Ask Allie

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Is there a probiotic culture that was used by early Christians? 
Any Jewish Heirloom cultures as well? 
Also, what culture has the most diverse amount of bacteria? 
Any cultures that seem to promote good dreams the best?

— Alec

Alec, you’ve given us a lot to think about here! Because there is so much, yours will be the sole email I answer this week!

Is there a probiotic culture that was used by early Christians?

Any Jewish Heirloom cultures as well?

I’m tackling these together, because they’re related - early Christians were generally also Jews. Let’s take a brief but transdisciplinary approach to understanding the types fermented foods that likely would have been consumed both by Jews and early Christians.

Like basically everywhere in the Middle East, Palestine and Egypt were heavy wheat cultures. Palestinians and Egyptians primarily consumed emmer and einkorn wheat, with durum thrown in. Poorer people, it’s believed, generally consumed einkorn. We have archaeological evidence of wild einkorn from this time period and region, though wild einkorn is a shattering type of wheat, and thus not great for feeding the masses per se. Cultivated forms, however, are just ducky for feeding a people, and not expensively (which is why einkorn was a poor person’s wheat during this period of history even though it’s wicked pricey in modernity). A number of researchers make compelling arguments that, if kuccemeth is a type of wheat that still exists, is likely einkorn rather than the spelt it’s more frequently translated as. In the region where Jews were living during the periods that the word kuccemeth tends to pop up in the Bible, spelt was still unknown, so we can go on ahead and dismiss that one out of hand.

What we know, based on how bread has historically been made, is that these Jews and early Christians would have made unleavened flat breads, leavened flat breads, and leavened breads. Thus, we can make a reasonable argument that they were making sourdough breads. As such, we have a few options for starters that would work for you within the schema of historical baking:

1. Einkorn sourdough starter culture: I think this is where you’re going to get closest to accurate, because we have oodles of evidence that einkorn was out and proud in the region during this time. This really is a lovely flour to work with, and the starter itself is creamy, fragrant, and slightly sweet to offset its tang.

2. Egyptian sourdough starter culture: We can make a reasonable argument that some early Christians (and definitely can make it about even earlier Palestinians) would have sourdough starter handed down over generations, since the Exodus from Egypt. If we agree this is possible (and even likely), then this would be a fine choice (although I highly doubt that the one we sell is a couple thousand years old). That said, you would probably want to transition this from an all-purpose flour starter to emmer to optimize authenticity. All you have to do to make that happen is feed it only with emmer wheat flour. Easy peasy. This starter is also creamy, despite being made with all-purpose, and has a lot of the same characteristics of the einkorn one. Must be a regional thing? Dunno, but I really like both of these starters.

3. Red Whole Wheat sourdough starter culture: The thing is, common wheat was actually common back then. So I think you’d be solid with this option, and would have a bit more flexibility in terms of producing “regular” (AKA contemporary) breads with it.

4. WILD CARD! If you’re a fan of the KJV, you could go with our Wild Dark Rye sourdough starter culture: The KJV has a couple of spots where it translates kuccemeth into rye. I am reasonably sure that no one else agrees with this, but if you like rye, this is your in! I selected the wild dark because it has the highest chance of being something you might find there, and since it’s not tied to a location like our other ryes are, more flexibility.

Moving onto dairy!

So, these people (Jews and early Christians both) would’ve had a bunch of animals. BUNCHES. Lots of milk-producing beasts of wonder, primarily. So if they had milk, they fermented it. We can look at Judaic holidays and their symbologies and say yes all the way to cheese. That’s probably not helping you bunches, though. We can also make some reasonable extrapolations about yogurt, like that they had it. And because we know they had cheese and assume they had yogurt, you can make labne!!! It’s delicious - all you do is strain your yogurt until it’s like cream cheese, and then eat it on bread with olive oil, some veggies, olives, salt, pepper, and perhaps a bit of sumac. Za’atar is nice for this, too.

The scholarly consensus is that in instances where the Bible says something about “butter,” it’s really talking about leben (basically thick buttermilk) or a soured milk like yogurt. I’m gonna “full stop” on that one, because it’s the most rational view, allowing for recognition than a pastoral society generally is going to consume a variety of fermented dairy goods (such as we see in Scandinavian cultures), but also because it is generally accepted that as animals carried the milk in various skin and similar bags, those milks often resulted, due to the mix of microbes and warmth, in fermented products. That said, no way did they not also have butter. It is understood that their butter was not like our butter, and that largely comes from preparation methods.

Current understanding is that the traditional methods still employed by nomadic peoples within the larger Middle Eastern and North African region is likely how this would have been done for ancient Israelites/Palestinians, where the milk - not just the cream - went into those bags. So whenever the now (due to animal movements) curdled cream was plucked from the fermented milk, you would in effect have a cultured butter (albeit still a thinner one due to production methods).

Me personally? I’d go “not bloody likely” here and use milk kefir to culture cream for my butter. But that’s just me. If you want to ensure the taste of kefir cultured butter is closer to that sort of buttermilk-y deal we discuss above, Caucasus grains are your best bet.

Now, I think that no one in their right mind would try to tell you that we have a yogurt that we could definitively state, or even maybe, is the same as what Palestinians were eating back then. But they were eating something in this category. So, most valid options in my opinion are:

1. Buttermilk. This one is a no brainer for me, because we are reasonably certain that what these people were drinking was similar, if not the same. You could also go for thermophilic buttermilk here, because we’re pretty sure the milk was in animal hides being lugged about by animals, which kept it warm and agitated.

2. Egyptian Style Heirloom Thermophilic Yogurt: I’ve selected this one because Egypt is right up on Palestine, so you’re getting a better chance of using same/similar microbes as would’ve been consumed then. Not the same, but more likely similar.

3. Lebanese Style Heirloom Thermophilic Yogurt: Ditto on this one - Lebanon is right there too, so this one also gets you closer, in all likelihood, to what may have been consumed in this period and region.

This will explain why you should make labne. If you’re going for authenticity for the Roman period, leave those tomatoes out.

Other than that, you’re really going to be looking at fermented vegetables, olives (though honestly, most of their olives went to oil production), and beer/wine/vinegar. Wine is going to be the easiest, because you can get that basically anywhere, and vinegar of course is made from wine. I personally love brewing, but I don’t use contemporary methods for it. At some point, I really should write up my brewing system. It lends itself well to how much fermenting happens in our homes, and I use sourdough starter for my yeast source. It’s delicious and fun! Currently, we don’t have our wine vinegars in the shop, as we’re getting them ready for y’all, but if you check back you’ll see a nice selection of them in the upcoming month or so. We’ll be adding at least 4 of them for you guys!

Olives are out of season, but once they are in season again, I’ll be posting a tutorial on fermenting them. You generally want, however, to go with a 10% brine for 3-6 weeks (depends on how sweet or bitter you want them), and then you can marinate or not. The alternate choice here is to pack them in salt and let them chill for a while.

So last, we have fermented vegetables (fruits too, but that’s easy). By the Roman period, which is when those early Christians start working into our storyline, we also get cucumbers. So you can ferment those. Additionally, Palestinians had garlic, leeks, radishes (if memory serves, these were black radishes), onions, wild greens, orach (you can buy seeds for this here, and it’s worth doing so because orach is delicious), dandelions (also delicious, by the way), wild chicory, wild endive, wild lettuce (particularly important food), wormwood, sesame (largely for oil), mohlokhia (Jew’s mallow, traditional throughout the region as a green even today), and all sorts of other fun foods.

A lot of early Christians (and some of the most important ones) were vegetarians, so that really does give you a lot of options within the context of their culinary customs. Some (not all) options for you for ferments in this category are:

1. Honey fermented garlic. This is exactly what it sounds like - put garlic cloves in honey, lid, wait.

2. Honey fermented fruits. I would go figs, dates, grapes, apricots, and pomegranate here.

3. Honey fermented nuts. You’re probably seeing a theme here. But yeah, they ate a lot of nuts and they ate a lot of honey, so… Soaking nuts in honey is pretty common in a lot of cultures, and is a wickedly delicious snack. I recommend some of the nuts and honey on some of the sourdough bread you’ll be making, per above.

4. Sugar fermented fruit. Okay, so this would not at all be authentic. The Romans did introduce sugar to the Palestinians, but you would probably be using something more akin to Mexican piloncillo. I find the concept of anyone actually doing this outrageous, but you could, if you wanted, make the argument that it might be period authentic for an especially wealthy household. I find it really unlikely anyone would really accept the argument, but if you’re not going to be doing this from a hardcore perspective, it’d be delicious.

5. Brined vegetables - cucumbers (but not for pre-Christian Palestine), onions, leeks (all of these are delicious, by the way), garlic, radishes.

6. Salted vegetables. Do you know about this? You basically pack your veg into salt. You can do this for a very short period with greens, and you can do it with a lot of other veg. You know what? Imma get you a video from one of my three favorite YouTube channels (the other two are my hall pass and one of the saviors of my sanity)

I have made these, and over a year later the beans were perfect and cooked up well once they’d been soaked. If you get stuck with a bunch of green beans and don’t know what to do with them, do this.

Also, what culture has the most diverse amount of bacteria?

Hands down, milk kefir. My partner and I had a conversation about this earlier today, because he asked the same and was surprised by how decisive my answer was. If you can find a culture that has more diverse microbes than milk kefir, I want to know about it. They tend toward 30-50 different types. In contrast, the most diverse yogurt I know of, amasi, has 13 in its most potent forms. Milk kefir is where it’s at if you’re looking exclusively at potency and/or microbial diversity. Studies have also, though I’m sorry if you didn’t want this level of detail, shown that microbes from milk kefir can be found in stool samples, thereby indicating that at least some of its microbes can survive the digestive process. That’s a really big deal, because there’s debate about whether this is generally a thing in the scientific community, and there are health implications of non-viability through the digestive tract (i.e., it doesn’t work as well as you’d like it to in terms of systemic digestive health).

Any cultures that seem to promote good dreams the best?

I’m gonna go with “the boozy ones.” No, but seriously, if you’re not getting to whatever stage it is for you where a buzzed sleep is a good dreams sleep, I don’t think this is a thing.

Kind of.

There are a lot of reports that if you put a bit of mugwort in your ales, it will give some interesting dreams. I have not personally experienced this, and I do brew with mugwort every time I brew, but I have served enough people ales who later reported “crazy” or “awesome” dreams that night to believe it’s possible (depending on the individual). So maybe that’s another plug for homebrewing?

Thanks Alec, for the interesting questions! Cheers!