Carbonized 1,300-Year-Old Bread Loaves Unearthed in Turkey

4 months ago (ancientist.com)

Usually you can freshen up stale bread by putting it in the toaster.

  • Staling is a transformation in the starch molecules that is reversed by heat.

    A good way to freshen up stale bread without toasting it is to steam it.

    If it doesn't need moisture, a few seconds in the microwave oven does the job.

    • My favorite method: spritz with water on both sides. A few seconds in the microwave. Then a minute or two in the toaster. Even very stale bread is as good as new.

Would this have been done using a pan with a reversed pattern or hand skills?

  • It would likely have been done using a mold similar to the ones in this article about Roman breadmaking in Pompeii. [0] This story did make it to HN a couple or three years ago, maybe longer, and has been updated since.

    [0]https://tavolamediterranea.com/2018/06/14/baking-bread-roman...

    There's some bullshit about no part of the website being reproduced, etc at the bottom of the article but I ignored it since they posted it online where anyone can read it and they mentioned earlier traffic from HN so I'm sure they're totally okay with us abusing their materials, maybe as long as we all purchase something from their shops. /s

    • "NO PART OF THIS WEB SITE [...] MAY BE REPRODUCED, DISTRIBUTED, COPIED, PLAGIARISED, OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, INCLUDING [...] VERBAL CONVEYANCE"

      Imagine asking people not to talk about your work. Astonishing.

      2 replies →

The entire website seems fake! The quoted archaeologist sounds like GPT.

  • I noticed that too, but I suspect that people's GPT-meters may be a bit too hair-trigger these days.

    Idea for a study: take a bunch of GPT-sounding snippets from a verified pre-LLM corpus, along with an equal number of typical LLM generated ones. Randomize and ask test subjects to tell them apart. I suspect it would be a bloodbath. (Random chance at best, or heavily biased toward false positives.)