Row
after row of tall, golden wheat stalks covered the field.
Today, everyone in the village would help harvest this precious crop.
The growing season had been good. There
would be a large supply of grain for making bread and, occasionally, some sweet
date pastries.
Bread and
Pastries
Beer
How Do We Know That?
Since
barley and emmer wheat grew well in ancient Egypt, bread was a staple of all
Egyptians’ diets. Wealthier
Egyptians also ate many sweet pastries, and many Egyptians made beer.
Bread
and Pastries
After the grain was harvested, the ancient Egyptians used grinding stones to
pound it into flour. This coarse
flour was mixed with water and kneaded to make bread dough.
Egyptian cooks sometimes made the bread in huge bowls on the floor.
They would jump in and knead the dough with their feet. The dough was
then shaped into loaves or placed inside cone-shaped molds and baked over an
open fire.
Ancient Egyptians loved sweet things, so flour was also
used to make cakes. There was no
sugar, so Egyptian bakers used honey, dates and fruit juice to sweeten the
dough.
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Beer
Beer was made from pieces of partially baked barley bread that was sometimes
sweetened 
with dates, honey or spices. The
bread was soaked in large containers filled with water.
The mixture eventually turned into a gritty beer that was strained before
it was drunk. Egyptian beer was a
dark color and had a sweet taste.
Egyptian beer was a nutritious beverage and most
Egyptians drank it. Beer was such a
common drink, it often appeared on the offering list for a deceased person.
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How Do We Know That?
Egyptologists have noticed that many mummies have very bad teeth.
Dental problems may have been caused by all of the sweet dates and honey
the ancient Egyptians ate. It may
also be that sand and grit were ground into the flour used to make bread.
Chewing gritty bread would have worn down the Egyptians’ teeth very
quickly
When Tony Melcher, a dental scientist, examined the
mummy of a 9th Century middle-class Egyptian named Djedmaatesankh, he noticed
that the outer enamel coverings of her teeth had been worn almost completely
away. Years of chewing sandy bread
was probably the reason for this.
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