Bread from Pompeii (79 CE)
Pompeii’s bakers were experts at creating the round, dense bread favored by Romans, called panis quadratus. The bakers created these loaves in large volumes, selling them to customers from bakeries and restaurants throughout the cities. One early morning, the bakers prepared their bread for the day’s service, kneading and shaping them into the loaves, tossing them into the oven to keep up with demand. But the loaves would never be eaten.
Later in the day, some say August 24, others say October 24, in 79 CE, Mount Vesuvius unleashed hell on the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. As the ash, pumice, and heat bore down on these cities, all that grand food was carbonized and buried for over 1,500 years. In 1862, archaeologists unearthed the Bakery of Modestus. They found eighty-one of these circular loaves carbonized, amazingly well preserved despite having experienced volcanic heat and destruction of an entire community.
