The University of Cordoba and a Cordoban bakery recreate the original medieval bread recipe
Meridies is the new family of breads that the Hermanos Fernández Artisan Bakery will begin to develop over the next few months and that will be manufactured using methods from the year 1500.
The University of Córdoba (UCO), through the Meridies research group, is collaborating with the Hermanos Fernández Artisan Bakery to recreate the original recipe for medieval bread, specifically from the 15th century.
The research group, led by the professor of Medieval History Ricardo Córdoba, will collect information on how to make this product from around the year 1500, by consulting documentation kept in the Provincial Historical Archive of Córdoba. The workshop will use this information to develop over the next few months a family of breads that it will baptize with the name Meridies. In addition, it will reproduce the production process through the location of cereals, prior study of the flours, mixing tests, a design imitating the format of the breads of the time and baking in a stone oven.
The project, as Córdoba indicates, will aim to define what varieties of wheat were used, what types of flours were obtained, how the bread was kneaded, how long it was left to cook and in what type of ovens, and what type of bread was obtained by the end of the process. "Different formulas will be tested until marketable results are obtained, but always by using a technology similar to that used in the medieval period," he explains.