2 tsp of yeast. Stir, hand-shape to a ball, adding flour at need.
In point of fact—all bread requires: flour, liquid (often water), oil, sugar in some form [for the yeast to work], salt, and yeast or equivalent. Simple as early civilization.
Only I’m going to put back what the Romans had and we’ve lost: wheat germ/bran, as in what results when you grind whole grain. About a cup of it. Because it’s inert, it doesn’t count much in the recipe, and it ‘extends’ the mix into something larger. Allow to rise once, then shape by hand. Punch in center, spread outward, or—if you’re brave—use its elasticity to flatten it by spinning it on your hand. The old Romans simply pressed a knife or blade into the risen dough ball, to pre-make easy-break divisions of bread, like pie slices. We found loaves in the ovens of a bakery in Pompeii, or at least, their ghosts. The people had been going about their normal morning—until the apocalypse.
I used to be able to ‘throw’ pizza like the guys in the pizzeria ‘windows’, but that was many decades ago. We’ll see.
How-some-ever, on our diet, using a little Prego sauce, Paul Newman’s, or its equivalent, {if I were being good, I’d hand-make that, too), I plan to lay down some low salt, low fat, low calorie stuff, like chicken bits and raw mushroom with Italian spices, then some acceptable cheese, not overdoing it, and produce an Italian-style pizza, which is much lighter on ‘goodies’ than the American version.
With a 425 bake on a pizza stone (ceramic: if you like crispy bottomed pizza, a must) it should rise and be nice. Not like Domino’s, but good.
To be technical, you don’t need yeast to make bread. I made some soda bread for a St. Pat’s party, where the recipe consisted of flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, oatmeal, buttermilk, and egg. Mix that all together, knead very briefly (mostly so it all sticks together, since over-working this dough makes a very dense bread), pop it in the oven and bake. I like bread, and this made a decent go-with-dinner bread, but not something good enough to star on its own. But you can do a lot of additions to quick breads to make them taste better, i.e. almost cake. I used to have an awesome recipe for one with maraschino cherries and pineapple.
And just an update on my pup: Katie has really really blossomed in the house. She’s still not as confident as I would like outside the house, but inside she’s pretty much a normal dog. Here’s my most recent video of her working for her breakfast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKUMm91QjJ0 She’s a far cry from the dog who had to be physically dragged out of her crate when I first got her!
That is a very good point about the heat! As you say, there were almost certainly a lot less people around at that time of year.
There is also a theory that a lot of people left after the big earthquake 17 years before.
What we know is that about 1100 bodies have been found. The total population has been estimated at anywhere from 6000 to 30000. Beard’s estimate is about 12000 in the town itself, and perhaps 24000 in the immediate vicinity, outside the city walls.
There is also a debate about when exactly the eruption took place, despite what Pliny says. There may be evidence of autumn fruits which wouldn’t have been available until well into September, and there is a coin which it is argued could only have been minted in September at the earliest. Those experts who argue for a later date think that there may be a mistake in the medieval copy of Pliny’s book.
One of the points Beard makes is that there are a lot of things we just don’t know. Often modern experts present things as facts when they are really just guesswork and theories, and hotly debated in archeological journals.